We've been out on a lovely winter ramble through the hills, and now I'm back writing my column for tomorrow and playing with my photos from today. Check out the new album below on the left if you're interested. Have a lovely, restful Sunday evening, my friends.

Today has been a lovely, lazy Saturday. I slept luxuriously late, until after 8, snuggled down under my electric blanket. My sweetie and I cleaned up the house together this morning, and I went to the church at noon for my regular Saturday Holy Hour in the Eucharistic chapel, and a visiting priest was in there saying Mass, so I got to go to Mass an extra time today!
My hour there with the Lord was wonderful, as it always is. This afternoon I just kind of piddled around, then went back to Mass at 5, and then my sweetheart and I went out to eat a little steak dinner together.
It was COLD and windy here in the Ozarks today. Tomorrow is supposed to be warmer and sunny, so we're looking forward to getting out in the hills.
Meanwhile, sometime between now and Monday morning, I have to come up with an idea and write a column. I'm totally drawing a blank!
What was your Saturday like?

Hey, friends,
What's your favorite thing to do on a cold, winter night at home?
Tonight, I'm making a pot of pasta, some toasted garlic foccacia, some salad, and we're going to just eat a leisurely supper, and probably curl up with our respective books for a while.
What about you?

Myspace Graphics

“Why would I be
missing Memphis? I’m living in God’s country,” said a member of the
band with a big grin from the stage at the Lyric Theater Saturday night.
“I
might like to go back to Odessa, Texas, to visit, but not to live,”
said the lady who runs the little grocery store in St. Paul. “I’d miss
my trees.”
“Many are called, but few are chosen,” our new friend
Joseph Morgan at the Boardwalk Cafe in Jasper told us about coming to
live here. His theory is that the ticks and chiggers keep the Ozarks
population under control, scaring tender-footed, tender-skinned
flatlanders out of making the decision to pull up stakes and move here.
 Doyle
and I have definitely been called, and we're just taking it on faith
that we've been chosen, because we have no intention of leaving these
hills we now call home, chiggers notwithstanding.
This weekend, my
love affair with the Ozarks was strengthened even more by the road trip
we took to a section of the mountains that was new to me.
“I’ve been
saving this for you,” said my smiling husband, who fell in love with
the Arkansas highlands long before he ever met me.
We headed west
out of Harrison Sunday morning, turning left on Highway 412. Our first
stop was at the King’s River Country Store in Marble, which Doyle had
told me made the best hamburgers in North Arkansas. We got some fried
chicken to have for lunch later, but we couldn’t resist sharing a
hamburger with lots of jalapenos for a little mid-morning snack.
At Huntsville, we turned south on Highway 23, entering country that was all new to me.
We
drove through Aurora and crossed Henderson Creek. The road followed a
long, peaceful valley that reminded me of Boxley, then curved up into
hills that grew more and more steep and unpopulated. While negotiating
our Dodge truck through one hairpin turn after another, my hunter
husband explained to me that this was bear country. It wasn't hard to
believe, because it seemed even more remote and wild than Newton
County, where we usually ramble.
We crossed the White River, which
was very narrow in that place, and entered the White Rock Mountain
Wildlife Management Area. From there on, the countryside was even more
magnificent. I soon realized that I was making my maiden voyage down
Arkansas' famous Pig Trail, where bare gray branches tangled over the
road in a winter canopy that I knew would be absolutely breathtaking in
the fall.
Our destination was White Rock Mountain campground, which
we wanted to investigate with the idea of renting a cabin in a month or
so. We finally found White Rock Mountain Road, a bumpy, steep dirt road
that wound up and up and up the mountain.
Rugged rock formations
flanked the road, and here and there we'd glimpse a cave entrance in a
bluff that looked like an ideal spot for a black bear to hibernate.
To
me, it looked like giants had stood on the tops of the mountains and
flung handfuls of huge rocks down the hillsides, leaving the woods
littered with massive, craggy boulders.

The rock-strewn hillsides
almost looked like they had recently been in motion, the rocks flowing
from the peaks downward in an Ozarks avalanche, as if they had been
moving until just a moment ago, when some wild magic froze them into
place.
After a bone-rattling climb through untamed scenery, with the
road running for a long time beside a gentle creek and little
waterfalls glimpsed through the trees, we finally arrived at the very
top of the mountain and drove through the rock gateposts to White Rock
Mountain.

There’s a small rock lodge, three guest cabins, and the
home of the caretaker, Paula White. White Rock is the hub of several
hiking trail systems, including the Ozark Highlands Trail, and we
watched some hardy hikers arriving at the summit, undeterred by the
freezing temperatures.
Paula let us tour the rustic stone cabins,
built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. They're simply
furnished, and have fireplaces or woodstoves, and rudimentary kitchens
and bathrooms. You bring your own linens and things with you — and one
of the former guests noted in the cabin guestbook that it wouldn't be a
bad idea to bring an electric blanket and small heater, too. The views
from the top of the mountain, even on a cloudy day, were breathtaking.

We
made our reservations for a couple of days in March, then headed back
on down the mountain and north toward home, happily munching on our
fried chicken from Marble and listening to an Eric Bibb blues CD.
Yes,
indeed. Why would we be missing any other place in the world, when
we've got God’s country spread out around us in every direction?

By Celia DeWoody

Published in the Harrison Daily Times Feb. 12, 2007

Copyright CPI, Inc.

Today's trek to White Rock Mountain, a couple of hours west of here, lent itself to black and white photography.

