Life Never Ceases to Amaze Me

Here it is, February first already!  Where has the month of January gone?  I hope for all of you that it was a happy and peaceful month filled with wonder and joy.  Mine?  Well, it was full of surprises, happiness and new experiences.

To begin with, if you have read my January post, you will remember that I was sad about not seeing my Grands for Christmas.  Well, you'll never guess who showed up on our doorstep the end of the first week of January.  Aw, you guessed!  Mountain Man and I had gotten up fairly early and were sitting out on the deck, having coffee, enjoying an unusually warm January morning.  Since we only have three other full time families on our side of the mountain, we recognize by sound and sight all of the cars that come past our cabin.  As we were looking out over the mountainside, we heard a truck coming up the road that didn't sound familiar.  As it appeared around the curve, Mountain Man remarked that it looked just like Token Son's truck.  Me, being the curious and slightly nosey person that I am, ran to the other side of the deck to see if I could see where it was heading.   Well, wouldn't you just know it, it pulled right in our driveway!  I wouldn't have been any more surprised if I woke up with my head stapled to the floor!!!  After a whole lot of whooping and hollering and kissing and hugging we found out that they had plans in the works for quite a while to surprise us with a visit and I must say, it worked like a charm.   So, we were able to spend some wonderful, quality time with our Chillin' and  the grands.  The highlight of the week being their first horseback riding experience.  We knew that the older sis would ride since she had gotten to do a pony ride in the past.  The younger sis?  She was a crap shoot.  At not quite two, you truly never know how she'll react to any given situation.  She made Mountain Man's day! She took to that horse like a duck takes to water!  We now have two little cowgirls in the family and I'm sure many fun times ahead riding with them when they come to visit.

The week with the Grands went waaaay too fast.  You see, I'm greedy with my time with all of my Chillin' and my Grands.  There is NEVER enough of it!  But, seeing how, the very next week after they left, we had to make a trip back to Ohio for a memorial service for Mountain Man's first Mother-In-Law and my adopted Mama.  So this meant not only bonus time with the Chillin's and Grands, but getting to see so many friends and distant relatives that we don't get to see nearly enough.  Girls that were just babies themselves yesterday are now successful career women with families of their own.  Young men who were busy raising families and carving out their place in the world are now grandfathers and are either retired or looking forward to retirement.   The "old people" are mostly gone and WE are the "old people".   It seems like just yesterday I was 18 years old, now I look in the mirror and don't even recognize the face that I see.   Getting to see everyone again and catch up on our lives made us realize just how quickly time is passing and how much we can't take a moment of it for granted.

When we returned to our beautiful mountains from Ohio, we decided not to let any grass grow under our feet.  We know that we will both have to get jobs soon since Social Security is never enough.  But, until we start working again, we are trying to spend as much time as possible out in our beautiful backyard, the Chattahoochie National Forest.  Since we have been blessed with an unusually mild winter (even by North Georgia standards), we have been hiking as many trails as possible, experiencing the great  beauty of as many waterfalls as we can find and experiencing all the beauty that nature has to offer us.  This doesn't mean that we are running a race to see everything there is to see.  No, we are truly taking our time by hiking a slow pace.  You see, we don't want to miss one little thing in nature.  Whether it is a new plant peaking up through the leaves, a print from one of many little woodland critters in the mud or a claw mark from a bear searching for bugs in an old tree stump or under a rock.  We are finding that when we truly slow down our pace, it is easier to breathe, easier to move and easier to rest.  I pray that when we return to the working world, we will be able to keep to this slower, more mindful pace to make the most of this beautiful life that we have.

Happy 2017!

I have started this page in my head more times than I can count.  I have actually been writing it since December 1.  Every time that I would think that I had my idea concreted enough to blog about it, something would happen that made me rethink it.  After a few days, I would start over with a modified idea and again something would happen to change my thought process, and so on, and so on.   I'll give you an abbreviated rundown of my month's worth of failed attempts before I get to my actual current thought.  Hopefully, that will help to make sense of this current entry.

