Yesterday was a strange day from the get go. I woke up at 3:30 in the morning knowing something wasn’t right. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I had an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. After determining I hadn’t eaten anything that would cause such a feeling, I got up, wrapped my camp jacket around me and stepped outside to look at the stars. The sky was crystal clear and the stars looked so close you could just reach up and touch them. I stood there for awhile in my bare feet letting the energy from the earth seep up through my body. When I was sufficiently chilled, literally and figuratively, I went back to bed. But I couldn’t get back to sleep until dawn.

I finally woke up at around 10:00…absolutely unheard of for me these days. I’m usually awake with the chickens. I stumbled around, did my morning toilette, then dressed and cleaned the camper. Finally around 11:30, I packed up my writing implements and headed for the lodge and good WiFi. I created a movie of the best photos I’d taken on this WV tour and wrote till about 3:00 in the afternoon. 

I headed to the Pioneer Farm that’s on the back of the park property. This farm was abandoned for a long time, but people were always vandalizing it so now there is a farmer and his family living here. There was no one home when I was there so I wandered around taking pictures and marveling at its timeless beauty. I sat for a while and watched two horses and a donkey browse on the sparse grass in the meadow and felt more peaceful than I had most of the day.

On my way back to the campground, I stopped at the Nature Center and introduced myself to the Naturalist. Tammy is a cat bird. She has a coal country drawl that put me in mind of the Deep South but she assured me she was born and raised within a stone’s throw of the park. She apologized that she had recently let all the critters go. She normally traps possums and raccoons, tags them, and keeps them in the Nature Center for a few weeks to teach people about them. Then she sends them back off into the wild to track their whereabouts and traps another one to tag.

Tammy wasn’t originally hired to be a Park Naturalist. She was supposed to be a campground attendant. She doesn’t have a degree in biology, but she has a knack for nature…two and four legged. She was taking campers for nature hikes when the Park Administrators saw they had a gem in Tammy and told her she should apply for the Naturalist position. And the rest is history. She was a delight to talk with. She smiled as I left and called after me…”Put me in your book!” You bet I will, Tammy!

As I was pulling back into the campground, it happened. There was a low grinding noise coming from my truck and I knew that is where my uneasiness was coming from. Something hasn’t been quite right with the truck for a couple of days but I just couldn’t discern exactly what was troubling me. A sound, maybe? A smell, perhaps? Whatever it was, I kept shifting it to the back of my mind…yet still monitored the situation.

When I heard that noise, I knew there was something mechanically wrong with the truck. And that puts me in an uncomfortable position. First, I am here alone. There are two other campers in all of the campground and I am grateful for them. But they aren’t going to help me in this situation. I do not like being in a situation I cannot get out of quickly. It stems from being trapped in a garage as a young child and sexually assaulted. To say I have control issues is putting it mildly.

I went into the camper and made myself sit down and think. What I wanted to do was hook up the camper and get out of here, but of course…that wasn’t the right thing to do. I texted Mr. FixIt but I knew he was working and his phone would be in the truck. Then I texted my besties, Janine and Gail, and asked them to pray that I would calm down and everything would work out. Within minutes I felt much better and realized this whole thing is an adventure and an educational opportunity, so why not make the most of it!

Mr. FixIt called me a few hours later and he’s going to drive down this morning. He’ll check out my truck. We can tow the camper with his truck. And, either he’ll follow me to a mechanic or we’ll have the truck towed. That’s what I have AAA Plus for. We’ll go home tomorrow. I am so grateful for my friends who pray for me. And I am exceedingly grateful for a wonderful husband who takes good care of me. Wouldn’t you know it would happen at the last park on the last day? But I’m exactly where I should be. I have everything I need right here and I can get some work done while I wait. Thank God I wasn’t pulling the camper up the side of the mountain with no cell service!

❤️

“And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 4:19 NIV