Sugar Top - a fine place to spend a few days

Friday afternoon, view from our condo at SugarTop

Today, August 19, is  our last vacation day before we leave for home. Gay and I have had the most wonderful relaxing week at Sugar Top Resort on the tip top of a mountain ridge in the High Country of North Carolina. Although we have had much rain, we didn't care. We read, rested and watched some TV. We also visited with friends who have a large mountain house near Boone, NC.

I didn't realize how much I needed to get away until I had been here a day. Our condo is rented by owner and he fulfilled my request for a place cleaned with only vinegar and water and no use of air fresheners. I didn't think to bring my own linens, so I had to go out and buy sheets, towel and wash cloth. The linens that were on my bed had been washed and dried with scented detergent and dryer sheets.

We opened the doors and windows when we arrived, turned on some fans, and we have been very comfortable. The kitchen is furnished well, but we did little cooking. Mostly breakfasts. Banner Elk, the nearest town has many good restaurants and nearby grocery stores.

Sugar Top sits on a ridge and is considered an eyesore because you can see if from any direction and it breaks up the beauty of the mountains. I would hate for someone to build this huge place on top of a mountain in Clay County where I live. After the resort was being  built, the NC legislature passed a law preventing anyone else building on top of the ridges. But it was too late to  stop the building of Sugar Top.

In spite of all the controversy surrounding the resort in the beginning, I am happy to have found this very reasonable condo on VRBO. We are on the seventh floor with easy access by elevator. No stairs to climb. My bedroom has a  king size bed, private bathroom, flat screen TV and double windows opening to the beautiful long range views. We overlook a ski slope, some smaller rental units and at night the lights from Banner Elk, far down the way, shine like a Christmas village. I can imagine how fantastic it must be when snow covers the ground.

The staff has been nice to deal with, but it would be great to have had someone help bring up our luggage. Gay says we don't need help, and she handles it very well. She and I are so  compatible that sharing a place with her took me  back in time. We shared a bedroom growing up from as far back as I can remember and for a year in college. On some days here we didn't get dressed until late afternoon when we went out to eat. I almost  hate to go home. One afternoon I used the  heated pool for exercise. No one else was there and I loved that experience also.

The past two days have been extremely foggy. At times we can't see the ground from our deck. We are enclosed in a cloud, set off from all the world, like being in a floating apartment high above the earth. The silence is comforting and leads to thinking about all I am so grateful for in my life.

I also thought about my future. I will be cutting back on classes at Writers Circle next year. I plan to only hold three workshops at my studio. I hope that NCWN West will bring in some good instructors to teach in our rural area.

I will be home by the time you read this post. Thanks for reading my blog. I love to hear from you.

March 2, was Barry's birthday. I can't let that special day go by without writing about him. I'll also share some photos.

Barry, Glenda and Gay on vacation out west-photo by Stu Moring

He was not big on celebrating his birthday, but Gay and Stu, and our friends the Clarkes, had begun a tradition of celebrating both Gay's birthday on the 23 of February and Barry's birthday on March 2 with one event. 

The Clarkes often had us over to their house or we would go somewhere, the six of us to eat and drink wine, and enjoy the day.

I remember one year when the weather was particularly nice in late February and we drove to a tumbling creek where water splashed and spun in circles around large smooth boulders. We ate our sandwiches sitting in the warm sun on one of the huge rocks. It was one of those days that stays with you forever because of the pure joy and happiness we all felt and the love we had for each other.

Glenda and Barry on a creek in North Georgia Mountains

Barry and Gay, my best friends and biggest supporters of whatever I wanted, had the same signs on the Horoscope. Pisces. In many ways they were similar. Neither liked to dwell on details but would rather glance at the big picture and move on. Barry was not a worrier and neither is Gay. At least she seems to accept that things aren't going to always go her way, so she puts the problem behind her and goes on. Barry used to tell me that I worried about things that would likely never happen. He didn't worry and if something bad or difficult came up, he handled it at that time.

That is not the way I work. That is the way the government works. Reactive thinking. I hate that.

I am proactive. I plan and think ahead about what might happen so that I can prevent it. 

 

Good planning prevents most mishaps, I believe, but Barry felt that worrying or over-thinking was a waste of good time, energy and it was stressful. He was good for me because he often talked me out of a major melt-down when I imagined the worst scenario. But I was good for him when I prevented a disaster by thinking ahead. 

We fit together like a couple of puzzle pieces, frayed around the edges, maybe, but our ins and outs matched perfectly.