My first thought for this entry was how was I going to deal with spending my first Christmas without my Chillin' and Grands.  I must admit, I was feeling more than a little sorry for myself thinking about all what I would be missing. After all, in all my years of being a Mountain Mama, I have always had at least two of the Chillin' if not all three in my house over the Christmas season.  Plus I have always been blessed with getting to watch my Grands open all of their gifts on Christmas.  Well, that poor me story wasn't long for this world because I received word that our oldest Chile, her hubby and their mountain pup would be trekking up from Florida to spend Christmas with us.  This renewed my Christmas joy.  Mountain Man and I set out every Christmas decoration that we have.  We decorated inside and out.  Thank goodness I always dreamed of a mountain Christmas because I had everything that I needed to decorate our mountain cabin.  We did get a new Christmas tree, though.  Since this is my first vaulted ceiling, I felt the need to have a tree that I had to stand on a ladder to put the angel on top, that was the only new decoration that we sprung for.  I must say, our cabin became a warm and welcoming Christmas mountain retreat.  Everything inside was adorned with lighted pine roping, beautiful red cardinals and pinecones galore.  Add in the bluegrass Christmas music playing in the background and I felt like I was living in a Hallmark movie!

My next thought was about Christmas gifts or lack there of. We along with our Ohio Chillin' decided not to exchange gifts this year, but to adopt families in need instead.  I am so happy with this new tradition that I hope it is one that we will carry on for many years.  Our token Son's wife (our daughter of the heart) is such a thrifty shopper that it was truly amazing at all of the wonderful gifts that she was able to buy for all of our families.  As I said, I hope this tradition continues for a long time, but I LOVE giving to my family, so that was a very difficult thing for me to come to terms with.  There would be no gifts from Mama this year.  Well, no one said that I couldn't MAKE gifts!  I ended up spending two solid weeks crocheting and sewing until I had a large suitcase full of homemade gifts to send up to Ohio with our oldest Chile when she went up for a few days.  When there's a will, there's a way, I always say!!!

My next topic was going to be not getting to be with the Grands when they opened their gifts.  Anyone who has ever been blessed by being with little ones at Christmas can appreciate the joy and awe that they bring to the season. Because of my thoughtful Token Son, I didn't have to miss it this year either! Through the miracle of video chat, I was able to watch my Mountain Babies open their gifts and had a wonderful visit with them.  Even though I couldn't feel their little arms around my neck, to hear them say "I love you, Bhakti" warmed my heart just as much.

Our Christmas Eve was a joyous day.  My oldest and I spent the entire day baking cookies and Christmas goodies.  It had been a really long time since she had been around when I was doing my baking, so it was a special gift to me to get to spend the whole day baking with her.  I hope she knows how much that time together meant to me.

Christmas day turned out to be an unusually warm and sunny day.  After having a leisurely morning of opening gifts, breakfast, and long distance phone visits, we threw our Christmas roast in the crockpot and headed out to Meeks Park. Meeks Park is our local community park which I have never seen the likes of in any of the states that I have visited.  It is filled with beautiful walking trails along the river with swings located every so often so you can rest and enjoy the river view.  Baseball fields galore, multiple playgrounds, basketball courts, tennis and pickleball courts and of course the beautiful community pool dot the rest of the several acre park. The park was teaming with people that also wanted to enjoy the beauty of our Christmas day.  As we walked along the trail by the river, everyone that we passed wished us a Merry Christmas and a good day.  It made me feel that we were celebrating Christmas not as a few people in a family, but as part of an entire community.  What an awesome gift!

My Christmas carried over to December 26 when our Ohio daughter surprised us by making the drive down to spend the rest of the week with us and her sister. If I live to be 100, I will never tire of those kinds of surprises.  Needless to say, the rest of Christmas week was filled with the joy of family.  We visited, shopped, ate, and most importantly, enjoyed each other's company.  

Now it's New Years Day.  The Chillins have all gone to their respective homes and the cabin is quiet once again.  Last night, after Mountain Man retired early for the last night of the year, I sat alone in the living room.  I listened to the quietness of the cabin and our forest around us.  I reflected on the past year and all of the happenings, both good and bad.  If you ask just about anyone, me included, they are glad to say so long to 2016.  It was a turbulant year at best filled with war, deaths, elections, crimes and depression.  But, as I reflected, at least for me personally, for every negative thing that life threw at me, I was then gifted with at least double that in positive things.  Sometimes, while in the midst of the dark night, we aren't able or willing to look beyond to the horizon to the sunrise.  There have been many times in my own life that I am in the middle of a rough period that it is all I can do to muster the energy to keep moving forward.  Through my Creator, I always do manage to do just that, keep moving forward.  I do this because I have chosen to be a survivor.  A happy survivor!

