A Field of Daisies

 Thirty-nine years ago my husband and I decided to escape the ever-expanding suburbs that were wiping out the old Florida where we’d grown up. We ran away in search of a new home.

On a day in early June, we found ourselves sitting in a mountain pasture, watching the daisies stirring in the breeze and listening to the hollow sound of a pileated woodpecker hammering on a tree. The sky was Carolina blue and all we could see in the distance were mountains, green with trees and the occasional pasture. Except for an old cabin behind us and two tobacco barns just below the field, not another building was in sight. Breathing in that sweet mountain air, we decided we were home.

 

It was the beauty of the place that bewitched us – those rolling ranks of mountain ranges in hazy blues and purples, the lush early-summer greens of the poplars and locusts, maples and walnuts, the orange day lilies crowding the banks of the creeks and branches, the blue of chicory that reflected the sky, the white of the lovely Queen Anne’s Lace . . . the beauty that seemed to be everywhere we turned.  We fell in love with the scenery, took a leap of faith, and bought the sixty acres with the barns, the cabin, and the field of daisies  . . . and then, as we spent the summer camping out in one of the barns, we fell in love with the people and a whole new way of life.

 

Thirty-nine years later  and we've never regretted that leap of faith. And every time the daisies bloom, I remember that magical day . . . sitting in the field of daisies and deciding we were home.