And The Thunder Rolls…

On this summer day, I’m sitting here in the cabin, completely alone, listening to a storm moving in.  Oh, and my poor, pitiful washer that’s in desperate need of some attention from Mountain Man.  I swear, that man can fix anything.

Anyway, I’m looking outside at the expanse of trees that reside just off the deck and on the knoll down below and as usual, I’m stricken breathless by their majesty and beauty.

Well, here.  Let me just give you a tiny glimpse of what I’m talking about.

This is the view right off the back deck. I can touch the leaves you see in the foreground of the picture! Breathtaking, isn't it?

And believe me y’all.  A picture simply cannot do this justice.  So many details just get lost, no matter how hard I try to capture each and every one of ’em.  This is all around the east and south side of the cabin.  I can touch some of the trees and most of the leaves from the deck out back because the cabin was built around them.  They kinda hug the cabin in a way.  It’s a sight to behold for sure.

Not too long from now, all those green leaves will give way to their fall colors.  Shades of yellows, oranges, reds, and browns will appear and surround me with the warm colors of autumn.

This Mountain Girl cannot wait!

As for right now, in this moment suspended in time, I’ll sit right here, alone, in the silence and comfort of The Treetop Cabin, and continue to listen to the thunder roll off in the distance and feel the breeze as it comes in ahead of the storms that are forecast for our area this afternoon.

It’s times like these that I remember that I really hate being alone.

He Was a Big ‘Un!!!

I’m convinced that the government is conducting some sort of strange experiment involving those pesky little winged spawns of which I’ve written about in the past.  I know that we’ve never had this many flying insects in these mountains before in all my years of living here.  At first, I thought I was just imagining all the extra activity going on outside that required either, a) hunkering down inside and hiding from all the little winged spawns, or, b) spraying a shiny, thick, stinky layer insect repellent on all exposed, and some not so exposed, areas.  But, after much deliberation and thought on the matter, I’m going with the government experiment theory.

My son and I were driving home last night just after dark and I personally think we both witnessed history.  Something neither one of us has ever before seen.  And I don’t think either of us will ever be the same again.

First of all, we had to drive around, and through, one of the worst thunderstorms I think I’ve ever encountered in my life.  We were a long way from the sanctuary of our little cabin here on the mountain and were in the somewhat flat lands of a nearby county, and let me tell ya, when they get a storm warning down there, it’s not to be taken lightly.  It was absolutely amazing!  We could see the lightning shooting out of the black thunderheads out of the side windows of my little car as we were driving along and we were racing to get ahead of the storm.  The sky started turning that eerie green color that only happens when the conditions are just right for a tornado and my son is sitting next to me, visibly shaken and telling me to drive faster.  I don’t think he’s ever actually seen weather like this in real life and he was more than a little freaked out by the whole thing.

I wasn’t tore up too awful bad ’cause I’ve seen some pretty nasty storms in my day.  Wow, “in my day”.  How old does that make me sound!!!  Nevertheless, I was starting to get a little worried when the trees lining the highway started swaying unnaturally and bowing way too close to the ground.  So, onward we traveled in the blinding rain, with the radio blaring my newly acquired 80’s playlist and my poor son in the passenger seat trying to act cool.  Bless his little heart.  I hate I didn’t have my camera with me to capture all of this, but I’m sure he’s glad I didn’t.

The storm had let up when we finally got closer to home and turned down a familiar country road that I’ve driven both in the daytime and at night quite a bit and that’s when we were completely blown away again.  Now everyone who’s ever driven a back country road after dark in the summer can attest to the sheer volume of bugs that lose their lives by splattering into the front of your vehicle and especially your windshield.  And I personally think the really big ones know exactly when you’re just about out of washer fluid and they aim right smack in the middle of your line of sight on the windshield.  But honest to goodness, last night was a sight to behold.

And keep in mind folks, I worked 3rd shift for 4 years and had to drive at night in all sorts of conditions, but this beat anything I’ve ever seen.  The bugs were so thick at certain points in our journey home that it looked like it was snowing!  My son commented that it looked like we were driving through space!  It’s a good thing he recently filled my washer fluid in the car, ’cause I couldn’t go more than a few hundred feet without having to clean off the windshield!  It was absolutely awful.  I swear I think I heard some of ’em go splat as they hit!  I almost felt as though my son and I should have a moment of silence when we finally made it home to acknowledge all the tiny corpses on the car.

Whatever the reason for all these winged demons out there this year, I certainly hope that this is a one time occurrence and that next year, things will go back to normal.  Perhaps I should just get out on that country road every night and tackle the problem head on.  Nah, gas is too high for that kind of approach.

*Just to show you one of the more intriguing winged specimens, I’m sharing this pic with you that I took late last night.  Mountain Man called me downstairs to show me this beauty and we were both just mystified by how stinkin’ big this thing is.  He didn’t have antennae of his head, he had freakin’ feathers!  Honest to goodness feather looking things were sticking out of this thing’s head just above his beady little eyes!  And not only was he big, he was kinda dumb, too.  Bless his heart.  We tapped the glass and Mountain Man even touched it with the door and the poor thing stayed right there.  He barely moved at all.  So, we decided that he was either in stealth camo mode and thought he was on a tree, or he was a mentally challenged bug and he’s resorted to licking the glass.  🙂

We used Mountain Man's wonderfully sexy manly hand as a reference to show just how big this thing is!