REDRUM

This photograph does not begin to properly show the isolation and the beauty of this place…

I am going to live in the Georgia mountains for a few months. I am staying in a “Wilderness Community” in a cabin with a massive stone fireplace and eccentric neighbors. I have packed boxed soups, apples, winter garments, razor blades, batteries and Steven King’s On Writing, as if I am heading to the polar icecap or The Overlook Hotel.

The fact is, no one should ever rent their house to me. Not because I am slovenly or have loud parties and break the china, but because I feel the need (no matter how short my stay) to make a place my own. I have spent the past two days moving heavy furniture that didn’t pass muster, to the basement. I have replaced all the bedding including bed skirts, hoisting mattresses like I’m in training for the Highland Games. I put away all vanilla smelling candles, burnt dried flower arrangements and bagged anything that didn’t harken to the backwoods motif I envisioned (bears, moose, snow flakes). I artfully draped faux fur throws over anything that was frayed or stained.

The photograph below is the rustic bedroom I am sleeping in after I got through with it. I got this Cabin Beautiful look by combining my bedding from home with an authentic Appalachian quilt I snagged from a tableau (along with antique moonshine jars and wash boards) twenty feet or so above the kitchen cabinets…

Perhaps a tussle with a mountain man here?

Not pictured is the empty TV table where an unsightly, 500 pound, outdated television sat before I dropped it to the ground, rolled it onto a rug and dragged it to an empty closet. The telltale faded square above the bed is where I removed a print that offended my sensibilities…

But when it was all done, I poured a wine glass of gassy water and cranberry juice and read. By firelight. And if I can’t finish the writing project I’ve been working on for years here, then shame on me.