This week I celebrated my 5-year anniversary of living in the Blue Ridge — I’d say “Asheville,” but I did spend ten glorious months living in the sticks of Weaverville a half-hour from downtown.
Plus, five years in the Blue Ridge sounds more magical anyway.
In my five years here, I’ve had four different addresses — typical for my life. Doing some quick math, I believe I’ve lived in twelve dwellings across eleven years from coast to coast (if you don’t count Mitsy, my old Galant, as a dwelling).
However, I’ve now held a single address for a staggering year and a half — the longest I’ve ever lived somewhere since I moved out of my parents’ house 11 years ago! Go me.
There are a ton of asterisks to address, of course, since I moved to the Blue Ridge in 2016. (Again, this is my nomadic life we’re talking about.)
The summer of 2017, I spent two months on the road traveling from Colorado to Pennsylvania to the Outer Banks to Alabama and back to the Blue Ridge, meeting new readers and my newborn niece while wrapping the final draft of my Running To book.
The summer of 2019, I spent five months on the road traveling from St. Louis to Texas to Colorado to Pennsylvania to Maine and back to the Blue Ridge, helping a friend move across the country and attending my grandfather’s funeral and basking in Acadian glory while determining if I even wanted to return to these mountains for another go.
And then the summer of 2020, I spent six weeks between my parents’ house and the hospital as my body succumbed to an autoimmune disease, before eventually coming back to the Blue Ridge.
Technically, then, I guess I haven’t “lived” here for five years if you subtract all those many months away. Not to mention all the other weeklong flights and road trips along the way.
But come whimsy or mayhem, for five years running the road keeps leading me back here to the Blue Ridge. However many nights I’ve actually slept in a bedroom here, it is indeed starting to feel something like home.
I stared at the hills the other day and prayed, “God, please don’t let it ever grow old.”
I don’t want to stop basking in the wonder of this place; how the Ridge really is blue when you stare at it; how there is an endless well of wonders to wander about here. Trails and vistas and waterfalls, et al.
The Blue Ridge is the perfect place for me, if ever I could find “perfect” this side of Paradise.
A friend gifted me a guest pass to the Biltmore Estate, Asheville’s biggest tourist attraction, and I wandered the grounds on my 5-year Blue Ridge anniversary, a gorgeous day out. At last, it was my first time ever seeing that building with my own eyes!
How fitting to celebrate my 5-year anniversary there: in a new place in an old home.
I’ve missed traveling to new places in this crippling year of COVID. I’ve missed exploring new cities, meeting new readers, catching up with old friends. I’ve missed all the wanderings that have become such a staple, even “trademark” of my life this last decade.
But one of the many reasons I’m grateful for COVID is how it’s grounded me. Yes, I still want to go to Alaska and check off my 50th state visited. Yes, I still want to bask in a European backpacking summer. Yes, I want to travel the world.
But if I’m simply looking for new wonders to behold, I need look no further than my own bluish-hued backyard.
Beyond the mountains, I’m discovering more and more that Asheville has some beautiful people too. I still kinda feel like a kid going to a new school, learning people’s names and figuring out where I fit in, which “clique” is mine and such.
But as one year has turned to two has now turned to five, I’m starting to see how this place and these people work. People are starting to know who I am and how I work, too.
And that’s a special feeling. It’s a special feeling to be seen and known and still welcomed into the fold.
Something I’ve often thought about from last year’s medical catastrophe is this: what if my body had failed me on one of my big excursions?
What if my autoimmune disease had struck me in the middle of South Dakota, or Puerto Rico, or God knows where else I would have been last spring if not for COVID forcing me to be right where I was in my Asheville apartment?
I’m glad I got ill here.
I’m glad I recovered here.
I’m glad I’m still recovering here.
I’m glad for all the people who have supported me and continually comfort me here. And I’m glad for the blue hills beyond my bay window.
Thank you, Asheville. Thank you, Blue Ridge. Thank you, God.
People ask me if I’ve officially “settled down” now, and I always laugh. Truthfully, I never have any idea how long I’ll stay here beyond my current lease.
I love my apartment. I love my neighborhood. Dare I say, it’s my favorite place I’ve ever lived. I don’t necessarily see myself leaving anytime soon, though I feel God has prepared me to be a nomad and go wherever the story leads whenever the chapter ends however He purposes.
But in many other ways, I feel God whispering it’s okay for me to keep the same address for a while. I don’t have to be “special,” constantly changing my environment and the people around me in search of the next epic story to tell.
It’s okay to find new stories here, too; to not have to trek across the continent again and again. It’s okay to stop and breathe and grab coffee with the same person week after week, month after month, year after year, instead of constantly swapping out the seat across from me in different states, different time zones, different countries even.
It’s okay to get more and more comfortable calling this place home.
And yeah, it’s also okay to book a flight to Alaska when this pandemic ends.
