As a child of the city, I can only do nature in small doses. So why is it that I spend part of every summer in a North Carolina rainforest? Because it’s The Mountain, that’s why.
My two children have been coming to MountainCamp since 2002, when they found in the splendor of these woods a respite from the post-Sept. 11 world. For sure, being at the Mountain healed my older son, saved his shell-shocked heart, and my family and I have loved this camp and its staff ever since. [The family love runs so deep that my meeting-averse husband serves on the board of trustees.] So every year, I come here, to teach or to serve as a minister of the week for some camp or another, and to sit during my spare time in one of the rocking chairs on the porch outside the Great Room at the Lodge, looking out over the Blue Valley of Western North Carolina.
The Mountain was the first place I ever touched a cloud; one literally floated by a group of us sitting out on the porch one afternoon. It’s the first place I ever went on a “trust walk,” taking a path in the darkness on the strength of a single person’s hand. And it’s one of the first places I learned to pay close attention to the weather. One year, there were riotous thunderstorms every afternoon, with lightning strikes that took out the servers and killed the Internet connections here for two days (*that* hurt my feelings!)
Some years, I stay in the modern Lodge, but this year, I am in one of the cabins, nestled amid giant rhododendrons blooming everywhere. At night, the sky here is awash with more stars than this city girl ever gets to see; the sky seems not just dark blue, but veiled in silver light. Sometimes I stand in the darkness near my cabin just to watch it, and to listen to the silence of this different world.
I feel especially at home here this year, after the alien experience of Ft. Lauderdale and the General Assembly. It was such a strange experience that I am still processing it, hoping to know more about what it means. After my freely chosen exile of sorts, I was surprised at how good it felt to drive up the road to The Mountain, taking the switchbacks slowly, recognizing all the places my sons talk about the other 50 weeks of the year, passing the Dining Room and Heritage Hall, parking near the office and the pathway to Meditation Rock.
The Mountain has had its share of troubles these past few years, and more than its share of detractors. But I am an unabashed partisan, because when so many people have needed what this camp and conference center has to give—its warm hospitality, its generous welcome, its soul-deep commitment to Unitarian Universalist values—The Mountain has been there. I’m one of those people. It’s good to be home.