This is my New Year's wish for all of you, my friends.  Be a survivor.  I know that everyone wishes for good health, prosperity, happiness and all of the other cliches that go along with the beginning of a new year.  I have found that if I only concentrate on surviving, all of the other goodies come along with the success of surviving.  Everyone has to find their own personal way to get through the sadness, stress and basically crap that the world throws at us. Sometimes it's all we can do to remember that our Creator wants only happiness for us, and if we can keep on wading through the mire, fueling our strength with happy thoughts and memories, soon we will be standing in front of a beautiful sunrise of a new day.  

I'm Baaaaack!

I'm sure that because of my two plus week haitus, a lot of you thought that I gave up on my feeble attempt at blogging.  Wrong!  Mountain Man and I made a trip up to Ohio for a combination birthday celebration for our token son's wife and their eldest chile and Thanksgiving.  As anyone who has ever moved away from their home state and then gone back to visit, it's impossible to see everyone on the "I need to get together with..." list.  I made my list, checked it twice, added a few more names and then both Mountain Man and I got sick. He with a severe sinus infection (partially blamed on breathing the smoke from the forest fires), and I with my usual standby thyroid issues that had been brought on by the stress of the move and the exhaustion from the renovations. Needless to say, other than the immediate fam, our doctors got to visit us the most in our first week in Ohio.   Always looking for a bright side, feeling like I had been run over by a truck made me take it much easier than normal and gave me a lot more snuggle and reading time with my two grands.  You will never hear this Bhakti (their name for me) complain about too much snuggle time!  

Thanksgiving was a beautiful day. The whole day before, we cooked and spent the day together, and on Thanksgiving day, it was awesome!  The first Thanksgiving day in 30 some years that I didn't put the meal together!  Once the turkey was in the oven, I was off duty.  I got to watch the Macy's Parade, play, read the newspaper peruse the ads and just plain relax.  It was one of the best Thanksgivings EVER!  The kids did a fantastic job of putting on the dinner.  They have learned well and the baton has been passed.  We have had a changing of the guard!  Can you tell that I am totally excited by this change of events? After our family dinner, Mountain Man went back to bed,  my Daughter-in-Law (I really dislike that term for her.  She is as much mine as my two girl chillin so until I can come up with an appropriate title for her I will from herein refer to her as one of the girl chillin and you can just be confused!) took the two grands to her family Thanksgiving and my two chillin and I went to the nursing home to visit Mountain Man's ex mother-in-law.  She is actually our mama of the heart since she never let go of Mountain Man and she adopted me and mine when we got married 26 years ago.  She has been laid up in a nursing home for the past 15 months since breaking both legs in a fall.  We had a wonderful visit with her and promised to be back in a few days to see her again.  Then we went to visit our girl chile's family for a while.  Shortly after we all got home in the evening, we received a call that our mama of the heart had passed away shortly after we left.  Even though we had watched her health fail over the past few years, she was doing so well on Thanksgiving that we were totally in shock when the call came.  I am so blessed to have had that one last great visit with her.

The next week was a blur trying to catch up with all of the promised visits.  I must say, I failed miserably.  I did get to stop into my old place of employment and I got to see a lot of my beloved coworkers.   It felt really good that they were as excited to see me as I was to see them.  Hopefully, during my next trip to Ohio -- we are supposed to go up in January for the memorial service-- I will be able to see the rest of them and everyone else on my list.  

