"The Laughing Place"

Acrylic on canvas, framed, image is 45" x 35"

Almost everyone has a favorite place which has the power to call them. Growing up with parents raised on farms, my early childhood was full of long camping trips deep in the woods. My sons are amazed that I survived this since they secretly believe room service was invented for people like me. The truth is, none of my brothers or sister thought anything of the expeditions off paved roads in some remote part of north Georgia. Weekends would often find us loaded up for an 'outing'. Usually we would end up somewhere along a river. There would be a packed lunch or something to cook out for dinner after Dad found us a place along the shallows. We called it going to our 'Laughing Place', a term borrowed from the Uncle Remus stories we had heard in our nightly bedtime readings from My Book House.

I have no memory now of what my parents did on those river afternoons. Seems like Dad sometimes fished. Having been a mother myself, I imagine Mom simply collapsed. What I do understand now is this was an instinctual resource for two people raised in the wealth of the countryside. When life, kids, jobs got too much, they returned to what their hearts loved best--rivers, fields and woods. It restored them. That ability to touch and heal us is the gift of place. While the choice of where it happens is as unique as the person choosing, we are all born into the same blessing. Perhaps when we become lost to this beautiful world and ourselves, it is the voice of the laughing places we hear calling.

Recently when I asked my older brother if he remembered those excursions into the wilderness, he replied, "Oh yeah, the laughing place". It was a wonderful moment.