returning …

Even when your real life is one you actually enjoy, it’s painfully difficult to leave a place as dreamy as Lost Valley Ranch.

It is absolutely a place of genuine connections, set aside agendas, zero emails – and, of course – laughter and luxury.

Naturally, having someone else make your bed is far better than making it yourself. (And they do a much better job at it too.)

Turn down service nightly – and that little Andes mint waiting on your pillow – beats any sort of turn down service happening at my house.  (And what turn down service is happening at my house, you may ask? None. None turn down service is happening back there.)

It was a reunion week as friends and family (my dad!) met down the nine mile dirt road in the middle of a beautiful national forest.

We experienced a wider variety of weather in one week than we have practically all winter in South Carolina.  We had snow. Rain. Hail. Sunshine. And not one bit of it dampened our spirits at all.

Re entry is no fun. Regular life with chores and work and deadlines is just not as compelling as made to order breakfasts, fast rides on ridges and lingering conversations around a fire.

(Of course, I’m delaying that regular life a little with our long trek home, but I am slow diving back into emails and work and responsibility from the road.)

I’ll have loads to write – nothing surprising there – as we return and I sort through photos and journal entries and process all we saw and learned and did.

For now, however, I’ll just share some photos and this little bit as we transition back on the path to Home.

Standing outside the lodge one afternoon, talking with my friend Amy and our week’s Teen Wrangler Michael, we pondered what it was that made Lost Valley so uniquely refreshing and spirit giving.

Michael used a phrase, and he quickly said it was not original to him, but I don’t care who said it.

I just know it perfectly describes the essence of Lost Valley – and why, once you enter and cross that cattle guard – it literally hurts to exit back again.

He said something like this, “It’s like you get this little vision of what heaven could be like when you’re at the ranch.” (Amy and I are nodding our heads in agreement.) “And – the veil between earth and heaven is thinner.”

Yes. 

That’s it.

Exactly.

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