Highlands, NC

Highlands, North Carolina is beautiful. Set in the Great Smokey Mountains, nature is in its glory here. The mountains are covered in hardwood and evergreen forests. Flowers of every variety bloom in exultation. Man's imposition on the land is in the form of houses and gardens worthy of a Thomas Kincaid painting. There are an inordinate number of golf course communities in the immediate area, each more groomed and carefully tended than the next.

A wag once said that Paris, France would be perfect if not for the Parisians. Now, don't get me wrong, there are very interesting and engaging people in Paris; just as there are very interesting and engaging people in Highlands. And, believe it or not, there is a thread to this seeming non-sequitur.

All my life, until my first visit to the city of lights in 1990, I hated things Parisian. The National Gallery of Art had at one time rooms from an 18th century Parisian hotel. The rooms were a masterpiece of high rococo, exquisite in every detail. Every time I walked into them, which was often, I wanted to start breaking up the furniture and throwing paint on the walls. It was as if the spirit of Madame La Farge seized my body and I felt the urge to lop off heads and storm the walls of the Bastille. Of course, after one day on the ground in that most lovely of cities, I softened, and have since wallowed in its delights on several visits.

A similar unease affected me on my first visit to Highlands in 2010. I had accompanied my cousin to help her close up the house she had had there for 15 years. Despite the physical beauty I could not relax. Maybe it was the number of "Kill Obama" bumper stickers on the back of gun mounted pick up trucks. Maybe it was that the Atlanta bomber successfully hid in the surrounding woods for two years. Or maybe it was that every time I entered one of the gated compounds of the summer people, I felt like I had stepped onto the set of a Chekhov play where the aristocracy do their best to ignore the seeds of change sprouting around them. For whatever reason, my latent proletarian instincts came rushing to the fore.

On Monday, after we drove in caravan from Sarasota,  my cousin moved into the condominium she has rented for a month in one of the country club communities of Highlands. The condo is graciously furnished with treehouse views of mountain laurel and old growth forest. In the morning there are frequent visitations by ruby-throated hummingbirds. Summer flowers are everywhere and the weather is cool and dry. It is a perfect place for her to escape the heat of Sarasota in the summer. After a night there, content that she is well settled, I packed my prejudices in my car and took off. Upon consideration, my reaction to Highlands - and Paris - says more about me (and possibly my past lives) than it does about either place. I like to think of myself as a tolerant being but I am actually a terrible snob.  I hold people who are fortunate enough to live in beauty and splendor to a higher standard. I want them to be philosopher kings as elevated as their surroundings. I want them to be better. Ah, but there's the rub: better than what?