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Friday, August 15, 2014

The View from Here

  
Peering across high Hampton Inn & Country Club's Hampton Lake at Rock Mountain stirs a variety of thoughts. It takes me back to my Camp Chattooga Days in the foothills of the North Georgia Blue Ridge Mountains. The surrounding cabins, the inn, the waterfront, the hiking trails remind me of those carefree days of my youth. They even ring a bell for lunch and dinner.

It also returns me to my late teen years when I spent summers working at Kanuga Conference Center in Hendersonville, NC. The warm days and cool evenings, the chilly lake water swallowing me when I dove in, the fresh smell of mountain air, the possibilities ahead in every day leap again in my heart. All those years ago I vowed to someday make Western North Carolina my home. I haven't yet.

Some part of those long ago experiences has stayed with me, though I didn't find a way to stay with them. I grew up. I got married. I had babies who turned into children. I got a job. I got busy. Soon, it was too late to go back.

Too late to go back except in my imagination. Gazing at High Hampton Inn & Country Club's Rock Mountain reminds me that I have gone back and I have taken hundreds of readers back with me. 


The Beast of Blue Mountain: A Campfire Story for the Fearful (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1492259101/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1408113755&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40) captures and bundles that nostalgia. At the same time, the story takes a twist and presents a surprise that appeal to young readers. It's an absolutely perfect book for a place like this.

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