Made up Games and Heart's Home

All five of us are prone to make up our own silly games, and some get attached to places. Here my youngest is the leader (though my oldest has stopped playing for now) in a game where you draw a line in the gravel with your walking stick and the other must follow it no matter how difficult or convoluted. My oldest invented this game to amuse my youngest, and now either one will lead or follow, depending on who gets the notion first.

We only play this in one place - this magnificent road around the Bass Pond at the Moses Cone Manor on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Here is another photo of that road - one of my favorite glimpses as you make the one mile circuit. This place is one I go to mentally to revive myself. It's where I am lying in the photo on my profile on my website, and on that same page is another photo of the place, with the most important people in my world.

It's like the lyrics of "My Secret Place" as sung by Joni Mitchell:

"I'm going to take you to
My special place
It's a place no amount of hurt and anger
Can deface
I put things back together there
It all falls right in place-
In my special space
My special place"

When I was in my late teens and twenties my mental escape was to the grounds of the Livingston Manor, Clermont, on the Hudson River near Tivoli, New York. That used to be my secret place. As time and space separated me from NY and connected me to NC, and to this spot in particular, my heart moved its home.

I can't count the number of epiphanies and personal revelations we've had on this mile of old carriage road.