The Song of the Inn

Our inn's name, Mountain Song Inn, is simply an endearing term for the place we love, reflecting things of the heart. While you are here it is our sincerest desire that your heart is stirred in ways only the wonder of nature, peace, quiet and refined comfort can elicit. Of course, nature's wonders are manifested in many places, in many ways, not just in the Blue Ridge Mountains. But there is something almost melodious here about the woods, the hills, the sky, and their many moods that engenders a nearly inexplicable sense of belonging, of being surrounded by strength, of finding harmony with the soul; hence is evoked the lilting allusion to joyful "song". If you will: Mountain Song.

The real "song" of Mountain Song Inn is the idea that during your stay you will sense a metaphoric "song in the heart", an emotional repose of sorts, with which most of we country-lovers are familiar. It's that feeling of wonder and contentment that lets us know we're "home"; connecting with our surroundings, even though they aren't familiar, on a level deep enough to evoke a sense of kindred spirit with them, explicable or not.

Some thinkers attempt to explain in written word our affinity to things country life stirs within us. Consider Robert Frost and Henry David Thoreau:

• What is it about Robert Frost's less traveled roads that he and we find so beckoning, or his woods "…so lovely, dark and deep…" on snowy evenings?

• Why did Thoreau's firewood warm him several times--- as he energetically split it; as the fire warmed him bodily; and inwardly as his soul found sweet contentment and rest in reflecting on the selfless expiration of his woody servant companion, giving of itself as if charitably, for his warmth, in the flames?

• Why can solitude, at times, and especially amid the presence of natural surroundings be our most companionable companion?

• Why do old things and articles of relative permanence, from antiques to ageless mountains, stir our affinity towards them? Even back to biblical times, men and women would look to the permanence of the mountains symbolizing '…from where comes…' their help. (Psalm 121; 1,2)

• Why are we moved by the reminiscence of an earlier day, a time less hurried, in days gone by?

• Why does the utter endlessness of the starry realm draw us in to that awesome wonder of it all until we are literally "full of wonder"—wonder-full!?

These are queries of the soul we sometimes, maybe often, ponder but for which there is almost never an articulated response worthy of their answer. They are abstract affinities simply more easily experienced than talked about. But just getting around to experiencing these attractions of the soul is all too often an elusive thing for many of us to do, for we tend to subjugate these abstractions to realms of lesser importance in comparison with the everyday things in life we otherwise find more necessary to perform. It seems the song of peace, rest, and pursuing a sense of wonder-- things for which most all of us inwardly long, can almost perpetually be eclipsed by the dischordancy of life's rapid, sometimes aimless direction! Though we often long inwardly for life "to connect" with the inward man and flow rhythmically, all too often we feel instead like couplets out of rhythm, phrases out of rhyme—in syncopated time! And the elusive, harmonious song of our lives is drowned in life's cacophony of demands.

Regardless of spiritual proclivities, I'd think all we who love the country would agree there indeed is an innate spiritual connection between our emotions and mountain vistas, and there is the need, for the sake of peace and sanity, to engage such settings from time to time. Sometimes it's simply so good just to sit around and think. And dream. And wonder why. It is for this reason my wife and I have finally elected to surround ourselves, environmentally at least, with that which enhances exposure to such things (the remote hills and all they contain) as much as possible. Lest I be misunderstood, little do we sit around in states of contemplation with all there is to do at an inn! Nonetheless, life's everyday discordance can ebb away watching a full, large, orange moon ascend the crest of the eastern panorama. And silent song—of stillness in sweet harmony—thusly enfolds the land…. And the soul is refreshed.

And, you? If you have read this far chances are we share kindred spirit found in such things. You'll feel at home here.

In closing, let me share with you one of my favorite, oft' repeated weather experiences here at the inn. It's about certain rainy days. Now, rainy days aren't usually favorites, but the weather here can be so dynamic and interesting—and engagingly "personal", as it were, if we so allow. When the air temperature, ground temperature, and humidity are in certain combination, the softest of almost angelic tendrils of mountain mist weave their gentle paths between hill and ravine in the lower land before us, cloaking fields and trees in a shroud of white. I'll sit on the porch and just watch. Contrastingly dark and dusty hills beyond seem to guide the misty visitors through the valley; they seem to have arrived as if to simply say "hello". And then they are gone, vaporizing into nothingness.

I think what's so profound about our fleck of dust-sized space in the Grand Scheme is although man is only a speck on this tiny blue ball, yet how intrinsically intertwined with Nature's grandeur he; we all; can become—if we take the time. So it's to you, our guests, who are taking time for whatever reason to come to the mountains, that we extend gracious welcome; a wish you'll find in your heart that special connection with the hills—as Audrey sometimes terms it, a "happy place"; a song within your soul, upon whose melody you may reflect for time to come. Your Mountain Song.

~Psalm 19:1–4~