While at my parents’ house, I’m a kid again—sleeping as late as possible and hoping my dad makes pancakes. South Carolina’s Glassy Mountain, where Mom and Dad live, is probably at its best in the early morning—although I wouldn’t know much about that (because of the sleeping). But I got a taste when two wet noses poked me out of bed and out of doors before anyone had even brewed a cup of coffee.
I tuck my pajama pants into boots, pull on a jacket, and escape the early morning preparations— the stuffing of a bird and the mixing of pumpkin goo for pie. The house has smelled like sautéed onions since before dawn, but outside I breathe crisp air and watch the sun creeping orange over mountains. What’s that I see shining like glass so far away, low-lying wisps of clouds or mist-covered bodies of water?
I decide on water, not clouds, and leave the road, following a path into the woods. The hounds are in their sniffing glory, and I’m all tangled in leashes. I find a big rock and sit.
The view from up here is—well, there are no words, so I don’t try but instead imagine Son saying to Father, Look—over here—at what I’ve made. Did Christ know light and shadow on mountains would sing of His very Self? That on a chilly Thanksgiving morning a girl with two dogs would slip out before the day got too crazy-full with faces and kitchen duty and kid duty, and that she’d wonder at the Person who breathed all this into being? Of course He did.