The Giraffe Head Tree

Above the Waterfall
Sevierville, Tennessee
Sony Cybershot
July 2003

Hubs and I took the offspring, at that time eleven years old (oh my!), to Sevierville, Tennessee, to visit some relatives and friends. Our friends, Steve and Beth, live in an artistic jumble of a house nestled - I swear - in a hollow. Steve turns scrap metal into pieces of art, which can be seen throughout their yard of rambling perennials. Beth's heart lies in social work, working with children. Their home is an angular frame home Steve built piece by piece, backed into a "V" of a mountain. You can practically touch each hill through windows on both sides. Wild maidenhair ferns and ferns of all manner grow wild along the mountainside and act as natural outdoor curtains. My favorite part of their home is the skeletal remains of a piano Steve playfully mounted on the outside wall. Mallets are close at hand and the children loved to rap the strings, making their own rusty music.

Sevierville is just down the road a piece from Gatlinburg, the tourist's Mecca and not my cup of tea at all. Sevierville is a calm place filled with winding roads and artist's cabins and holds a bit of magic. I adore it.

My trio and the Hubs oldest daughter and her family met us here for a long playtime weekend. One of the places Steve and Beth took us to was a local water playground called "The Y." Here, the children (big and small, old and young!) could tube down a low, tumbling waterfall. They would hike a trail far up into the woods, set their tube down into the frigid water which would gently take them down to the waterfall where they would bump and spin downward, yelling with glee, only to do it again and again. When they tired of that they would swim across the narrow ribbon of water to a huge cliff on the other side, climb up, up, up, up, up and jump into the water. Ick to THAT I say but to the kids it became a Badge of Courage.

I did none of that. Instead, I explored paths, picked up rocks and took some photos. Above the waterfall was this little waterfall, above. There I sat surrounded by the sound of tumbling water, the laughter of children way off in the distance. My bare feet played in the icy mountain stream and it was one of the happiest times I've ever had. The entire visit was Bliss. Thanks, Steve and Beth, for such wonderful memories.