Dear Z,

When we discovered this bed and breakfast, we knew it would be the real deal because they had a poorly designed website. Clearly, they were spending more time on their biscuit recipe and fine white linens. When we arrived, they did not disappoint.

You were still pregnant with J, no more than a month away from his arrival, but our foolish plan was to go hiking on this extended weekend of a babymoon. When we arrived, it took a little while to find someone to check us in. Another good sign.

It was a beautiful old farmhouse – white walls and original wooden floors – and when we met the owner we found out that the place was run by a family. Husband and wife, two kids, one of the grandmothers was the head cook. We knew we had struck bed and breakfast gold.

They showed us to our little room, to our bathroom down the hall that we would share with another room, and to the dining area where each guest’s name was handwritten on a folded card and placed at their assigned seat. All the other rooms were filled with people out all day attending a nearby wedding. We just about had the entire place to ourselves.

What surprised me was how much that meant to us. Living in the transition of a pregnancy is like living on a train. The things closest to you: your seats, the other travelers, the conductor collecting tickets, remain the same. But everything else is in constant motion. For us to visit a place so isolated and insulated from the world we knew gave us our first chance in about eight months to take a deep breath.

As we drove into Pisgah Forest, the trees leaned in above us to create a canopy far above our heads. Cars were parked up and down the sides of the road as hikers came to different conclusions about how far they were willing to walk against how long they wanted to look for parking.

When we found a little nook to rest in, another couple was nearby discussing whether to start with lunch or bring their packed sandwiches with them to the summit. As we got out of the car, strapped on our backpacks, and headed to the trail entrance, they were unfolding the plastic on their sandwich bags and opening up a bag of chips.

I fell in love with these woods about as soon as we arrived. At the end of our first hike was a waterfall cascading off of a massive overhang and into a slope of rocks. We took turns with the other hikers approaching it, but we could all stand under the overhang and look up into the waterfall. It was a brilliant array of colors, reflecting and improving upon the sky behind it like a living rainbow.

After having our chance to dip our hands into the water and take a few pictures, we started heading back for the mile or so walk to our cars. It had gone so well that we planned a much longer hike, about three miles each way, for the following morning. Before we got very far from the waterfall though, we ran into an older couple who stopped to ask us a question.

“Is that the main attraction?”

“Yes, this is it!” we responded enthusiastically as we continued down the path. Before we got much further, we heard them exclaim,

“We hiked all this way for that?”

We tried to stifle our laughing as we kept walking, equal parts amused and bewildered that someone could have such a different experience of the same hike as we did.

For two full days and nights, we went hiking, played cards in a quiet, screened-in porch, ate sausage, eggs, and biscuits to the peaceful harmony of dishes being washed and orders being taken, and regularly revised our five-year plan while lying in bed and listening to the creaking of floorboards as other guests returned home late from a wedding. Packing up our things and saying goodbye to the wonderful family who hosted us, they made us promise to return in the near future so they could meet our little baby. We promised we would.

It was a surprise to both of us that we took this trip. We’re both pretty frugal and the idea of spending money on something as abstract and fleeting as memories has never been at the top of our priorities. But that list of priorities slowly adjusted itself as we drove home through farmland, stopped halfway home to pick apples at an apple orchard, and picked up an anxious pup who spent a few days sleeping over a strangers’ house.

Now that J is born, the weather is a little warmer, and the train seems nowhere near slowing down, it might be time to make good on that promise to the bed and breakfast.

Yours,

S