COBB MOUNTAIN

I spent last week on Cobb Mountain, CA, with my sister, Alyssa. She leaves today, and though her summer was filled with a fair amount of drama and menial labor, I'm sure it'll be difficult for her to leave. It was her home for the summer. It was my home for one week, and it was sad for me to leave. Where is it? Well, if you drive to the very northern point of Wine Country in northern California, up through Napa and Sonoma Counties into Lake County, and then you keep on driving, past the bed & breakfast town of Calistoga, up, up, up into the mountains, past a couple little mountain villages and rustic resorts, until you are the furthest away from civilization that you could possibly get. Then you pull into Pine Grove Resort and Spa on Cobb Mountain, which is a very fancy name for a place that consists of a pool, some half-finished cabins and a pile of ecclectically decorated trailers.

Oh, there's also a "general store," a bingo hall and "The Grill," where you can get hamburgers, hot dogs and ice cream cones.

But despite its humble accomodations, it was the perfect place to get away for a week and spend some time journaling, laying out and conversing endlessly with my sister, who I miss very much. We cooked dinner in her dumpy cabin, we hiked around the camp, and we piled on my bed to watch Young Guns on a laptop computer. There were no cell phones, no TV, no housing developments, no chain restaurants or strip malls. Just clean, dry air and a sky full of one trazillion stars. The mountains in California are yellow because there is no rain in the summer, and they are covered with low bushes and thin trees with red bark. We hiked to a series of waterfalls that are where God must hang out when He takes a break from keeping everything together. I wish I had a digital camera so you could see my pictures. I sound like I'm romanticizing, but everything I saw really was a world away from everything I've known.

I also visited wineries - stone buildings, gardens, rows and rows of vines across mountain faces, fountains and the peppery flush of red wine (I now know how to properly taste it). I spent a night in Chico, CA, to see Pedro the Lion play and slept on the couch of a man by the legal name of DNA. I hoofed across San Francisco with my good friend Geoff and pretended to be a photographer. Yes, I did see the Bush Man.

My objectives for this vacation were to rest, to spend meaningful time with my sister and to have adventures. Check, check and check. Vacations are interesting; you go to somewhere totally foreign to get away from everything you know, and you're glad to be away, but you also miss the familiar. Being close to Alyssa, though, I really didn't feel too far from home. By the end of the week, I was ready to get back to (hurricane-stricken) Orlando (mostly to see my true love), but being back is tough. I miss not having expectations piled on my shoulders. I miss the total lack of to-do lists. I miss the sun and adequate sleep and time to write for as long as I want to. Speaking of which, my lunch hour is almost over, so I'd better wrap this up.

I did vow to bring more creativity and rest into my regular schedule. There's no reason for us to be killing ourselves every day trying to do it all. I'm convinced that happiness lies somewhere in the balance of hard work and time to rest and express ourselves with people we love.