Now there are five instead of six of us, and we celebrate Gay's birthday with lunch at a favorite restaurant. We don't forget Barry's birthday, however, and we can now talk about him and laugh at his zany remarks and cute ways, his comments that made us all laugh. His spirit is with us and we all miss him, but cherish the happy times we had together. 

BLUE HAWAII - Green and Yellow and Clean

Recently I had the opportunity to travel to the state of Hawaii as the guest of my sister and brother-in-law. Gay and Stu had been there before, but they gave me the experience of seeing that far off land I’d never seen and will not likely see again. The plane trip is far too hard to get over. 

We arrived in Honolulu and stayed one night in a hotel across the street from a beautiful Hilton. Because of my problems with indoor air pollution, I dreaded entering the Ramada Inn, thinking they would likely have sprayed chemical fragrance in their lobby and in the rooms. But I was surprised to find the hotel smelled clean -- not artificially deodorized with chemicals. No scented soap or personal body care products bothered me in the room. My first impression of Hawaii was great.

We flew to the island of Kauai the next day. We arrived at the airport in Lihue. My hosts said this was the least commercialized of all the islands. I loved the drive to the Marriott on Poi Pu Beach. Tall grass grows wild on the roadsides. I was told it was cane grass or buffalo grass. We passed wide open green fields with fat cows and sleek horses. We drove through a tunnel of trees and some small towns before reaching the coast. So much green, so many shades of green, and I didn't see one beer can on the side of the road.

It seems the residents of Kauai know the value of a clean ocean, clean air to breath and the natural world in which their native people depended upon for many generations. Never have I seen people so dedicated to recycling and caring for the environment.  

Plastic bags are banned on Kauai. 

Can you imagine that? If a store uses bags, they use paper and it is plainly printed on the side, Recycle.

I found the best method of recycling is a little fabric item called a market bag made by a lady selling them in a booth. It unzips and opens to a bag as big as one of the tote bags we find at the grocery store. This market bag can easily be refolded, zipped and carried in my purse so I will have it with me all the time. I wish I had bought several of them. 

Some retail stores in Kauai don’t offer bags at all. If you buy a blouse, you take it home in your hands – no plastic to fill the landfills and clutter the rivers, streams and oceans. Coincidentally, I heard tonight that our oceans are so dirty, oysters are dying out. The oyster farmer said this is like the canary in the coal mine. If the oyster goes, other things dependent on clean water will go also. Yes, I know he didn't say it was plastic in the water that was harming marine life, but all the junk adds up.

sunset on Poi Pu Beach

Gratefully, I breathed in the ocean air of Kauai and gazed on the blue water as I watched birds, some familiar, but most unfamiliar, in the sky, on the ground, and lighting in boughs of yellow and orange hibiscus bushes, and the multitude of flowering shrubs everywhere. 

It was easy to forget my responsibilities and worries. I couldn't have been more removed from reality--unless I had landed on the moon. 

While I Waited, Life Happened
By Glenda Beall

In the waning days of fall vacation, leaves fly
like gold finches, poplars’ jeweled showers
rain upon the mountains of West Virginia.

Temperatures plummet to freezing after dark,
but mornings crisp as caramel apples draw us
outside where cows seek sustenance burrowing beneath
tall weeds bronzed by season’s cold.

Three horses clip remaining blades from pasture overgrazed
in the drought. Smoke plumes from burning brush cut to make
the raw road, drifts across the pond’s mosaic surface.

I find myself nostalgic for my own country roots;
Soft sounds of mourning doves and lost calves calling
for their mothers; riding horseback in the woods, quail
flush and scare my pony; crows caw from stands of willows.

Boundless days stretched before me; days of wasted youth;
Hours of restless yearning, wanting always what I did not have,
waiting to learn what I would become, waiting to live,
oblivious to the riches I already possessed.

Given a second chance, I’d hold that gift of time cupped
tightly in my hands. I’d breathe, taste and savor every second
I have squandered -- not fritter it away, but hoard each precious
minute, clutched firmly against my breast.

On vacation in West Virginia our cabin was encircled by a large pasture where several fine horses grazed. Like enjoying a painting, my mind quiets and soaks in contentment when I watch horses. To me the horse is the most beautiful animal on earth and I've been in love with them all my life.

Vacation

"A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you've been taking."

I like this quote I found in a magazine because it is so, so true. I took a vacation yesterday. I didn't leave town or even our county, the smallest one in North Carolina.
A vacation doesn't have to mean driving hundreds of miles to the beach or flying to Europe to see buildings thousands of years old. A vacation can be just in your mind. Watching the Travel Channel on TV is a way my husband vacations at this time. He enjoys the beach resorts in locales too expensive for us to ever visit. In his mind he takes a vacation because he can no longer take what he's been taking -- the dark days of winter, the rain and cold, and his enforced immobility because of his health. His mood gets dark like the clouds that blew up yesterday and gave us a five minute blizzard.


