{"id":12,"date":"2012-12-21T17:46:49","date_gmt":"2012-12-21T22:46:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kariandcrawford.com\/events\/wedding\/?p=12"},"modified":"2013-01-05T09:43:48","modified_gmt":"2013-01-05T14:43:48","slug":"eureka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kariandcrawford.com\/events\/wedding\/2012\/12\/eureka\/","title":{"rendered":"Eureka"},"content":{"rendered":"

There aren’t many places like the mountains of western North Carolina. Admittedly, I’m biased. I grew up in the foothills, in the Upstate (or, today, “Upcountry”) of South Carolina, just a few winding roads away from some of the prettiest land in America.<\/p>\n

It’s not awe-inspiring, usually. It’s a livable sort of heaven. Like granite bean bags covered in trees. It’s a nice place.<\/p>\n

I’d grown up in those mountains, so I didn’t really think much of it when I hopped in a car to drive up to Black Mountain for the 1992 YMCA Conference on National Affairs — “National Affairs” to people of my vintage, “CONA” to the youngsters. Black Mountain itself is a bit blue collar, strip malls and the undermaintained above-ground power and cable lines that add a sort of honest shabbiness to a place. And the YMCA facility itself? Nice, but nothing like Camp Greenville to my eyes.<\/p>\n

Imagine getting out of the car, then, happy but unimpressed – even a bit jaded – and walking up to the (unfortunately named) Robert E. Lee Hall not knowing that you were about to meet the person you’d end up marrying more than 20 years later.<\/p>\n

Twenty years. The years have dimmed a few memories. And the memories that haven’t dimmed are sometimes unfortunate (the gray, iridescent meat that might have been turkey and might have been fish springs to mind), but I remember meeting this tiny blonde person named Kari. I remember meeting lots of other neat people too, people I kept in touch with after National Affairs. But Kari and I never quit talking, emailing, IMing. No matter how much time and how much life passed, we kept talking. And now we’re getting married.<\/p>\n

But I didn’t know all that when we met. I was young and dumb. I didn’t really know what to do or say to this little Floridian superstar who’d appeared before me, Eureka Treat <\/a>clutched close. We ran into each other a few times. She perched on my chair when we had a little musical interlude in the main hall one night. We hugged when we said goodbye. And that was the beginning.<\/p>\n

Because we sort of forgot to say goodbye. The thick book we all had contained a complete directory of all the attendees, including home addresses and phone numbers. I can’t imagine they still do today. And no email addresses, no twitter, no tumblr, no facebook either. So we talked. We wrote letters. A few years later we got email, then IM. We stayed in touch. We told each other about the things happening in our lives. Time passed.<\/p>\n

Then, about a year ago, we decided to meet up again. But that’s another story.<\/p>\n

So now those familiar mountains, grubby towns, and unfortunately named buildings, now they mean more to me than they ever did when I was growing up. It’s a strange feeling, to think you know something so well only find a completely new way to see it, a way that opens your eyes and fills your heart up more than you ever though possible.<\/p>\n

And it reminds you that, for all the grinds and bumps and scrapes of life, magic can happen. Always.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There aren’t many places like the mountains of western North Carolina. Admittedly, I’m biased. I grew up in the foothills, in the Upstate (or, today, “Upcountry”) of South Carolina, just a few winding roads away from some of the prettiest land in America. It’s not awe-inspiring, usually. It’s a livable sort of heaven. Like granite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4,5,3,9,7],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us","tag-black-mountain","tag-cona","tag-meeting","tag-yig","tag-ymca"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kariandcrawford.com\/events\/wedding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kariandcrawford.com\/events\/wedding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kariandcrawford.com\/events\/wedding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kariandcrawford.com\/events\/wedding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kariandcrawford.com\/events\/wedding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.kariandcrawford.com\/events\/wedding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25,"href":"http:\/\/www.kariandcrawford.com\/events\/wedding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions\/25"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kariandcrawford.com\/events\/wedding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kariandcrawford.com\/events\/wedding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kariandcrawford.com\/events\/wedding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kariandcrawford.com\/events\/wedding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}