northcarolina Archives -

A little girl in Finland

The good old song “Take me home country roads” starts with the lyrics “Almost heaven, West Virginia, Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River”.

This little story tells you how Blue Ridge Mountains seem to have been playing a role in my life since I was a little kid in Finland without me knowing it for over 40 years.

I’ve always loved music, at some point I wished to learn how to play piano, then drums and lastly guitar. Even if I never learned to play any instrument I still am a huge music lover and always listen to the music.

The Song “Take me home, country roads” was the very first song I remember loving as a little girl back in Finland.

Of course I had no idea what the lyrics were saying, since I spoke only Finnish then. I could just remember ‘take me home, country road’ and kept singing it. This song stuck in my mind as a symbol of my childhood favorite song. This was long before rock music and heavy metal were the number one during my teenage years.

The Song “Take me home, country roads” was the very first song I remember loving as a little girl back in Finland.

North Carolina

Interesting detail, all these years I was never really a country music lover… not until I moved to North Carolina and I learned to listen to it and then love it. I lived in Finland when I fell in love with this country song. I also lived in Greece and finally arrived in the U.S. So I’ve been exposed to many different music genres through the countries I lived in and the countries I have visited.

These frequent moves and changes made me very adaptable and able to expand my interests, likes and loves. So it didn’t take me long to appreciate this music genre too.

Last winter I decided to create a playlist with songs that have played an important role in my life, or that I just really loved for some reason. This idea sparked as my friend shared his playlist and I found the idea very inspiring.

So…the obvious number one was “Take me home, country roads” even if I hadn’t heard this song for years.

‘The place I belong’

As I was listening to the song in my home in North Carolina and heard the reference to the Blue Ridge Mountains, I got goosebumps… For a moment I felt like some kind of prophecy come true:

“Country roads, take me home

To the place I belong”.

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Here I was now; living in North Carolina and had just recently visited Western North Carolina falling in love with the Blue Ridge Mountains… and feeling for the first time in my life that I could actually settle my roots somewhere in this area which I had started to consider as my home. If you know me, you know I call myself a nomad, as I have been on the go for a long time and haven’t felt certainty where my permanent home should be.

Even if recently I moved away from the South back to Massachusetts.. I believe at some point my calling will bring me back to the South, somewhere close to these mountains, to the place I belong.

Darkness

I had the opportunity to experience the feeling of utter darkness (and yes with my eyes wide open) when I recently visited The Linville Caverns in Western North Carolina.

Did you know there are only two areas in the world where this absolute darkness can be experienced? One is in the deep, deep ocean (in depths below 3,280 feet where sunlight does not penetrate and the zone is bathed in darkness) and the second one is deep underground in caves like the one I visited in the Linville Caverns.

While doing my tour with a small group of visitors – small, due to the Covid guidelines – suddenly the guide stopped and prepared us for this short moment of an absolute darkness. Gradually he turned the lights off…and there we stood in pitch blackness. I saw nothing, only total darkness around me while my eyes were open.

Honestly you appreciate light a lot differently after losing it, even if it is just for a minute!

A differend kind of Darkness

During this 2020 pandemic, we’ve been living for almost half a year now in partial “darkness”. This darkness is the uncertainty that has come with the virus, the uncertainty of our health, jobs, finances and future.

Most of us have been affected somehow, either by experiencing the virus first hand and becoming ill, watching a loved one fighting it or more commonly having been stung by the financial impact.

Don’t we all simply want some light at the end of the tunnel right about now?

Without knowing all the facts or the timeline as to when our lives will be restored fully back to the ‘kind of new normal’, all we have left to substitute the lack of this “light” is hope.

Reminded me of this quote by Chirag Tulsiani:

“As a rope is to a mountaineer, as a candle’s flame is to the darkest of caves, as a current is to a stream, as a drizzle is to a desert, as shelter is to the nomad, as food is to the hungry, as an oasis is to a weary traveler, as freedom is to a prisoner, as faith is to a theist, Hope is to man.”

If you were literally stuck in a dark underground cave, what would you do? Would you just give up and wait until someone possibly comes and saves you? While I cannot answer this question for everyone, I believe most would not just wait around. We would use all of our inner power to calm down. By using natural instincts and intuition we would try to find our way back out hoping to see the light!

I don’t panic easily but I must admit, I was feeling quite uncomfortable. For a second I reflected on what would happen if the light wouldn’t come back! How on earth could we find our way out of this darkness…

Hope in Horizon

So, let’s keep that Hope in the horizon! We can do that by continuing to explore what we can, where we can as true nomads desiring new adventures!

There might be hidden treasures right in your home state that you didn’t know of, like the Linville Caverns here in North Carolina.

If you are in the area, go visit the caves. And specifically pay attention to how an absolute moment of darkness can make you feel. Maybe on top of a fun weekend getaway, you also gain some new insight about yourself!