Appalachian Memories

The following is a short essay I wrote for my book of memoirs. I want to share it with you today.
Down to the Soft Grass
At the top of Windy Gap we spread our lunch of cream cheese and crackers we’d bought at a little general store in Villas. Barry and I were in our thirties and had been married for a few years. I can see him now, long legs in jeans that fit like they were made just for him, camera hanging from a strap around his neck.

We had found this place, Seven Devils, and rented a rustic cabin that looked down on small towns and little roads that wormed between mountains in the far north western part of North Carolina. My memories of that day, high on a mountain in Appalachia, away from life’s reality back home, brings a smile to my face.
When I am stressed and want to go in my mind to a place where I feel comfortable and at peace, I go there. That is the only way I can go back there. The place no longer exists having been developed with condos and vacation houses for the skiers who fill the slopes in winter.

And Barry is no longer here to go with me, so I’d not want to go there. But I can recapture that day, the wind blowing in my face, the sweet fresh air tasting like a cool drink from a mountain spring. Little did I know how quickly the years would pass and how precious that day, that moment, would become to me, decades later.