It’s a more gentle life here in these North Carolina mountains when slow, yet sure, comes June. Temperatures modulate, the winds calm (relatively speaking), our meadow comes to life. A wild new green climbs the ridges then settles, making a deep rich carpet, one just the color of the pile that covered the floors in my own childhood home. I wonder now, looking across, if this was something my mother realized at the time she chose it. Was its name “summer mountain green”? Or did the color simply feel familiar? A comfort?

Because I grew up in mountains like these, though I’ve spent the bulk of my grown-up life in the South Carolina flatlands. I watch, now, as the daisies multiply, the rhododendron burst into bloom, the tall oaks spread their distinctive leaves that unfurl (overnight!) and hang and stretch and offer shade to the living world below.

“I need a mountain to rest my eyes against,” said author Lee Smith‘s daddy, a man I never met but one with whom I feel a spiritual connection.

I need a mountain to rest my eyes against.