Mountain Home

Have you ever set on a mountain and just listened to the earth. At first you can only hear the noise of everything going about their lives, but sit and listen and pick out the birds songs or the squirrels fussing at each other. You will have to block out the sounds of all that lives that is still able to call the mountain home. It will take concentration and meditation, so don't give up. It will take more time for some and less for others. What the mountain will tell you is the echo of long ago times before man touched the land, just after God brought forth the land and the waters. You will hear trees growing and the wind that started blowing at the beginning of time through the mountains. The mountain will tell you of the birth of the first animals to walk its slopes. She tells of all the insects and how all of the life that lived in the mountain coexisted in harmony, how they relied on each other for their existence and nourishment. She tells of the proud Eagle that no longer fly’s above her and screams with delight at her beauty. How the wise owl calls to the new comers to announce who they are. She tells you how they welcomed the first man to marvel at her with open arms and how he and his kind respected her and the friends of the mountain. She will also ask you what she has done to deserve what man is doing to her now and why so many of her friends have left her and not returned as they once did? The mountain still welcomes man to marvel at her wonders and scale her peak, but she now begs you to listen and respect what she gives and what she needs to help the world to continue to live so that man can still exist. I still love to sit and listen to her tell the tales of the Cherokee people playing in her and her family's valleys and how they foraged through her forests to find their food. I keep her love in my heart always and now you know why I live in the foothills of The Great Smoky Mountains. 

I had to put the Bald Eagle in this picture because so few live as they once did in the Smokies.