It’s the early part of leaf season here in western North Carolina. And while the leaves are just starting to change where we live, it is a much different story at higher elevations. Brandon showed me a picture of what it currently looks like up along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and I told the fam, “We should go…like right now…like put on your shoes and I’ll meet you in the car!”
Truth be told, right before saying that out loud, I had other thoughts. Like, “We should go, but I kind of don’t feel like making the 45-minute scenic drive to get there,” and another like, “If I just stay here, I can wash another load of laundry.” But then I thought back to last year when we were planning our fall trip up here to see the leaves. Every single day, Brandon would show me pictures posted to Smoky Mountain Facebook groups of the changing leaves at different elevations. He was so worried that we wouldn’t get our timing right to be here, and that we would miss peak season.
The fall leaves are so beautiful here, and truthfully, it doesn’t last very long. Seems like as soon as they are most vibrant and have all made their change to their autumn color, a strong wind or storm will take them all away. I knew we couldn’t wait.
I know that what is there one day, could be gone the next.
And isn’t that true about anything in life? We tell ourselves we will do something tomorrow, next week, or next month. We say we are waiting until we get a pay raise, waiting until the kids are grown, or waiting until we retire. We wait and we wait and we wait. It’s like whatever we envision is out there, we also envision will still be there later. It’s like the things we want to experience most, we put off until we have other things done first. For me today, I was going to put off seeing peak leaf season at an elevation of 5,000 feet for staying home to do laundry! I can assure you, even without that extra load of laundry today, everyone will be just fine tomorrow.
Now, if I stopped here, I wouldn’t be telling you the whole story.
When I said, “let’s go,” I knew it was about to rain, and I know that whatever conditions are like where we live, it’s ten times that up on the mountains. But it wasn’t raining yet. And while I knew there wouldn’t be long-range views, I thought we could at least see the color change as we were driving up.
What I didn’t take into account was the fog. As we were driving, the higher up we got, the windier, wetter, and foggier it got, too. I’m guessing we made it about halfway to our destination when the fog (or maybe it’s that we were in the clouds) made visibility so bad, I had to find a place to turn around and head back down.
We turned around at an overlook parking lot. It was then our two younger kids who were with us, asked if they could get out of the car to “see what it feels like.” We said yes and I told them I would take their picture. I thought it was funny that we’ve come up here so many other times to take pictures of the views and the mountains, and today you could see neither of those things. That’s when I noticed our youngest had his jacket, but didn’t even bother to have his shoes!
And isn’t that true about anything in life? You expect things to go a certain way, and it just doesn’t. You think you’ve made the right preparations, and you haven’t. You envision things going a certain way, but it goes another way instead.
Yes, I missed out on doing a load of laundry AND I missed seeing the leaves today. What I did get was this little gem. I didn’t know until later that Brandon captured our little circus from the front seat of the car.
What I got today was an opportunity to say yes to something I really wanted to do. To say yes to something we used to only dream could be a spur-of-the-moment outing for us. To say yes to getting out in the rain, wind, and fog to take a picture of some under-prepared adventurous kids.
And while the leaves at the highest elevation will be gone soon, and I am not sure that we can get back up there in time, I am happy that we tried. I am happy we didn’t wait. And I am happy because we know life is ALWAYS about the journey and not the destination. And what a journey it is!
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