When I was a little girl, every year we took a family vacation to my grandmothers house in Virginia.
Before the West Virginia Turnpike was built our trip truly took us over the river and through the woods to grandma's house we go ... well, something like that through the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia.
My grandmother lived in a cottage-like home in Clifton Forge, a small town with a papermill. As an adult to this day I will drive through the town with my car windows rolled down smelling the air to catch the scent of my childhood. Ahhhh ... the olfactory sense that triggers familiarity.
Grandma's house was green, very country and we slept in the old cedar attic in a bed with blankets piled high to keep warm. We would wake up to the sound of the rooster and lay in bed planning the wild run to the bottom of the steps through the ice cold attic. Grandma would tell us to gather the eggs out of the chicken coop for breakfast, to which my mom always warned us about snakes.
I don't remember at what point we stopped going to grandma's house for vacation as a family, but I continued to go alone in my early 20's when I needed to run away. When I needed to escape fast-paced. When I needed to rejuvenate alone in the mountains at grandmas.
Decades later ... I am a woman now and I am still making this trip, to grandma's house.
Rejuvenation happens for me during my five hour drive.
Usually, I will leave home around 4:30 a.m. so I am in West Virginia as the sun rises through the mountains. The massive mountains become walls that welcome, transcend and block off everything I am leaving behind. A much simpler world welcomes me for the next couple of days.
I always stop at Tamarack for coffee. From this point, there is only one hour left until I am at grandmas where there is no coffee pot. For the next couple days I will have hot tea made with water we collect in jugs from a fresh spring. There is no television. No computer connection capabilities and in some places little cell phone service. My navigation system is lost and no longer knows the route, but I do.
The mountains surround me. The freshness of springtime takes my breath away.
Rejuvenation begins.