 
This old church/schoolhouse in a little town on the way has been abandoned since 1948.

I walked along the top of this stone wall at a picnic area on White Mountain Road, very remote.


Cold wintertime stream that ran along the roadside for a long way.

The rocks looked to me like they had been thrown down from the top of the mountain by giants.

The little kid in me always has to get inside the rock and look out.

 Or get down on the bottom and look up...

My sister Mary Katherine is a very wise woman.
In
honor of  her 50th birthday last week, I had sent her a little gift,
and she mailed me a beautifully handwritten thank-you note. Along with
her thanks, she shared her musings about turning 50 with her big
sister, who had beat her to that landmark by 13 months.
"It feels
very freeing to be 50!" she wrote. "It's like the world's expectations
of me begin to recede, and my own expectations take center stage."
I've been mulling this over, and I think she's expressed a deep truth.
"The world's expectations of me begin to recede...."

The
world's expectations weighed heavily on me when I was young. At the
tender age of 19, I became a housewife in a little Mississippi town.
Although my mother hadn't lived there in 25 years, her hometown was
still populated with female relatives who were very dear to me, but who
certainly had expectations of what a young Southern lady's life was
supposed to be like.
I felt that I was expected to be charming and
hospitable at all times. To always look pretty, which included having
my makeup on just so, my hair shiny and fixed, and my clothes
fashionable and carefully ironed. My house was always supposed to be
gleamingly spotless, and the antique silver tea service my grandmother
had given me should be polished and on display on the sideboard. I
should go to Sunday School and church, clad in a nice dress appropriate
for the season, as well as stockings and heels. I should graciously
"entertain" from time to time, and my grandmother would have been
tickled to death if I had accepted the kindly offered invitation to
join the very proper Women's Study Circle, of which she had been an
charter member back in the 1930s.
 There was nothing inherently
wrong with any of those expectations, except that they created a mold
that I just didn't quite fit into. I had not grown up in that unique
Deep South culture, but on Navy bases all over the United States, with
people from all over the country and all walks of life, and I just
didn't think exactly the way that my good-hearted kinfolks and
neighbors did about everything.
 When I was very young, I wasn't
quite sure who I was, and as I tried to figure it out, I earnestly
tried on various costumes - most of them handed to me by someone else.
For a time, I tried hard to fit into that mold I felt was set for me.
It was an uncomfortable squeeze.
Now, at  51, those external
expectations have lifted. I'm no longer trying to fit my life into a
mold poured by someone else. I can just be Celia, without a costume to
hide behind. Sometimes it's a little scary to break out of the mold, to
come out from behind the mask, but it is very freeing.

 Now, I know who I am on the inside.

 It helps a lot to have a husband, relatives, and true friends who
accept me and love me exactly the way I am. It helps a lot to have a
bedrock-deep knowledge that the God who made me also loves me just
exactly the way I am...in fact, He made me this way, with all my
oddities and quirks.
Like my sister said, "my own expectations begin to take center stage."
Have you found this to be true?
That instead of the world's, or your mother's, or your neighbor's, expectations, you are governed by your own?


I believe, if we're Christians, our own expectations of ourselves are colored by, steeped in, what God's expectations are of us.

What are the expectations that are now taking center stage in my life?

My sister, I know in my heart, shares my expectations, and I imagine many of you, do, too.

I expect to learn more and more about what it means to live the life of Love, the life "hid with Christ in God."

I expect to spend more of my time doing things that really matter, not
spinning my wheels on activities that will not amount to a hill of
beans as I look back on my life from my deathbed.

I expect to become more dedicated to "feeding His sheep and tending His lambs."
I expect to walk through my days with - maybe not always happiness - but with deep and abiding joy.

By Celia DeWoody
Published Feb. 5, 2007 in the Harrison Daily Times, Harrison, Ark.
Copyright CPI, Inc.

Colds and flu-type bugs are yucky. D and I have both been sneezing and sleeping and trying to breathe most of the weekend.
But the good news is...we will both feel better soon.
It occurred to me today that as bad as I felt today, my mom, and other chronically ill people, would probably be thankful to feel as good as I did today.
Makes you think.

Attention Hillcrest Home friends:
I really would love to write a Valentine's Day feature story for the Harrison Daily Times about ONE SPECIAL COUPLE who met and fell in love while they were both in service at Hillcrest, and married. I have run across several via Xanga in the past few months. Do you have a couple whose story you think would be a great one for me to tell, and who would let me write about them and use pictures of them in the paper? Please suggest a couple, or volunteer yourselves! Thanks so much for your help.

Hey, everybody!
Doyle took me to work this morning at 7 and dropped me off - (remember, I had to leave my car at work 'cause I couldn't make it up the hill!). I had to go in early to do the morning news for the radio station, which we take turns doing from the newsroom.
All the news folks came in with snow pictures....my boss had the BEST one of a redbud tree, snowcovered branches, completely FILLED with redbirds!
Here's one I ran out and shot just across the street from the newspaper office, of the courthouse square:

Thank you for praying for my little mother. She's comfortably settled in the brand-new rehab center in Sarasota, and when I talked to her today, said the food was GOOD (which is a miracle, because she always acts like the food in a hospital will kill her!) I told her I was proud of her for trying to have a good attitude about being there. I think the Lord really has answered our prayers for peace and courage for her.

"If a man be gracious to strangers, it shows that he is a citizen of the world, and his heart is no island, cut off from other islands, but a continent that joins them."

-- Francis Bacon