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| November 4, 2005, Mountain and Valley View from the Top of Our Property |
.....as seen through my eyes!
By: Jacqueline E. Hughes
Exchanging Capri pants and shorts for blue jeans and relegating my traditional flip-flops to the secondary role of 'slippers' to make room for covered-toed shoes and hiking boots......painful. Oh, and did I forget to mention socks? You know, those particular items of terror that encase your feet as if they were sausages with the prospect of keeping them warm and dry!?! What's a Florida girl to do?
Even as my specific world of haberdashery is being turned upside down, I gladly extract our small suitcase from its upper-shelf location in our closet and toss it on the bench at the foot of the bed. Loving the slightly 'teeth-gnashing' sound unzipping it makes, I am reminded of all the previous excursions we've taken up to the Waynesville/Maggie Valley area in the past nine years since falling wildly in love with Cansadie Top Mountain within The Glens of Iron Duff, in Haywood County, North Carolina!
Snuggled between the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Pisgah National Forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains, our mountain, Cansadie Top, is centered in a triangle formed by I-40 to the west, the Pigeon River to the east and the National Park to the north. As a matter of fact, as we stand on the small mountain road, Bear Vista Trail, that delineates the northern boundary of our 2.2 acres of heaven, our vista is nothing short of spectacular! Stretching out to the mountains located northeast of the Pigeon River, we see small farms in the valley and listen to the echoing mooing sounds that travel up Cansadie Top from the bovine herds grazing down in the distant meadows.
Hanging at the mercy of gravity and the lush foliage clinging to the mountainside, our lot lives along the 'belt' of the mountain, halfway up. We've often traversed the winding lane, Frank Davis Road, in order to reach its peak. After purchasing the land, Dan and I made a point of visiting it at least once, often twice, each season of the following year......taking photos and documenting the changes that occurred on the land every three months.
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| Dan Presenting Lot #26, The Glens of Iron Duff |
We have witnessed the expanded views of winter when the brown, crispy leaves are piled high beneath the skeletal trees and become dusted with powdery snow. Sitting snugly within the warm confines of our car, we'd munch a light lunch purchased at the local Ingles Supermarket as we talked, dreamed and devoured the wide open spaces before us.
I remember getting my car stuck in the thick mud at the end of our little road as the springtime rains created havoc when mixed with the thawing earth. We would use the turn-around at the road's end to point us back down the mountain and then park just above our lot. Fortunately, Dan had a change of blue jeans in the suitcase at the back of my Kia Sportage because the ones he had on were sporting massive amounts of brown Cansadie Top real estate! We laughed so hard tears ran down our cheeks.
Our 'mountain lane' conversations ranged from where to position our future log home in order to have optimum views to, should our log cabin have an attached or detached garage to, choosing the least amount of trees to be removed in order to make all of this happen. It was always going to be a house made from logs.....you know, the flat kind with tons of chinking stuffed between each beautiful, long length of wood.
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| Another View Facing The Pigeon River to the Northeast |
Today, however, is bittersweet. We are on a mission this weekend. Time shifts and constantly changes form like a fairy spirit floating through the mists; a Banshee warning you of major life changes just ahead?
I will talk with you, once again, on the flip-side of this journey to Cansadie Top....
Copyright © 2014 By Jacqueline E. Hughes
All rights reserved
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