The Greening of Montreat

Spring comes to the Blue Ridge Mountains

The view from our deck

I had a different post planned for today. It was a meaty piece, about how our relationship to the land affects our spiritual well-being, but it didn’t get completed because my relationship to the IRS and the FTB jangled my spiritual well-being so much that I was unable to concentrate on anything other than how green it has become now that it’s spring. And so I took a lot of nervous system resetting walks when I should have been writing.

During the winter months in Montreat, when the tree branches were bare and arthritic and spindly, and you could see clear across the valley, Mary Jo would tell me about the “greening of the mountain.” One day in April, she said, I would wake up to find that the brown hillsides had turned bright green, almost overnight, so thick and lush with tender spring leaves that I wouldn’t be able to see through them.

“You can feel kind of confined when it happens,” said Perrin.

Well, it has, and I don’t, and frankly, these country cousins of mine don’t know from confinement. The last three years I lived in West Hollywood, I stared out my balcony at a concrete wall belonging to a luxury condo that was being constructed but which never got completed, despite all the jack-hammering and drilling and ungodly ear-splitting noises. The site manager was like Penelope in The Odyssey, promising that construction would be done “in another month or two,” but then, I’m convinced, secretly undoing what little progress had been made the day before just to torment the neighbors. Being surrounded by concrete will suck the life out of you.

But being surrounded by leaves will breathe life into you. So here, in lieu of an actual newsletter, are some pictures of Montreat leaves in spring.

Leaves around Lake Susan

Leaves on Rainbow Road

More leaves on Rainbow Road

No leaves, but an object I was convinced was a discarded snakeskin belt until I realized it was still attached to a snake who was halfway down a hole in the ground hunting for rodents.

Leaves, and a broken tree, on Elizabeth’s Path

Leaves by my favorite spot in Montreat

The photo above was taken while I was lying on my favorite rock, an enormous moss-spotted slab that happens to sit in my favorite section of the creek that runs through Montreat. If you close your eyes and listen to the rush of water in your ear and feel the cool breeze wander over your skin, I guarantee that you will have a mystical experience here.

Unless, just as you are trying to take a picture of all this resplendence, your accountant calls to inform you that you owe much more tax money than you anticipated but you can’t exactly hear her because the creek current is roaring and your hearing isn’t what it used to be, and so you scream, “I OWE HOW MUCH?!” and she thinks you’re mad at her because you’ve raised your voice so she yells back, “I TOLD YOU TO INCORPORATE!” and now you really are mad, in addition to being traumatized, and then you glance over at the path where a man and his dog and two young children are looking in your direction with alarmed saucer eyes. If that happens, you will not feel remotely spiritual.

Until you end the call and lie prostrate on the rock as the cold, clear water rushes by, taking your murderously bitter feelings towards the IRS along with it. And you listen to the breeze whispering at you through the green leaves: “everything will be all right.” And then you start to believe that it will be.

Leaves at sunset

“Come with me into the woods. Where spring is advancing, as it does, no matter what, not being singular or particular, but one of the forever gifts, and certainly visible.” - Mary Oliver