Where the Balmy Breezes Blow

-In Donegal, Ireland, up in the Gaeltacht, there is a tiny cove, about a mile down the road from Teac Jack’s in Gweedore. When the tide is in, you can barely see anything except for a few rocks, about a hundred feet out, standing up out of the water. When the tide is out, you can stand on the topmost rock and look down almost 20 feet into the water. The wind is so strong, you can barely hold anything in your hands – it might get ripped away. If you look back at the land behind you, you feel miles away from civilization.

-Off the Isle of Capri in Italy, you can get in a tiny boat with oars and be rowed to a tiny hole in the side of a cliff. The man in the boat will drop his oar, catch hold of a chain across the opening, the tide will go UP and then DOWN and he PULLS and you duck, your head clearing the opening by inches. Inside, it seems pitch black, and all you can hear is some quiet splashing, and the sound of the oarsmens’ voices as they sing in Italian. “Turn around,” your oarsman says, and you turn and behind you, the sea is glowing deep blue, lit up from below. It’s like you could reach and scoop up some of the water, and still have it glow in your hands. Supposedly, during the spring, sometimes the oarsmen let you get out and swim in The Blue Grotto.

-Growing up, I spent weeks and weeks in North Carolina during the summer. Asheville, Brevard, Montreat, Black Mountain..I love Buncombe county. I went to camp every year from the time I was 8 until I was 18 in Brevard. I went to Montreat with youth group. My boyfriend at the time lived in the Asheville area part of the time we were dating. When I was in high school, I spent practically the whole summer in that area.

There’s something about North Carolina. The trees, maybe. Or the smell. More than Georgia, sometimes, it’s home.