My love affair with the mountains began at an early age. One of my earliest memories is of a trip I took with my parents and grandparents to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia as a young child. I remember marveling out the car window at the mountains as we drove along Skyline Drive, running through the trails in the forests, sitting on enormous boulder outcroppings looking out over the vast mountain range with my dad, and canoeing down lazy rivers enveloped by a canopy of centuries-old trees.
During my childhood, I split vacation days from school between long, summer days playing in the Atlantic Ocean on the Outer Banks in North Carolina and at my grandparent’s house in southeastern Virginia in a rural farm community. The forest that surrounded their home provided an enclave, a shelter, a respite, and I reveled in our visits. My grandmother told me that as a toddler, I would resist baths unless they let me bathe in an old steel tub set out in the backyard under the trees.
As children, my siblings and I would spend hours running through the woods and building forts at their house. As I got older, I had a favorite reading spot hidden among a cluster of azaleas on the edge of the woods. And, I would spend countless hours listening to the wind in the trees and watching the gentle, rhythmic sway of the trees. I still find comfort and solace in the wind moving through the trees.
As I write this, I’m reminded of the choices that I made in my life that have brought me to this place, to this home in Tahoe. And, I am thankful to live every day in the mountains, and grateful to my parents for that first trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains.
