It’s so quiet here that even the birds wonder if they should sing. The only sounds are the evening crickets and the whisper of the wind. There’s the occasional boat in the distance. A storm is rolling in and rogue lightening bolts light up the mountainside. It’s just started to rain and the gentle pitter-patter blends nicely with the babbling man-made waterfall on the property. Fresh rain is the only perceivable scent. The air is clear and the water is clean. Across the cove, if you can call a mile-wide stretch of water a cove, is the Cherokee National Forest. Not a light, sound, or movement defaces/pervades the view. There is no need for shoes here because the only thing underfoot is the earth. Watauga Lake seems to be the place the world forgot.

I don’t quite know what to do with myself. I’ve relaxed and reflected, but eventually your brain runs out of things to think. There’s no Internet [yet] and the Appalachian Mountains block all cell towers. I’m unplugged from the world as I know it, and I can already feel my body readjusting and syncing with the rhythms of nature. It’s easy to see why things run slower in the South. I haven’t looked at a clock in hours. If I had anyone to talk to, I think I might have an even more lethargic and drawling Southern accent than usual.

As if to highlight the peace and tranquility of this place, the trip here was quite the opposite. It was the most unconventional and exciting of my life: I arrived at my parents’ house Monday morning only to jet ski over to Warren’s (a family friend and my pilot) house. At Warren’s, I jumped in his 1960 banana-yellow Citroen and drove to the New London Airport where we then boarded his private plane and flew down to Watauga (the flight took an hour and 15 minutes as opposed to the 3 1/2 � 4 hour drive time). The sky was a bit hazy, but the aerial view of Virginia gave me a new perspective on my not-quite-adopted home state. We flew at 8000 feet (slightly under a mile and a half up) all the way to the Johnson County Airport. The mountains around here are so high that our final descent was steeply pitched, giving me an incredible view of the landscape around me. I, of course, took photos.

Our trip here is a reconnaissance mission. We’re here to gather data about Watauga Lake and her surrounding area in all it’s glory. We want to sample, taste, touch, and experience as many of her hidden corners as we can. We’re hoping to find the spirit of Watauga Lake and learn her stories well enough to be able to recount them accurately and faithfully.

The final goal, of course, is the destination website for Watauga Lake. Much like the Smith Mountain Lake destination website, I will be instrumental in compiling information and writing keyword-rich (but interesting) web copy. I enjoy this kind of work because it allows me to mix my creativity (i.e. writing) with my finely-tuned research skills honed in high school and college. On top of that, my mind is always in SEO-mode, and I’m excited to see how highly the website will eventually rank. So here we are, at Watauga until next Monday or Tuesday, researching, gathering, and and building a goldmine of Northeast Tennessee information.

But I’m Yankee at heart and a city girl for the moment, and peace and quiet are not my thing. By next week, I fear that I may be ready to fling myself off a cliff into the chilly Watauga River just for a little variety. And if we don’t get our Internet connection soon, the withdrawal symptoms will set in hard and fast, rendering me an irritable little girl. But for the moment, I am enjoying my quiet interlude of introspection. Having nothing to do oddly gives me much to do. There are sounds to discover, unknown flowers to sniff out, and natural wonders to behold. It’s been a long time since I’ve sat on a porch, gently rocking myself into a state of calmness, in the midst of a summer rain. And I rather like it.