The best place to be
- Chuck Thompson
- Aug 31, 2025
- 2 min read
Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of each.”
I’ve experienced Southern California in the summer, living in Ventura at the time, with the hills on fire, and found my way through the arctic blast of minus -25 degree weather in South Dakota, snowing sideways in a fierce wind indescribable by words.
But in both places there was something missing — in California it was … well, basically all the seasons — in South Dakota it was the Autumn look and smells. That feeling of Fall when the leaves are crisp, the air is just perfect and the smell of chimneys fills the nostalgic sense of home.
There’s no place quite like North Carolina.
Sure, we have our issues.. be it mood, politics, sports rivalries, or the yearning to experience something more, but home is more than just a house — it’s that feeling you get when you’re surrounded by accents that sound like your own, when the food taste like comfort, and the sights look like any Carolina town.
Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterians all praying to beat one another to a popular restaurant on a Sunday afternoon, the nip in the air at a Friday night football game, the hayrides, the pumpkins, the preparation for Thanksgiving and soon to be Christmas Day.
Whatever is happening that season, every day is one of those where your neighbors wave, and your family makes sure that you “get up on in the house and fix you a plate” type of day.
We might have different sentiment between that of living in the cities and the country, but we seem to make it work and it’s not just one way or the other — here, we agree to disagree whether it might be football, basketball, or politics, yet we somehow keep being family, keep on being neighborly, and we all come together for that BBQ fundraiser for someone’s hospital bills, that high school football game, or pass the honey ham, and later the banana pudding, around the table after we say grace and pass on what our grandparents taught us: respect.
Without that — what good is anything else?
As we eventually will leave behind the official end of the summer climate season in late September, of all the places I’ve been, the people observed, and the landscapes and roads traveled, I can’t imagine being anywhere else when the season changes and the leaves turn to a beautiful melody of autumn twilight, than right here in North Carolina.
As Henry David Thoreau said, “Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of each.”
I hope you all have a great week.
Read the Sunday Column every week, only at ShelbyIndependent.com .
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