if these logs could talk

Though it is our choice to not have TV or Internet at the cabin, we do have a little Sony music system. And our music selections include favorites like:

• The Three Pickers: Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, and Ricky Skaggs
• Alison Krauss and Union Station
• Béla Fleck
• John Hartford
• A huge collection of Appalachian Folk Music
• The Appalachian Picking Society
• Celtic Woman

While at the Smokey Mountain National Park this summer I picked up several more albums at their gift shop. To our delight one of them, as it turned out, fast became a favorite.

Listen to samples at Amazon

Mountain Aires is a traditional acoustic folk band that started as a group of young home-schooled boys in Wake County, NC. The guys began playing together for fun and family then recorded their first CD in 2008.

When I heard the first song on the album, Old Joe Clark, I was hooked. It’s one of the first songs I learned to play on my Dulcimer. I was just blown away with their sound! It’s toe-tapping music that speaks to one’s soul. It was inspiration …. made me want to practice my Dulcimer more. Their rendition of Be Thou My Vision was so beautiful it brought tears to my eyes. I have to learn to play that for sure.

They have a new Christmas Album out, I ordered it and can’t wait to hear it! Check out their website at: www.mountainairesmusic.com

Christmas is a magical time, no matter where you are, but at the cabin we have time to think about the significance of it all.

I wonder how many Christmas times these old logs have seen and how the people who dwelt within them celebrated? Did they bring in a tree to decorate? Did they string popcorn and cranberries, bake gingerbread cookies,  and hang a pine bough wreath on the door?  Did they delight in sharing  little gifts with family and friends? Did they sing carols while savoring  the warmth of a roaring fire in the hearth?

We decided that a real tree was too much of a fire hazard in the small confines of the cabin. But I love the little artificial one, never-the-less. It seems to fit right in and I’m quite sure it considers itself to be as grand as any tree that ever lived. I can tell by the way it twinkles and the jaunty way it holds the ornaments,  even though its star is rusted tin.

Knowing the people of these mountains, I am sure that they treasured the season and celebrated the birth of the Savior. And like us, found great comfort and reassurance that the Christ Child came into the world to bring us “Peace and good will among men.”

I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; from whence shall my help come?  My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.  He will not allow your foot to slip; He who keeps you will not slumber.  Behold, He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.  The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand.  The sun will not smite you by day, nor the moon by night.  The Lord will protect you from all evil; He will keep your soul.  The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever.

-Psalm 121

Family and friends alike have asked us, out of true concern, “Why do you want to isolate yourselves up there so far from town? Don’t you get bored?”

My answer is always the same. Spending a few days each week in the mountains always brings us a renewed spirit of peace.

The stress of day-to-day in the business world, the hassle of the Atlanta area traffic, even the tension that comes from constant bombardment of noise all around us (cars, telephones ringing, planes passing overhead, leaf blowers, even the tiny noises all add up). The constant worry about safety and health of family and friends is a strain. Today’s turbulent world and the situation our nation is in right now are heavy burdens.  Not that we would consider totally ignoring all of this as a solution.

One of the ways Mike and I cope with it all is our time at the cabin with no call phone coverage, TV,  or Internet, surrounded by hundreds of acres of forest, listening to the “quiet” sounds, and focusing on all that is still good and remembering that with God’s Grace we WILL survive the rest of it.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to know of the little dramas that here played out in days gone by? Would they whisper of a young couple sitting on the porch in the evening twilight, listening to the chirp of the cicada, seeing the twinkling lightning bugs on the edge of the garden, and making their plans to be married? Would they recount the story of a young mother giving birth to her first child in a quilt-covered bed, midwife in attendance, while the anxious father paced the front porch? Would they ring with the delightful squeals of children as a grandfather entertained them with stories as they sat by a cozy fire on a winter’s night? Would they echo fiddle music, and lullabies?

Undoubtedly there was laughter; there were tears; happy moments as well as heartbreaking calamities; moments of great historical significance as well as mere everyday events. What were the sights and sounds? What grew in the garden? What dinners did they eat? Were there celebrations, struggles, close calls, special visitors? Did a loved one march bravely off to war? What were the dreams they dreamed, and the prayers they prayed?

Time moves forward and we cannot look back, but only imagine what was not recorded.

Fast forward to 2009 . . . .
There is a story to be told. Let it not be said that the 21st century inhabitants left it untold. Those that went before us left their legacy in their own way, we will leave ours.

Look who I found lurking in the sink when we arrived at the cabin this week…..

We have lots of iddy-biddy spiders in the cabin. I mostly don’t see them or pay them much mind, just clean up their webs. After all, there are all those old stories about house spiders bringing GOOD LUCK.

Back in the 1500′s they would say, “When a man fyndeth a spyder upon his gowne it is a synge to be that daye ryght happye.”

Remember the passage in Mark Twain’s book when Huck said, “ Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I flipped it off and it lit in the candle; and before I could budge it was all shriveled up. I didn’t need anybody to tell me that was an awful bad sign and would fetch me some bad luck, so I was scared and most shook the clothes off of me.” Then he blamed all his troubles on the spider bringing him bad luck.

I hear there is an Appalachian superstition that you should never kill a spider in the house. I think maybe the ever-resourceful Appalachian housewife found keeping the cob webs cleaned up in a log cabin, just as impossible as I do, so like Huck they found blaming it on spider luck to be a plausible  rationalization. It worked for them …. it works for me. But I draw the line at GIANT spiders in the house.

So he only stayed in the plastic-tub jail until I could identify him, then I set him free, outside, of course.