Leaving Ohio was bittersweet.  As you would expect, I hate having to say goodbye to my chillin' and my grands, but after being in Ohio for those two weeks, Mountain Man and I realized that Ohio is not home anymore.  Our home is in our sweet little cabin in the beautiful North Georgia mountains.  As much as we love being with our family and friends, there is just something in these mountains.  On the drive home, as soon as we could see the mountains again, we had an overwhelming sense of inner peace and joy.  It's a combination of so many things that it's hard to pinpoint what exactly makes this feel like home.  I know that at this time of year, our town is much smaller,  it only consists of the full timers now.  All of the Floridians and summer renters have gone home for the rest of the year.    Now, when you pass a car on the road, you get a friendly wave.  When you pass someone on the street in town, they stop to chat for a moment.  It's more like living with an extended family rather than a town full of strangers.  We went to the annual Christmas parade (Yes, it was a Christmas Parade, not a "Holiday" parade) downtown last night.  The whole town comes out for events such as this.  There was music on the town square.  Santa was visiting with all of the children,  the ladies of the historical society had a bake sale set up and I'm pretty sure they sold out!  The parade was great fun, but then again, I am partial to parades!  After the parade was over, we stopped in to the local coffee shop not only for a caffeine fix, but to visit with the owners. Then after walking around town, we stopped into the motel that we stayed in while waiting to get in our house in what now seems was a lifetime ago.  The owners of the hotel not only remembered us, but welcomed us with warm hugs. We enjoyed a great visit with them before making our way back through town to our car and home again.  I know that for some,  all of the friendly, family type atmosphere would be an uncomfortable and stifling thing.  For Mountain Man and me, this is exactly what we need at this point in our lives.  The only thing that could make this life any better would be to have all of our chillin and grands here with us.   That is not to be at this point so we will make the most of our visits to Ohio and Florida and make the most of their visits here with us. We know now, after only one visit back to Ohio that in these mountains, we are exactly where we belong... we are home!

When Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

When Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, the classic beautiful ballad by the Platters comes to mind every time we step out our cabin door lately.  The forest fire that started a month ago in the Chattahoochee National Forest with a single bolt of lightening has now burned over 21,000 acres of land and is only 20% contained. They don't expect to have them totally controlled for at least 2 to 4 weeks yet if we don't get any considerable amounts of rain.  Since that first fire started, there have been many other fires that have also taken off.  Unfortunately,  they are finding that some of the more recent fires that have started have been set by obviously deranged people.  Thank goodness, they have already found a few of these criminals.  I know that forest fires can be a cleansing thing to happen to forest land- burning up old dead wood and allowing new growth to come up from the forest floor fresh and new.  I understand that,  and I don't have a problem with it as long as the fires are able to be contained inside the boundaries of the forest and not have any ill effects on any homes in the area.  My only problem at this point is breathing the sooty and smelly air that is constantly surrounding us and our entire town.  Since we don't have a garage at our cabin, my car and Mountain Man's truck are constantly covered in a layer of gray powdery soot.  Not good for the lungs!  Since the smoke is getting heavier and more consistantly in our area, Mountain Man went to the local big box store and got us some masks to wear.  I must admit, it's not  a very becoming style, but it does make breathing a bit easier!

As with most tragedies and catastrophies, there is always a bright side.  The bright side in this story is the outpouring of love and generosity that is coming from ours and all of the other surrounding communities.  We have firefighting teams from all around the country and Puerto Rico,  Sky Crane Helicopters with their flight and mechanic teams, and tanker airplanes with their crews that have all come here to help us control and extinguish the fires.  Even though most of these heros are being compensated for their time spent here working on these fires, there are also countless numbers of volunteer firefighters that are actually taking time away from their full time jobs so they can be here to help.  All of the communities that are being affected by the fires are so grateful to all of these people that the local restaurants are providing free meals, people have been preparing food and bringing it to the fire departments, collecting water, toiletries and other necessary items to keep these firefighters as healthy and comfortable as possible while working on these wild fires.  To be a part of and a witness to this southern hospitality makes me proud of my community and happy to be a resident of Georgia.

