Several years back, Alisa & Ryan were married at Lake Placid. Baby Jane and I stayed at the Trail Head’s Inn in the Bigelow Room, then owned and run by a young couple from Australia.

By circumstance, I ended up with our room all to myself. The room split into two areas, one side of which was the ‘Adirondack sleeping porch,’ once a balcony with an old, squeaky and washed out grey wood floor and a very thin steeply sloped wooden roof. The railing of the porch was a faded white painted wood, and all open areas of the balcony covered with a thin fine green mesh.

It held a queen-sized bed with white bed coverings & a duvet, a small old and worn rug purchased from a Moroccan market, one forest green reading chair, and a beautiful antique cherry wood night table.

This room sat on the opposite side of the entrance from where the family lived, and so was completely silent. Due to the height of the balcony, I couldn’t see anything but the forest’s tree tops as I sat on the bed.

It poured over the course of the night and into the next morning, leaving me drenched in the aroma of rain falling through trees. Nothing existed beyond that space, and I was immersed in overwhelming peace. There wasn’t a feeling beyond the rain, whose misted cool breeze seduced me beneath the duvet far into the early afternoon.

Eventually, I said a humble thanks to God for such a perfect morning, and tip-toed my way across the frozen porch and back into reality.