EVEN THOUGH I’VE LIVED in the flatlands of South Carolina since college—a mind-boggling span of some 40+ years—I am a mountain girl. In fact, when Tim and I married in 2002, he made a sweet wedding promise to someday get me back to the landscape I love best. That dream came true in 2015 when we stumbled upon a can you even believe these views place at the top of a very high ridge in Western North Carolina. In no time Tim had nicknamed the getaway “Cat’s Mountain” in deference to both my giddy joy and my deep soul connection to the very earth here. Each time we arrive, we go straight out to the broad back deck where we look around, take deep breaths, and somehow exhale into the very best versions of ourselves.

It’s because we have become part of a world that stands today as it has for thousands of years, is Tim’s theory, a slice of creation that’s largely left just as God intended. Our house is thoughtful but simple, built in 1978 and designed to meld into its surroundings with a deck that cantilevers over the steep mountain meadow from which it rises. Beyond are North Carolina’s beautiful Black Mountains—the entire range spreads before us—and as you stand there, the sun rises to the left and sets to the right, offering stunning bookends to mark each day.

I love waking up here. We get up early—both of us do—and eager for another day, I most often throw on clothes I pull from a collection that, the prior night, I took off and piled on the bench at the foot of our bed. (I’ve been known to wear the same pair of cutoff jean shorts for more days than I care to count.) I wash my face, apply sunscreen, snatch back my hair, then kiss Tim goodbye as I grab my laptop, journal, and the tall, milky coffee he has just prepared and left on the end of the counter for me. I walk along the house’s front deck, past the long row of stacked firewood, and just as she comes into view I stop, nod to the Mother Tree* and climb the stairs to “work,” so joyful I can hardly stand it.

(*Who am I kidding? Almost always I take a photograph of Mother.)

MY MOUNTAIN STUDIO is really, really special. For one thing, it sits even higher than the house, and the views are spectacular. For another, it’s large. I mention this because: 1) I have room for a big work desk, a standing writing desk (that’s placed by the window), a gigantic art table, and a large H-Frame easel that’ll very happily hold an oversized canvas. So not only do I have space for many, many creative endeavors, I really believe the combination of PLENTY OF ROOM and those GRAND VISTAS makes for a mindset that’s loose, open, expansive. It’s a place that encourages big thinking, where an imagination can roam, where a big brush eagerly wants to paint in bold, broad strokes just for the kick of seeing what emerges.

This bigness I love for so many reasons, not the least of which is my writing. I stand here, right where I am now, the world outside changing by the second as the sun travels across the wide sky, cheery clouds throwing shadows that shift and change and move as if a choreographer has planned it. Then suddenly, a rustling. A breeze through the trees, then cooler still and before you know it there’s rain, would you look at that, it came from the west and snuck up before you could even see it. Then a break and a rainbow. No two! It’s a double! And you’re up so high you realize you’re actually above a double rainbow and that shift in perspective, that changed way of seeing is energizing, liberating, fresh and new. Then here comes the fog, rolling in in waves, joining now with a thick mist that rises from the low valley floor. The world goes white and you watch, you wait; you hang on knowing this too shall pass, this is a world ever-changing. It’s also a gorgeous metaphor for the page, I think, and for all I try to accomplish there: dream big, keep the action moving, know that at any moment, something unexpected is likely to happen.

MUCH OF MY just-published novel I wrote right here, standing at this desk, right by this window. I edited version after version at the big work table where I spread out notebooks, note cards, sticky notes—plus all manner of research—tearing apart and putting back together in ways I hoped were making That Which Binds Us all the better. I’ve written short stories and essays and blog posts. I’ve written a draft of a second novel that sits today exactly as it was in April of 2024, when I signed the contract for That Which Binds Us with Turner Publishing. (That fact, I have to say, astounds me.) I had no clue how much work it would take to get from contract to final manuscript to book to market to promotion. I’ve loved every minute though, just as my book tour has taken me from South Carolina to Georgia to North Carolina to Tennessee and Virginia, and there are more events in the works.

Nevertheless I have reached a place where time is beginning to open up, even if just a bit. It’s a hint, a whisper, nothing more than that. Still in those tiny spaces, quiet as they are, I feel the pull of the second novel. I’ve yet to open the file, but I’m relieved it is a prospect that brings a level of excitement.

I would like to say this, too. As I begin to make my way back to the daily work of writing and editing—albeit on an abbreviated scale for now—I will do so with a greater appreciation for the process itself. It has always been true for me, and it’s true now, that I’d write without an audience. I write to find out what I think, as Joan Didion said, to determine how I feel. I write to experience other places and times and lives. But there has been a magic in completing the circle, too, in holding a finished, printed book, in talking to readers who, almost without exception, tell me what they most loved about my story, the characters, the themes; who demonstrate the levels on which they were able to relate. Miraculously (and to my grand surprise), nearly every person says something different. That’s validating to me not only as an author but as a human person living on this planet. We all are different. We are also very much the same.

OH, THIS BEAUTIFUL mountain, with its broad vistas and changing seasons and unpredictable weather. With its summer blueberries and roaming black bears and morning birdsong. With its reminder to me to get up early, to pay attention, and to dream big and wild.

How very fortunate I am.

XXOO