As I mentioned in the last paragraph, there has been a Sky Crane Helicopter, which is equipped with a snorkle to suck up 3,000 gallons of water in 45 seconds that can then be dumped on the fires, stationed at our local airport.  This past Sunday, Mountain Man and I were making a trip the Walmart to pick up a few things.  The road that leads to the Walmart passes by the end of the runway.  We could see that the helicopter was there as we drove by so on our way home we decided to stop in at the airport and see if we could meet crew and thank them for risking their lives to save our forest.  We pulled up to the operations center at the airport and Mountain Man went in to ask if we could meet the crew.  I am still not totally used to small town living, the operations manager at the airport told us to go ahead and drive across the runway to see the copter and the crew!  Yes, you read right, drive across the runway.  Well, he did tell us to be sure to look both ways for landing planes!  Good enough for us, off we drove across the runway.  When we got to the other side,  the copter and crew were all just hanging out waiting for their next call.  We were able to have a nice visit with the whole crew and much to Mountain Man's delight, he was able to cross another thing off of his bucket list. He not only got to get his picture taken in front of the giant flying machine, but he also was able to get up inside of it and have the captain give him a lesson in how to start up and fly the big bird.  Needless to say, it was one of the great highlights of recent times for my Mountain Man.  To be able to watch him getting to experience something that brings him such joy and to see his childlike awe brings me such great joy, there are just no words.

So, until next week, wash your cars, clean your windows, forget your umbrellas, do a rain dance and most of all, pray for rain!

Green Acres, We Are There!

There is definitely a "slow southern style" way of living here in these mountains. There is an inbred politeness and kindness that just about every soul in this area carries with them.   Case in point: nearly everywhere that I have been in this country I have seen No Littering signs.  They are usually matter of fact and are accompanied with a threat of fines.  On the roads in our community, we also have similar signs.  The only difference is that they are polite reminders.  These signs say "NO TRASH PLEASE".  As we were taught as youngsters, please and thank you goes a long way.  I'm not sure whether there is just more pride and respect in our community or whether people appreciate the manners, but either way, it is rare to see any trash along our roadways.

We also have, as most other communities do, community online yard sales.  I have taken to reading these posts on Facebook, not because I'm in need of anything. Heaven knows I've got way too much stuff already.  I ready them for the pure entertainment value.  As the oldest of my chillin' called to my attention, most of these people have no filters.  Everything from phone numbers to personal information as to their whereabouts is openly shared on these sites. You can tell that this is a small, trusting community because you could never get away with these things in big cities.   Here are a few of my favorite posts from these sites.  I hope that you will also see the humor and innocence in them.

The first one that every caught my attention was a desperate woman with an unemployed man.  This ad read something like this:  "My boyfriend needs work now.  The baby's coming soon and he needs to be working.  he will do almost anything.  Please call me at --- ----."  The way I read into this is that he will do almost anything other than look for a job!

The next one was a man trying to sell his truck. He was also including the wench.  Yup, you read that one right.  So did a lot of other people.  The first person to pull the trigger on that one wanted to know if she works and what does she look like and is it legal to sell wenches in Georgia.  The gentleman that placed the ad soon saw the error in his spelling and corrected it promptly!

Sometimes people aren't looking to make money on their items, sometimes they just want to trade.  There was this one gentleman who was looking to get rid of his car.  He wasn't interested in cash he only wanted either a truck or weapons!  There are no words!

The last one for today is a lady that was interested in getting rid of some of her farm animals.  She had the usual goats and chickens for sale, but the one that caught my eye was the silky chicks.  She said that she had a whole batch of silky chicks for sale, but they were too young to be sexed.  My question is: How old does a silky chick have to be to be sexed???

Now for my Green Acres moment.  Last week, Mountain Man was trying to make a phone call.  When he picked up the land line, he heard a man's voice on the other end.  After a few confused moments, he found out that the phone line was being worked on and he would have to wait to make his call.  I was starting to feel a Green Acres moment coming on.  If any of you are old enough to remember Green Acres, you'll remember that the Douglas's had to climb to the top of the telephone pole to make their phone calls.  After they would climb all that way, they had to talk to the operator if no one was using the line so they could make their call.  Later that day, our middle chile called us.  The only problem was that when she called, the person that answered the phone had an unusually thick southern accent.  Her, knowing her Mountain Mama like she does, thought that I was playing around with her so she just refused to say anything until Mama straightened up and talked right!  The voice on the other end again said hello, can I help you?  Now, realizing that this isn't  the Mama, she looks at her phone to make sure that she hasn't dialed the wrong number. Reassured that she had indeed dialed the correct number,  she, now wondering who exactly is in her parents house, said, "I'm trying to call my mom."  The kind voice with the strong southern drawl then politely informed her that he was working on the phone lines and that she should try back in a few minutes.  When I did finally talk with her, she asked if the lineman had given me the message that she had called.  I told her no, but that wasn't his fault.  I only waved and kept on driving when I passed him.  I'm sure that if I had stopped and said hello, he would have given me the message!  That's just how things work down here!

