Gone to Carolina in my Mind

When I set out to write Away at a Camp in Maine, my goal was to write a book that made me (and thereby my reader) feel like a James Taylor song.

I wanted to capture the feeling – the quiet, the calm, the beauty, the nature, the essence, the real-ness, the sweet.

When I hear the first string of his guitar in any James Taylor song, I feel the rhythm of my heart slow down just a beat. I smile. I am instantly transported to another time, a time in the 1970’s when I was a teenager full of so much hope and promise – when all the world was good, when anything was possible.

It’s my “Carolina.” It transports me to my happy place.

As a writer, words are my elixir. They pirouette around my mind, dropping like falling leaves, gently floating around in my head, twisting, bending. When they’re best, they’re quiet, calm, beautiful, natural……

Words are what create the pictures for me. Words calm me and allow me to make sense, or at least accept, what I see around me -- people, others’ conversations, the world. They uplift me as I walk alone and choose just the right word for what I’m seeing, smelling, hearing.

Some people likely see pictures, in Technicolor. Or they revel in music.

But me, I can close my eyes and it’s the words in my mind that create the pictures that can bring me to my “Carolina,” that can transport me to anywhere in the universe.

I have a rich world between my ears and whenever I wish, I just pull inward and transport.

“Carolina In My Mind,” James Taylor: Greatest Hits. Warner Bros Records, Inc. © 1976