New Folks at Home

A big city Atlanta family finally finds comfort in a cozy mountain retreat as The Atlanta Journal explains. Dawn Burnette, husband Rod, daughter Ansley and son Beck recently left their lives in the hustle and bustle of city life and built a new log cabin in the North Georgia mountains bordering the National Forest. Dawn, who taught high school English for 15 years, now home-schools her children and speaks to educators about about her grammar and writing programs. Rod oversees the operations of the family's home-based business, DGP Publishing Inc. The first segment of Dawn's four-part account of the family's "getting away from it all" experience appeared in the AJC in September.

The construction trucks are gone. Most of the boxes have been unpacked. And here we are-nestled among these beautiful mountains where we feel a sense of peace we've never known before. We're waiting for the heavy crush of regret what were we thinking? But it hasn't come. We don't believe it will. Meanwhile, we've learned some new vocabulary words. Mind your trash cans, for example, because "bars" will come out of the national forest to explore their contents. Dinner occurs around noon (for people, not bars). And it's not Blairsville or even Blairsville. It's Blurzvul.

A friend recently asked me when he could expect to read the next installment of this series, and I confessed that I was stumped. My assignment was to write about our first experiences in the mountains, but I was torn. Have I come to praise Blurzvul or to bury it? (Praise means more people might come here. Bad. Burial means upsetting our new neighbors. (Also bad.) I'll be honest. Blairsville has no zoning. Although there are a few subdivisions with covenants and restrictions, we opted not to live in one. That means we don't have to ask anyone's permission to paint our house or shoot at targets off our back porch. It also means that the people who own the property adjoining ours could put in a gas station, but we're not worried about that. A dirt road that most people can't find would be a lousy place for a gas station.

It's a great place for pets, though. A few weeks ago, I met a neighbor. I call him a neighbor because if I enter the national forest and hike out the other side, I'll be on his property. With his son proudly holding his new pet rooster, he asked me if we planned to have any animals. "We have three dogs," I told him. "I think that's enough." We're now considering a fourth dog as well as three cats, four Bantam Chickens and two roosters. Blairsville has few big chain stores, at least for the moment. At several local stores, our dogs are greeted warmly when they tag along, and the friendly cashier at the hardware always slips them each a biscuit. The other day I drove to the nearest Wal-Mart, in Murphy N. C., 25 miles away, great selection, but don't take your dogs. It is still very natural.

A local Doctor recently had a different problem. one of his cows escaped from his pasture and wondered into the national forest. It was whispered that skunks and lady bugs played a role in the breakout. In spite of animal invasions, we feel very much at home in Blairsville. So far we haven't had a chance to miss our family and friends because someone comes to visit every weekend. We won't miss traffic, pollution or the noises of airplanes and trains. We won't miss covenants and restrictions. Information for this content was released from The Atlatna Journal.