A Walk In The Forest On An Autumn Eve

Well, the work on the mountain cabin has all but been wrapped up.  After a few more deliveries and a new HVAC unit going in this coming week, we will be all settled in.  The rooms have all been painted, cleaned and decorated and the place now feels like home, our perfect little mountain cabin.  We will now have time to relax and enjoy our beautiful surroundings before heading back to Ohio in a few weeks.  We will be going up to celebrate birthdays and Thanksgiving with the Ohio Mountain Chillins.  I am looking forward to seeing them all again, along with all of our extended family and friends that we left behind.  With all of the modern technologies that we have now in our lives, it is so much easier to stay closely connected to our loved ones,  so even though there are over 600 miles between us, I can still talk to them almost daily and see their face. It does help with the homesickness.   Still, nothing is better than a good hug! I'm looking forward to lots of those!

Since we have more free time now, we have been taking advantage of having the Chattahoochee National Forest in our back yard.  There is a beautiful, gently sloping trail that leads through the mountains that we have been walking.  With each walk that we take, we have ventured further up the mountain.  With Mountain Man being a hunter, we normally can navigate the trails looking for signs of all of the forest creatures and sometimes even stumbling across a few without making a peep.  With this years drought, though, there is no such thing as a silent step.  The beautifully colored leaves that carpet the trail are so dry that the crunch of our footsteps is almost deafening.  There is absolutely no chance of quietly coming upon a feeding doe or any of the other small wildlife scampering about.  They are able to hear us long before they see us.  Just as when we are sitting on our deck, we can hear them making their way along the well worn trails long before we can see them.  Autumn in the mountains is so different from Autumn anywhere else that I have experienced it.  The air is cleaner, the sky is so clear and blue that I sometimes feel like I'm looking at it through a high definition camera lens.  The leaves vary much so in color that I'm sure there are not even names for some of the beautiful shades that they turn.  If you stop long enough and sit quietly, you can hear the birds and critters calling out to one another in their own personal conversations that we are blessed to be able to eavesdrop in on.  The wonders of nature are truly here in these North Georgia mountains.  I'm not wishing my life away, but I am living in anticipation of the spring, when hopefully the drought will subside and the creeks and rivers will once again be filling and the sounds of the babbling waters flowing down the mountain.  Since I am a water baby by nature, I do miss having the water around me.  

After a light dinner this evening, we trekked back out into the woods to collect some wood to turn into walking sticks and curtain rods.  We hiked up the hill across from our cabin, selected the perfect saplings;  a hickory for me since Mountain Man says that a hickory is a lady's stick and a mighty oak for him.  In true Mountain Man nature, he used his handy little ax to cut them down.  No chain saws for this Mountain Man!  As we were dragging our saplings back up the road to our cabin, I secretly hoped that none of the neighbors would drive by.  You see, the hickory that I was dragging was nearly 20 feet long and the Oak was every bit of 15 feet.  Oh, and, I forgot to mention that since this wasn't a planned adventure, I was wearing my slippers.  When you are alone on a mountain most of the time, you tend to forget that, on occasion, other people are around!  We were almost back to our driveway when we heard a car coming up the road, I didn't realize how fast I could move in slippers dragging a big stick.  I felt like I was doing the mountain version of Cross Fit!  I beat the car, so  no explanation needed!  Mountain Man then cut the sticks to length, skinned them both and they are now drying so they can be sanded and oiled.  This will make our hikes quite a bit easier.  Plus, having it made with love, just for me, makes it even more important.  I will be making curtains for the basement windows when the fabric comes and I will have enough of the saplings left to use as curtain rods.  This living off of the land thing is fun.  Now every excursion into the forest will surely provide more decorating ideas and materials!

