I’ve just returned from a vacation, the first I’ve had in—actually, I don’t know. There was a two-days trip to St Simon’s in January to visit a friend who, as it turned out, was not all that happy to see me. (Mysterious as the ways of seeming-love are those of seeming-friendship sometimes, but all that is another story.) Before that, I took a trip to Virginia for the lovely wedding of a young friend nearly two years ago. And before that, all is darkness. The perpetual problem is the difficulty of finding a good pet-sitter, but I know that, at bottom, I’m simply reclusive, practically a hermit, really.

Anyway, I took a vacation. I went with a friend to a camp up on Lake Champlain in New York. First, the camp was kind of primitive, and I don’t do primitive well. Then, she’s a bit of a Yankee—though she’d deny that—and has some difficulty, I suspect, with my southern slowness—though she’d probably deny that, too. (She’s very nice. It’s a trait we do not share.) But the trip was wonderful. She had told me that it was “so peaceful” there, utterly restful. Well, it’s hard for me to imagine more peace than I have in my own extremely quiet and private home and garden—but she was right. It wasn’t the lake. I’ve seen large bodies of water; this wasn’t anything in any way different. It wasn’t the quiet; there were a few ordinary “people noises” from neighboring cabins—actually more noise than I have here. It was something about the air …. 

She said it was the land of “the blesseds”. Brother Andre went to the same church we attended for Sunday Mass. But, she said, it was where Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha is buried, and she believes that accounts for its remarkable peace. I took that with a grain of salt, but I think she might be onto something. It wasn’t the different altitude from my low-lying home in southern Georgia—I’ve been to the Rockies and the Alps. It wasn’t the temperature or humidity level—believe it or not, we actually do have a good deal of cooler and less humid weather here. It wasn’t the quiet: There were some kids playing basketball on the camp’s makeshift court. The difference is that the noise would have bothered me here; it didn’t there, not at all. In fact, nothing bothered me, including my friend’s Yankee pace (though she’d deny that.)

I have to conclude that she was right. There was a great peace there that I can’t account for any other way. And as we made the day-long drive back to her home, I could feel it ebbing. I could feel the loss. Spooky. Wonderful. I want to go back. I think I believe in “holy ground.”