Yesterday, I watched out the car window as trees swiftly turned into a mass of grey, green and brown. On the shady side of the mountain where snow dots the ground it is a winter wonderland, but when we cross over to the sunny side it looks almost as if it is springtime, everything is sunny and melting. The snow isn’t deep enough to cover all the foliage on the ground and the tops of the dead plants poke through, dotting it with dark brown and making it look muddy. To the right of the car the mountainside stretched up as far as I could see, and to the left was an endless valley with the Savannah River somewhere down below.
This is my first time in North Carolina, and we are staying in the small town of Highlands for a romantic cozy weekend away. Everything in the Carolinas is absolutely gorgeous, and I love it. Charleston, SC was one of my most favorite places we have visited, and now being in the mountains of NC just outside of Georgia, and this small town/ hallmark movie feel is absolutely filling my soul the way I needed it too.
We read somewhere that there are a lot of writers who live in the Highlands area, and I can see why. Everything is secluded and gorgeous, and inspiring. It’s quiet here, and I absolutely love it. Even in January, when the trees are ‘bare’ and brown, it’s still earthy and gorgeous. The air is pure and full of breath, it sparks creativity. It is doing exactly what I needed it to do after the busy holiday season. I needed a place to relax, recharge and reignite the writing spark. I haven’t been able to get much done in the last two months, but I was always hoping that this trip would allow me the time and space to write. Here I sit, in front of a wall of windows looking out at the forest covering the mountainside with a cozy warm fire going and getting some words ‘on paper’. This started as a short story about ‘sight’ from a class I am taking with Sarah Selecky that I signed up for in order to reignite my spark after the two-month hiatus I took, but then it spiraled into more of a stream of consciousness about the way I feel right now. And that’s OKAY, I am still writing and getting something down and however it wants to come out is perfectly fine. That is something I have had to come to terms within the last year in order to allow my creativity to flow, that sometimes things don’t go as they are planned but words on paper still count, and you have to allow those thoughts out in order to make room for something else.
I had handwritten a quick story with an emphasis on sight last night, and when I sat down to transcribe it to type something else just flowed out and it became more my internal thoughts. AND THAT’S OKAY. Sometimes I need to reflect on the things going on around me and really soak them in. I think it goes hand in hand with intention, and just being present, and I always have so many thoughts swirling around they just need out. I am a very emotional and sentimental person and I like to focus on the way I am feeling, and always try to transcribe it into words so it doesn’t get lost forever, I want to hang on to every memory for as long as I can. Then I try to fictionalize it or put the way I feel, or the things I am seeing into a story to immortalize it forever, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Today, it wasn’t working the way I wanted too and so instead my brain had other plans. So here we are. Anyways, as always thanks for following along and maybe I’ll have another update from NC before we go, and maybe not, we’ll see where the rest of this week takes me. Cheers!
