Located on a quiet country road, amid rolling hills and the greenest grass dotted by cows, the white wood store sits on a hill "looking like a big old farmhouse, with about 30 rocking chairs on the long front porch that faces west where the sun sets," Maddox said.

"I particularly love sunsets - the colors, the warmth of the sun on my face, the calm and the sense of absolute. The sun is always going to go down. It's perhaps one of the only absolutes in the world today," the aspiring actress and Carrboro resident mused dreamily.

When she's not auditioning for different theater companies, Maddox works as a waitress at the Siena Hotel's Il Palio Restaurant. Acting has been her passion since she was 14, thanks to an "amazing teacher I had in middle and high school."

"He opened up part of me that I had no idea even existed," she said. "It was like floodgates opening."

As an actress, Maddox loves to "create a life from start to finish - researching the philosophy of the time, its music and art, all that influenced the person I'm creating."

"And I also enjoy creating the person visually - finding the correct clothes and hairstyles, learning about the daily activities the character would be involved in," she said.

Born and reared in Chattanooga, Tenn., Maddox said she left her "conservative" hometown for New York City, where she attended New York University, majoring in theater.

After graduating from NYU, she went to Vermont, where she worked on a maple syrup farm.

"I just had to get out of New York, and as I had sold the syrup from this farm for friends in New York, that was the ideal place to go. I did everything: I walked the lines daily to inspect the trees. I drilled holes into the trees. I made the syrup," she said.

Eventually, Maddox returned to New York "to do what I am supposed to do: act."

"There, I lived on the top floor of a house," she said. "The front yard was just dirt. Looking for serenity and peace, I decided to make a garden there from scratch. It was what got me up in the morning. I watched my garden grow, watered and cared for it. But one weekend, I went out of town and returned to find that the landlord, who decided to redo the front yard, had ripped up my garden. I was furious - it was my only happiness. So I packed up and left and moved to Chapel Hill where I had friends."

Maddox had returned to her native South to make her dream come true: make her mark in the theater and to "enjoy the graciousness and serenity of the area."

Soon after, she was invited to go to Germany with the Bread and Puppet Theater, a group she had joined while in college, for a six-week stint.

"I worked with them at the world's fair, doing everything - making puppets, doing sacred harp singing and stilt dancing. I still have my stilts and would love to continue but need an accordion player to work with," she said.

Maddox came back to North Carolina, this time to Carrboro, to continue pursuing her career.

"The Triangle area has a lot of theaters, and it's more interesting for me here than in New York," she said.

And, she noted proudly that she'll appear in February in the Raleigh Ensemble Players' "The Most Fabulous Story Every Told."

But, as important as her career is, Maddox's search for an inner peace, a way to balance her professional life with an inner serenity.

And that's why she chose to live on a country road. At every opportunity, she now can "drive into the country, be alone, have time to evaluate myself, what I'm about."

"I'm still changing, but the basic me is not changing," she said. "I'm trying to be real, to live in truth, to have the time to figure out what I really feel and think, to be secure in myself and not depend on someone else to fulfill me. Self-evaluation is really important and necessary for me."

The Maple View Farm Country Store is the perfect place for Maddox to watch the sun set in an environment conducive to peaceful introspection.

The one-room country store, with a pleasing black-and-white-tiled floor, is a step back into another, more gracious time. It features such old-fashioned delicacies such as creamy ice cream, milk in glass bottles, chocolates made locally, honey from a local apiary and home-grown beef.

Maddox said nothing makes her happier than to be at the store and to "sit in a rocking chair, eating ice cream and watching the beautiful sky and the gorgeous sunset."

"It's very comforting," she said.