I took both of these shots from the porch of our new (well, almost new) apartment last week. The first one (on the left) is facing southeast, early in the morning last Thursday, December 22nd. I was surprised that my little camera, an older Kodak Easyshare, was able to actually capture some of the mist from the overnight rain. The second photo was taken that same evening, standing in just about the same spot, but turned, facing southwest.
It's so nice to have this peaceful, incredibly private orientation of our apartment. All of our windows face into these hilly woods. I think I've talked here before about the fact that this is the first time in my life I've lived in an apartment complex (not counting the few months after my mother left my father when I was eleven). I never liked apartment complexes, so even when I was younger, just out of school, before I married and before we bought our house, I still managed to avoid living in a complex. My first apartment out of school was in the basement of a house (we call them terrace apartments here). It was actually really sweet. It had a beautiful rock wall in the kitchen and a little white painted brick "fireplace" that housed the heating system: a single, old-timey, ceramic, natural gas space heater. It was so cozy and I loved it so much. It was an easy walk to Lenox Square, where I worked right out of college and I became friends with the family that lived upstairs (and remain so until this day), which made it easier when I went to work for MississippiRiverLand Airlines (not their real name) and was gone so much, first for training and then for a two month stint based in Boston until I could get into the Atlanta base, and, for that matter, for the two and a half years I spent on reserve for the aforementioned air line, going long periods of time when I was hardly ever there. It's where I met my husband, who had gone to high school with the man who lived upstairs (and the woman's brother, for that matter).
I would have stayed there longer, but a wonderful rental house became available and I, knowing the previous tenants, jumped at the chance. It was a thirty by thirty foot square with a pyramid roof, three rooms, all tongue and groove pine paneling, a hundred years old, with a massive rock fireplace in the living room and another in the kitchen. It sat on a hilltop acre in a stand of oaks older than the house, in Atlanta (not quite Buckhead and not quite Sandy Springs), well inside the perimeter. It was beautiful. I lived there happily, first alone, then after getting married and until our oldest son was three and our second son just born. I loved that little house. It was so private and, although it was on a busy street, it felt almost rural, sort of the way our apartment feels now, once you're inside. We moved because we bought a house, where we lived for almost twenty years, but that's a story for another time. The wonderful rented house on the hill is gone now. In fact, the entire hill is gone now, with GA Highway 400 and a MARTA rail line zipping fifty feet below grade where that little house and that lovely hill used to be.
I'm guessing nobody realizes how much undeveloped land there is back behind where I live now. I would have never known. It's steep and there's a big creek running, sometimes rushing, through the bottom. I don't know who owns it, but it's worth a fortune and I'm betting that, eventually, somebody will find these woods and replace them with million dollar houses on little tiny lots. For now, they're my pleasant respite.
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