An hour and a half of bland highway scenery passed before the occasional pot hole began to break up the monotony of pavement.  Another couple of minutes of resistance, then the asphalt finally submitted to the gravel’s reign, as the smattering of trees on each side gradually grew into full-fledged forests.  After only a few nauseating curves of bumpy gravel road, the path turned sharply to the left, exposing several football fields worth of flat pasture out the right window – the foreground of a painting dominated by rolling, tree-covered hills, the occasional winding trail, and bordered by the bowing Cahaba River.  The small sign on the side of the road read, “The Future Home of Living River: A Retreat on the Cahaba.”

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