Fill up the gas tank. Start the engine….I'll be riding shot gun beside 'cha. I love adventure. Exploration. Travel. Anywhere. Mid-March started a series of monthly trips that are lasting into this fall. I'll be sharing these mini-journeys with you mostly through captioned pictures. Originally, I'd named this series Friday Forays. Then, per life necessity, I decided to go on limited posting schedule (two times weekly, Tuesday-Thursdays, versuse three, Monday-Wednesday-Friday,) here at "The Journey with Grace" through Grace's busy summer, start of school and now an impending in-town move. Come enjoy my journeys:
Mid-March I returned to Gatlinburg. I PROMISE MOST OF MY TRAVELS ARE WAY LESS KITSCHY! The point here was the experience of the trip. I was a guest and my host chose to rent a mountain cabin there. Despite all the architectural man-made carnival-like…stuff lining Gatlinburg's streets, the mountains manage to maintain their beauty. We did make a quick trip into the ghastly crowded town where I lunched with a childhood friend who lives there now. Our visit warmed my heart. If you're a Gatlinburg lover, my apologies….I enjoyed this Myrtle Beach-style tourist trap of the mountains as a child and a college student and avyoung twentysomething. But, my tastes have changed and yet, as I wrote above, I'm game for a trip anywhere. It's travel!
Our supposed-to-be remote cabin was not. It was in a neighborhood of little cabins. The woods we were supposed to be surrounded by were a strip behind the cabin. But, we were there for me to receive the Rites of the Munay-Ki. On Sunday, before returning home, we made a short pilgrimage to one of the region's natural jewels, Cade's Cove. Along this stream, one by one, I dispersed a jar of smooth stones from a trip with a former partner to the Pacific Northwest. I have done this ritual before and I, again, found it very healing to release a physical and emotional-energetic attachment in this very physical manner.
My teacher and traveling companion has used that gushing stream in Cades Cove, pictured above, and a forked stream during our walks at Nashville's Radnor Lake, to illustrate that I have a choice (as do others) to ride the direction of the water or to struggle upstream. I can go with the flow of life or I can choose suffering to the point that my life becomes a muddy trickle.
What do you think? Is there mud in your trickle of life?
This is the only photo I have from this trip as it was before I began photographing more with my Droid. A version was first shared here.
