The Dude Ranch

Some recent conversation has caused me to remember our brief visit to a dude-ranch in North Carolina last summer. Our family really loved this place (http://www.pisgahviewranch.net/). We did go on the heels of a week with both sets of grandparents at the beach, so perhaps we really needed the peace and quiet. Or maybe it really was that great. In any case, it was a little oasis of quiet, rest and well, nothing-ness that made it just perfect.



The quiet was mountains-in-the-morning kind of quiet. The view I've shown is what you're staring at from the main house on the ranch - Mt Pisgah. It's the kind of quiet where you sit on your rocking chair on the front porch in the evening and you hear the squeak of your chair and the clop-clop-clop of the pygmie goats kept as pets on the property (no kidding). And that's it.

See - there's the goat. (Andrew's in green with some boys we met). By the way -- we heard something on our deck one morning and, disturbingly, the goat was ramming his tiny little horns into our sliding-glass door. Kinda weird.

The rest was the kind where (after biscuits and gravy) you choose from a walk over to skip rocks on the pond (which I can't do!), a game of shuffleboard (I avoid the game after pulling a muscle on a cruise a few years back), or a trail ride on one of the beautiful horses they keep at the ranch. I found that I loved to take Andrew and just wander-about...checking out the chickens or digging up rocks by the pond. This was the nothing-ness. Nothing to do. Nowhere to be. You're there. And every now and then we'd just take off running for no reason.

And also: you can get sweet tea all day long in the main house. 'Nuff said.



Doing this post is making me remember a verse.

Isaiah 30:15
"In repentance and rest is your salvation.
In quietness and trust is your strength..."