What if... you knew you were meant to be some place other than where you were? What if you were born in the mountains (in your heart, mind and gut), and had lived in two different mountain regions, the happiest, most grounded times of your life? What if you were 55, unhappy where you were, it seemed like as difficult a climb to reach your dream as to reach the mountain itself, but you knew you had to be there? What if?

In the last bit of time, my closest friend and I have talked about leaving this town where we both live, longing for other places. We will be heading in two different directions and no one knows but he and I what my heart longs for. It is not the time to tell anyone yet. We are riding big waves right now, coming in close to shore to face my mother's impending death. Time, it's all about timing...

I lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains in the country for 11 years. I traveled to New Mexico in 1990 and high in the Sangre de Cristo mountains I felt I'd found my destiny. I fell on my knees and I cried. I didn't want to go home, but of course I went. I was married with beautiful children and there was no question, then, what I should do. For twenty years I have wanted to live in New Mexico, but now it is too far, too expensive, too distant a dream.

In the year 2000 I moved to Colorado for a time, and rented an old farmhouse facing the Rocky Mountains. I would sit out on the wide front porch early in the morning on my old 1940's glider and have my coffee and wonder how I had ended up in Paradise yet again. My time there was short lived and I wept when I had to leave those mountains to come back to my ocean town. A lovely little city, a water city, with the Cape Fear River on one side and the beautiful North Carolina beaches on the Atlantic ocean on the other. Beautiful, but not for me. I need mountains. I need snow and cooler weather, not near tropical weather where the heat is past dreadful and there really aren't four seasons. I said it when we moved here in November 1992, "There's something wrong with living some place that you can get your Christmas tree wearing shorts." No, this has never been home to me, not ever. I don't want to die here one day.

I love Folk music dearly, and so when I saw a movie that I could rent called The Songcatcher I rented it, not knowing where it had been filmed or what the film was about except mountain music and a woman who went to study it. When the movie started I sat in shock to see that the movie was filmed in the exact location I have been telling my friend that I wanted to move. I was awestruck and tried to breathe the mountain air in through the screen. I wanted so badly for the movie never to end, and I felt a great sense of loss when it did.

I have such dreams. To live out my life in a little place in the mountains, to see it snow outside my windows as I decorate the tree, parrots and dogs all around me, a pot of soup bubbling on the stove, in the middle of writing my book with a basket of fiber and spinning wheel at my side. I have this dream and I intend to make it a reality.

After the movie ended, sitting in the silence, the room was too still and my emotions were rising too high, undone by the movie and being struck head on by images of the very place I've longed to see in person. I have been there before. Been through the area several times. Now, it is the Smoky Mountains that call to me, a town with rich culture, artisans of every type, the holy smoke anointing the sky over the mountain range, a place where a woman could plant flowers and herbs and vegetables, and pray. A place where a woman could write and perhaps look out of her window to see a doe and her fawn nosing about in the grass. A place so unimaginably beautiful it makes your heart beat faster and there is a lilt to your voice when you speak of it, joy floods your body like a warm river, hope of a new life, a new start, a chance at life when you thought you had given up. I need the mountain air to breathe. I need the rolling hills and mountain tops to feel safe. I am a mountain woman in a flat town surrounded by water. I have been drowning here.

Finally I decided it was too silent. 1 a.m. on a Saturday night, my heart was aching, and I couldn't imagine breaking the silence with the television and couldn't fathom that there would be anything of interest on but I turned it on, a sleeping pug draped over my right side, Big Dog Moe asleep on his bed next to me on the floor, the three other little pugs snug in the beds, and the birds all asleep. So I clicked on the t.v. and quickly found an Ani DiFranco special on public television and was instantly mesmerized. She was singing folk music. She is so amazing and wakes you up, shakes you up, and soothes the spirit and the heart all in a matter of a few songs. Too soon it was over. How can an hour pass so fast? Sometimes the minutes just creep painfully by, but I breathed in that music like a baby taking her first breath. In one night a movie and unexpected music settled in that place in my heart where the seed of my future life has been living. I sit here overcome with emotion, trembling with fear, poking at the dream to see if it is alive. It is very much alive in my heart.

I do not know how long it will take or when it will happen, but sometime in the next several months I will be living where I was meant to settle and start over, a place where I can live out the rest of my life, do my work, and let the solitude and silence echo through the four chambers of my heart.

I am going to get ready to go to sleep. I'm hoping when I close my eyes I will be transported to those mountains. And the promise of finding my way home will be a little closer in the morning...