A Million Little Pieces Of My Mind

For years, I wondered why my sister, Louise, and her husband returned, year after year, to Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee. Then, a couple of years ago, I got to see it for myself. It is so peaceful…so serene. There is a restored model farm, of the type common in the area a couple of hundred years ago. Wandering in its fields and among the farm animals, you get a feel for how it might not be so bad to live then, in the Days Before Cable…!

As you enter the Park from its southern boundary, you come upon the model farm. Built of actual pieces of farms from the area (displaced by the Park itself), it doesn't look assembled: Every component is organic, seemingly grown on the spot.

The house itself sits still and patient. It is furnished and the visitor can walk through it; it seems to be awaiting the return of its owners, who might be gone for a few moments milking the cows or pulling weeds in one of the fields.

Actual animals reside on this farm. And, I've always said, it isn't possible to take a "bad picture" with a horse in it!

On a hot day, the residents of the farm might hitch up the wagon and ride up into the hills, to enjoy a picnic lunch and maybe play in one of the many creeks wandering amongst the trees.

Continuing upwards, one is eventually treated to spacious vistas, looking out into the "smoky" air that is actually clouded with the pollen of a billion trees…the same view the residents of the farm might have enjoyed, 200 years ago.