A million leaves rotate in a slow spiral to the ground already littered with the colors of autumn
the creek, frigid even in summer, flows as quickly, quietly as possible down to a creek larger in size, to a river, to the ocean eventually taking every laugh and tear with it
every summer from since ages before I was born i have been there generations laughed and cried and fell in love upon that creek, next to the campsite
Lot 47 was just a lot, it was wider, had bigger trees but it is just a site
a site where my grandparents loved each other more than life itself, where my dad laughed harder than he ever did at home, where mom learned to cook, where i got the scar on my ankle, where our names are illegally carved in the trees

where i learned to build a fire, hiked for miles, saw baby elk up close, fawns and bears.
Smokemont is just a place, a place of happiness and love and nostalgia of family and friends and a sense of forever
it is a place i will never go again but whenever i close my eyes and reach for peace it is the place i end up
with the smell of nanny's chili at dusk and coffee early in the cold humid mornings where mist rises off the creek like a magical fog seducing us in solitude and a quiet joy. The marshmallows roasted to a golden-y perfection every single night with Poppy telling stories and nanny squeezing into my chair wearing a navy blue hoodie and telling me to put on something warmer

Where i sit and read harry potter for hours, where we are all one again and when i open my eyes...poppy has sold the camper, nanny is buried with river rocks from lot 47, and we swear we won't go back without her