Not So Random Acts Of Kindness

Up until just a few months ago, I have lived my entire life in or within a few mile radius of Akron, Ohio.  Most of the people that I know have also lived their entire lives in that same area.  I know, or at least am acquainted with, many good people with big hearts that have always been kind, caring, compassionate and generous with not only us, but anyone else they come in contact with.  But working in the public venue for most of my adult life I have also come into contact with just as many, if not more, selfish, rude and impolite people.  Here's where I'm going with this... in the few short months of living here in these beautiful mountains, I have witnessed more of what most people would call "random acts of kindness" than I have in the past few years of living in Ohio. As a matter of fact, I would even be tempted to retitle them Common Acts of Kindness.   Some are so touching that they will bring a tear to your eye.  Some are actually kind of comical.  One of the funnier ones that we were witness to happened just yesterday in the parking lot of our local Walmart.  We were waiting behind a car to turn down an aisle to find a parking space.  The car was sitting still for what seemed an extra long amount of time waiting to make its left turn.  As there were no cars coming the opposite direction, Mountain Man and I began looking around to see what the holdup could be.  There, standing at the end of the row of cars, was an elderly gentleman with a cane.  You could tell by the way that he was standing that to walk was a chore for him.  We realized that the lady in the car ahead of us was waiting and waving him across the crosswalk in front of her.  After two waves and no movement on his part, she rolled down her window and kindly told the gentleman that she was waving him across and he was free to go.  He then told her, I understand that, but I'm not crossing, just waiting here for someone!  It brought to mind the old show Laugh In where the boy scout would pick up Ruth Buzzy, who was dressed as an old lady, and carry her across the street when she didn't want to go and she would end up beating him with her purse.  This instance wasn't as animated or as violent for that matter, but still made us giggle.  We have witnessed and been a part of so many acts of kindness here that there are just too many to mention.

On Friday of this week, Mountain Man was invited by one of our new friends to go with him to check out the hunting grounds in our area.  Always up for a hunting adventure, Mountain Man gladly took him up on his offer.  After a good four or five hours, they returned to our house to fill me in on their adventures. Expecting only to hear about the trails they found and the animals that they saw, I was only slightly excited to hear the tales they had to tell.  Well, I couldn't have been more wrong.  The tale that they had to tell was about one of the most emotional acts of kindness that I have ever heard.  You see, our new friend is of Cherokee decent.  He was raised not to be proud of his heritage, but to not acknowledge that part of who he is.  Therefore his children were also not raised to be a proud descendant of the native people.  A few years ago, after learning much about his descendants and his heritage, he decided that he would like to have a statue erected in Meeks Park,  our local community park, to honor the tribes of our area.  He started a small fundraising campaign to obtain the $32,000 that it will cost for the statue to be commissioned.  It will be sculpted by Daniel Horse Chief,  who is of Cherokee, Pawnee decent and is from Oklahoma. This started out for our friend to be a tribute to his people who were not only stripped of their land, but also of their lives, to acknowledge that this is their home.  This plan seemed to take on a life of its own.  It has now gone way past the statue.  Our friend is now waiting to be able to meet with the congressmen from here in Georgia to get approval from the federal government to officially welcome the tribes back to their original homes here in the four county area of the North Georgia Mountains.  This might not sound like a big deal, but it would be the first time in our country's history that the native people have been officially welcomed back to the land that was stolen from them so long ago.  In case you are wondering, this has nothing to do with the so called "Indian Casinos".  This would be a much more personal welcome.  No one thinks that there will be a mass exodus of the tribes that were displaced to Oklahoma back here to Georgia.  After all, the people have lives and careers and homes where they reside now.  What it will do is to open our communities and towns to anyone who would be interested in relocating, opening businesses and making a life in their true native land.  There would be help set up to assist these people in reestablishing a life here in their mountains.  

Mountain Man and I have always felt a strong connection to the native tribes. I'm not sure if it is just from our history lessons or if we were part of these tribes in another lifetime.  Either way, I feel that this act is long overdue. Mountain Man and I feel blessed to have a friend that has sacrificed so much of his heart, time and not to mention personal funds, to extend this kindness to the most deserving of people.

If you are interested in learning more about this endeavor, please check out the webpage at We Are Still Here.  It is a little outdated since it has taken longer to raise the funds and obtain the meetings that need to take place to make to make this happen.  And until next week, let's all go out and commit some acts of kindness!