Montreat retreat…

View from our Thanksgiving vacation cottage in Montreat, North Carolina.

Every Thanksgiving we drive up to the mountains of North Carolina for the long weekend. We stay somewhere around Black Mountain. This year, we were in the tiny town of Montreat, which has a Christian college, summer camps, conference center and not much else. You have to drive through a stone gate to get into Montreat. It is like driving into a dwarves’ village out of The Lord of the Rings.

There is something about this area of the North Carolina mountains where time slows down and priorities align themselves in a more satisfying way. I have no trouble staying off the Internet. Instead, I read, cook and enjoy my family. I have been other places like this (Sedona comes to mind, as does the Oregon coast), but Black Mountain is the only one I visit every year. I wish I could be there more often. I feel when I am not there that I am missing something important.