The Carolina mountains are covered in a down quilt of fog. It’s summer, but the temperature is a crisp 55 degrees.
The distant mountaintops look like blue humps in the hazy foreground. There are trees everywhere, trees so green they look fake.
The mountain highway winds back and forth like a half-inebriated copperhead, climbing upward, constantly twisting, turning, dipping, whirling, then doubling back. The Western North Carolina the scenery couldn’t get any more beautiful if it were made of golden bricks.
We pass a steep mountain pasture, not far from Mount Mitchell. The grass is so richly verdant, it’s lime green. The hillside is peppered with goats of all colors, grazing in haphazard formation. The goats are surrounded by a wooden fence that was at one time white, but is now weathered wood.
There is no traffic on this old highway. If you were to pull over, you could lie down in the middle of the road for half the day and live to tell the story.
It’s quiet out here. There are no vehicles. No overhead commercial airliners. No noisy A/C unit compressors. No ambient music. No nothing. Just the bleating of goats. Choirs of woodland birds. Light percussive rain, pitter-pattering on the leaves of the forest. And your own heartbeat.
I was reared in the country. Long before I moved to the city, it was the sticks that were my home. I was not raised in the mountains, but this place sort of reminds me of those early days.
My wife and I stop at a mountain gas station. The joint has seen better times. I’m not even sure whether this station is actually open for business, or whether it remains here as a shrine to the days of yore. The pumps are old, with spinning numbers. No credit card readers. No overhang.
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