A window with a view — Cades Cove, Tennessee

Cades Cove, Tennessee, is glorious.  With 6800 acres of quiet, rolling, tucked-away land in the Great Smoky Mountains, the cove holds the widest variety of historic buildings of any national park, but it’s the rough-hewn, still-standing cabins that we love most.

If you’re lucky enough to get up early on a Saturday morning and bike along the no-cars-allowed-before-10:00 Loop Road, you can meld into the landscape and pretend you were a settler in one of the pioneer log cabins.  It’s there that you can find your muse as we have — reflecting on how life was in the early 1800s and resolving to carve out more quiet times in unspoiled places whenever you can.

Nature photographer Bill Lea said it simply after his visit to Cades Cove, and we agree:  It’s where my heart is.

For more musings in the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge: Muse, click here.