During our one full day stay in North Carolina, we took a thirty minute trip up a mountain towards a town call Highlands experience the mountains. The only change in elevation we have in St. Petersburg, Florida is caused by old Indian burial mounds, so seeing mountains is a pretty big deal to us Florida folks.
We used the excuse of wanting the children to see the sights, but we were enjoying it just as much as them. I wasn’t kidding when I said it there was so much beauty to see there. I don’t remember seeing one ugly thing. Even with the pain of mourning the loss of my uncle, God’s beauty was encompassing us. Of course there is beauty here but it was different for me there, something I could really get used to.
We stopped on the side of the road on our way up to The Waterfall. By The Waterfall (that’s what I’m naming it) I really mean one of many waterfalls in the Nantahala National Forest. This particular one has staircases leading down the mountain towards it and has a pathway behind it. As a kid, maybe I was 5, I remember my dad taking my sister and me there one winter; it was so cold some of the water drops running down the rocks had frozen allowing us to break off ice crystal to suck on like popsicles. It’s hard to explain, but there are a few small caves behind the waterfall, where the path it. It was the ceiling of those caves where the icicles were.
Elijah loved seeing the waterfalls and mountains. I lost track of how many times “whoa!” came out of his mouth. Eliana didn’t express much verbally, she said “wow!” maybe a few times, but she couldn’t stop staring at the falling water. She only stopped gazing long enough to collect some rocks and look at the camera for a split second.
Looking back at these pictures only confirms how much I love the mountains, the rolling hills, the country side. God willing, one day we’ll wake up to that kind of breathtaking beauty daily.
