BENT MOUNTAIN LOVING OR DOROTHY I DON'T THINK THIS IS KANSAS ANYMORE

I've traveled a bit in my life.  I was born in the mid-west, which may surprise some of you that automatically tag me Yankee because I didn't grow up in the South.  (Also, please notice how I've learned to capitalize South, but not any other region.  That should make you happy and excuse me for the fact that I'm a Yankee.  Or not.)

When I was about 9 years old my dad got a job in NYC and we moved to Westfield NJ until I was a freshman in high school.  Another job opportunity and an inbred wanderlust uprooted our family once again and this time we ended up in Bad Hamburg, Germany, a suburb of Frankfurt.  We stayed about a school year and then landed in La Celle St. Cloud, a suburb of Paris.  (Actually I'm seeing a trend in this musing already, I was a kid of the burbs.  Funny, cause I've spent most of my adult life on Bent Mountain, not a suburb at all.)  Well the journey continued and we landed back in NJ for a year or so, and then off it was to college for me.  I chose Roanoke College.  Reason number one being that when I first started looking at schools I realized that the Southern boys I had met in Germany and France were much nicer and more polite than the boys I met up north. Now I realize that was something that their mamas had instilled deep in their souls, teaching them to yes ma'am as they were lying through their teeth.  Reason number two was it was the prettiest place on God's green earth.  So much for going to college for an education.  That's kinda overrated anyway.

Well anyway, I spent four years in Salem and in the midst of all that fell for my northern next door neighbor who still shares my Southern abode.  When we married Larry bought an alternative energy store in town and we moved back to Virginia.  After marriage and before kids I took a job selling travel and got to see more of the world I so dearly loved to explore.  I went to London for the weekend and spent 10 days with a bunch of crazy travel agents in Singapore and Hong Kong.  Went to Bermuda a half dozen times.  Cruised through the Caribbean, jetsetted to Switzerland.

So the gist of this musing is thus.  I've spent a near lifetime flying in and out of the Roanoke airport.  And each time, EACH TIME, I am blown away by that descent.  Every season of every year.  What glory!  What beauty! I'm home!