Learning about the past
If anything, history teaches us about our past. Where we have made mistakes and how far we have come. I love history of all types and while traveling on vacation with the family, we had an opportunity to visit the historic community of Cades Cove in the Smokey Mountains National Park of Tennessee. What a beautiful place with all the mountains and grandeur of rolling greeen pastures and forests. I can certainly see why early settlers would choose a place like this nestled in the cove in the mountains.
Some of the original settlers homes still stand as a reminder of how they lived and adapted to life in the mountains. Built with simple logs, hand cut and then chinked with earth, sand, mud and water to seal the cracks, this simple way of constructing a log home back in the day is a process still used today with more modern materials but not straying from the process. Choosing where to build a cabin was usually not random and had some sort of motiviation. Often sunrise or sunset were variables that determined which way to build. Some settlers though were just overwhelmed and in love with the view.
When you stand in the cabin and look out the window by the chimney, this is the view you have and I must say I that enjoying the view must have been the motivation for builiding where this settler did. The simple and beautiful satisfaction of enjoying God’s creation is what I learned from the past.