Our Journey Begins

We usually take a trip to Duck, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, in April, and this year we decided to travel there by a more circuitous and adventurous route.  Perhaps we were inspired by our friends Bob and Nancy, who take off for months at a time in their RV (at the moment they are in Utah).  So we planned a trip through some cities we have never seen and some we have not seen in a long time on the way.

We started our trip in familiar places - Brevard and Hendersonville - on our way to Highland Lake Inn and Resort, near Flat Rock.  (Our waitress at Marco Tratorria in Brevard at lunch had a large tattoo partially visible on her neck, and when I asked what it said - I usually do during this curious phase of my life - she told us, "Constant as the Northern Star," a quote from Julius Caesar; she said she wanted to be writer and this quote reminded her of her dream.)

 Beginning as a grist mill in 1789, Highland Lake Inn has a long and colorful history.  It became a golf course in 1910, and later a boys prep school and a summer camp. The property is now the site of several accommodations, including a historic lodge and several small cabins (where we stayed) and a first-class restaurant called Seasons.  There are lots of quiet places to sit, extensive paths and walkways and gardens, and a lake where we have gone canoeing in the past.

 We slept in one of the small cabins on the property, and all night we heard a very distinctive "screech" behind our cabin, something like a woman screaming.  We suspected what it was because last year we saw the same resident, a white peacock, and there it was in the morning when I went down the road to a secluded place to do my Tai Chi, perched in one of three trees (how appropriate for Easter morning!):

We celebrated Easter at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Hendersonville, where we heard a powerful sermon by Rev. Mark Stanley, who quoted Karl Barth to us.  Barth had wondered why people came to church (something I have wondered myself recently); on Sunday in worship, claimed Barth, people want an answer to this one question, Is it true?—"and not some other answer which beats around the bush.”

Then we had a plentiful Easter Dinner at Seasons and strolled the ground. And everything seemed to be remarkably true.

It had rained all day on our way over here on Saturday,  but Easter morning was clear and cool.  I arose early, before church and dinner, and ran a little over four miles on the grounds of the resort and in nearby East Flat Rock Park, the sound of that peacock still on my mind.  I found a path that wound around and around, following a lazy little river, the sun warming me as I ran, and I realized that I had no idea what lay around the next bend.  And that I was enjoying that feeling immensely.

Our journey begins.