I also took a vacation yesterday. I could no longer take what I'd been taking, so I drove my little red hybrid around town to the post office, the drug store, the grocery store, the bank and when I had no place else to go, I drove to the lake and parked facing the water.

The wind over the lake created white caps. The bare bushes and grasses on the bank tossed and leaned away from the water. In the distance forested islands blurred gray with the low clouds, and the mountains became hovering ghosts over the water. I opened my car windows and let the rain blow in clean and fresh and cold. Soon snow flakes and hard icy raindrops peppered my windshield. For just a few moments, the dark sky looked like night had set it, but as quick as it came, it was gone. To the west rays of sunshine streaked down from behind a small cloud over the lake like the pictures in the Bible we had at when I was a child. The pictures of Jesus kneeling and looking to Heaven.

My little vacation was short, but I drove home singing, my shoulders relaxed and a smile on my face.

This was a vacation I needed just as many caregivers need to take a moment for themselves. As women we often forget to take care of ourselves. To find quiet time, solitude, where we can think and focus.

As writers we need quiet time. Though difficult with the myriad of things we do, we must make it a priority. Schedule our writing time into our day.

If I could, I'd have a writing schedule like author Sharyn McCrumb. She writes all night and sleeps during the day when her husband and children are gone. I am a night owl. It is two o'clock in the morning right now.

Take a mini-vacation if you need to find quiet and alone time away from family, telephone and TV. I will go back to view the lake another day when I need a vacation. And I don't have to explain or apologize for going there, because when I return I'm a brighter and happier person..

A Woman Needs A Vacation

Emerald Lake in the Canadian Rockies

A rutting bull elk held us captive in our cabin at Patricia Lake in western Canada.


Our family never took vacations when I was a kid. Daddy could not leave the farm, or so he thought. Mother seldom left our neighborhood except to visit relatives. My father didn’t care for planes or car travel. Traffic made him nervous. Too many people and much too close quarters.
My sister and I, while still in high school, planned to travel and see the world once we finished college. She traveled, but without me. I chose to marry the year she graduated. She moved to San Francisco, worked with Western Airlines and flew to places like Hawaii and Mexico City, as well as to most of the interesting sites of the western U.S.A.
Each summer I planned a vacation even though we had little money to spend on such things. Folly Beach, South Carolina, and Boone, North Carolina were two of our favorite spots. I had fallen in love with the western NC mountains even then.
Once we were invited to go skiing at Snowmass, Colorado. We ended up driving through a blizzard for many miles after our flight was cancelled in Denver due to bad weather. Only dumb luck kept us from driving off the road and disappearing in a drift where we might not have been found until spring.
In the days before the airlines charged for even a glass of water, we enjoyed a champagne flight across the country. A couple of glasses of the free champage, and I was soaring on my own with my eyes closed listening to classical music loud enough to drown the sound of the plane.

We toured the coast of California for a couple of days before boarding The Love Boat in San Francisco for an Alaskan Cruise. We were likely the youngest people on board, but we enjoyed every minute.
Now that we are retired, we plan at least two trips each year – one in the fall and one in the spring. In winter or very early spring, I like to escape the cold gray days at home and head for Florida. That’s the time of year I enjoy the beach; when I need a jacket, but the sun is shining and warm enough to dissipate the clouds cob-webbing my mind.

Every few years we take, what we call, a BIG vacation. These vacations involve airports, lots of hassle and fatigue, to go someplace we have never been. One of my favorites was our trip to the Canadian Rockies a few years ago. We were awed by the glorious mountains, lakes like painted glass, and we saw every kind of wild animal you can imagine, from mountain goats grazing along the road, eagles over head and several black bear. A rutting bull elk kept us captive in our lakeside cabin for a couple of hours until a ranger came and frightened him off.

My husband takes no hand in planning a vacation. He says we live in vacation land, and he doesn’t see any reason to leave. But he fails to understand the difference between a vacation for a woman, and a vacation for a man. His life has been one continuous vacation since he retired. He sits on our deck high up in the dogwoods, gazing at the blue waters of Lake Chatuge and beyond at Brasstown Bald. He smokes his pipe, content and happy.

Most women know why I need a vacation. Besides the chance to visit and learn about a place I’ve never been, while I’m there I don’t worry about cooking, laundry, paying bills, cleaning or taking care of pets. Why worry? I’m miles away.
Instead of cleaning the kitchen right now, I think I’ll get busy planning my next trip. Now what did I do with those brochures?