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In Defiance of the Cold
The mists on the mountain bluff were my only solace—spinning, lifting and descending during the morning hours. We were in the clouds so much their filmy breathing fanned my morning world more often than the sun christened it with its dawning light. I could see the wispy pirouettes as they danced above the falls—water regaling water. The city, still dressed in drab winter garb even with early spring at hand, took the cloudy tears and used them to wash its streets. There were only tiny bits of color in the dullness of the muted world with the first burgeoning of red buds beginning to glow. The bulbs were still sheathed in soft green but seemed to be thinking seriously about opening their faces to the chilly air—tiny star-shapes in pale shades of their future colors aching to slice through the tips of their bulbous heads to celebrate their tender splendor. Japonica was pushing its Carmine-colored blooms from its bare stems as if in defiance of the cold while everything else preferred to patiently await warmer weather.
I thought about how most people wouldn’t think to describe a dreary world as lush but abundance was everywhere. This realization was unfolding in my mind as I grabbed a scrap of quiet for writing in the midst of the events surrounding Jim’s oldest son’s wedding. I lamented to my writer’s notebook, “I can’t wait to get back to you. I have missed your comfort.” Once life had become my own again, I tentatively approached my writing but it felt far away—a foreign thing after the busy-ness that had left me worn. “I have been away from my heart, so now I touch myself tenderly as I review that piece of me that shows through in the faint strokes of my own anxious pen,” I wrote. “Certain words touch me in return and I am sure they are mine. It is an acknowledgement when they whisper back, and deep emotion sparks in me; brings desire rushing forth and my emptiness is filled. My fullness greets me like a friend, but tentatively as if it is unsure how to approach me in my sadness. How can I fault either of us? I had to erect the walls in order to survive, and she was always forced to wait until I was ready.”
As the weeks progressed, the air warmed and the bony tree limbs sprouted their buds like a fine covering of mesh. I made it a point to enjoy the morning lights of the city knowing that the leaves would soon hide them from my view. As I stared at the awakening landscape, I let my mind skip across scenes from my life like a blind person’s hand touching brail in a delicate search for knowledge. As I did, a thunderhead plumed and I marveled at the power it so magnificently wielded as it drew the perimeters of its iridescent edge with a giant finger of light. It fashioned itself into a gilded pillow of moisture and when it unleashed its contents, the deluge wrapped me in a gray world through which puny light fought its way, entering the room tentatively like a tiptoeing mime bent on remaining silent. The storm thrashed against the windows as if angered that I was out of reach. I stood calmly, daring it to try and touch me.
The days seemed to careen along and suddenly the dogwoods bloomed. They unfolded their creamy flowers in concert with the azaleas, which plumped with profusions of color seemingly overnight. With our last Costa Rica trip about a month away, our destinations for the mission work were about to change. We were meeting with Craig Anderson, the Bishop of South Dakota, about repairing and building churches in his diocese, which held nine of the poorest counties in the United States on Native American reservations. We would be working with the Dakota and Lakota Sioux, and he showed us a video that broke my heart as to the conditions these people were enduring. I wondered what had transpired that would have brought them to the point of the poverty and despair I saw in the documentary.
The film led me to search bookstores in Chattanooga for anything I could find that would help answer this question and the options were slim. I found the book Black Elk Speaks and had a difficult time with the pain the story evoked. I also felt an immediate kinship with the keen connection the Native Americans in the story had felt with nature. I looked at everything around me with a newfound awe—wondering if the owl visiting the bluff at night, being a nocturnal creature, ever felt it missed the visual lushness the daylight hours brought to life. Did he sense the excitement of nature bursting forth all around him? I wondered. Of course he would, lighting as he did on tree branches, which a scant few weeks before had been bare, to find a spiky growth like the prickly surface of a piñata beneath his feet.
It was finally warm enough that I could write on the screened porch in the mornings and I loved being so much closer to the waterfall that its splashing was an accompaniment to my musings. I looked to the horizon and recognized the haze that had spawned the name Smoky Mountains—though we were not officially in the chain, I believed our ridges, which held a similar mix of mists and haze between their expanses, were close enough to share the same characteristics. These gaps and gullies, peaks and valleys were once home to a band of Native Americans with as painful a past as the one I would soon find myself greeting. Would I be up to “representing the church” with these people who painfully tapped into my wounding without even knowing it?
With that question resonating, I scribbled a poem on the empty page open in my lap. It would remain a rare first effort that turned out to be a final draft—even more unique because it predicted my experience in South Dakota and Alaska with eerie accuracy:
Plume
It is difficult
to face
someone else’s struggle
when it stokes the fire
of your own
painful burning,
especially when
you’ve labored for years
to swallow the smoke.
-Saxon Henry
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Did I Do Alright?
When there was moisture in the air, morning meant fog’s dull mask would overtake us and the waterfall would rage when rain had been present, hissing as it spilled itself over the indention in the bluff that allowed it an outlet to the rocks below. I couldn’t see it when the fog moved in but its smattering filled the house. It sang me to sleep at night and I often set the alarm so I could awaken before the sun rose in order to watch the sky change. The lights of the city seemed frenetic in the cold air as daylight took over—vibrating intensely as if they were attempting to ward off the passing of their torches by amping up their energy. There was, of course, no way to compete with the sun’s eminence and I thought about how so much of life was like that—a lesson in futility.
The silhouettes of the mountains ringing Chattanooga’s verdant valley seemed to meander when seen from an equal height, their profiles rugged as they rose against the soft orange that went white as morning launched herself with abandon. The trees beyond the windows looked as if they’d been stamped there—so dark against the coming day they were like a serigraph embedded in a lively watercolor. There was one bright star glimmering like a beauty mark just before the night lost its grasp on the firmament. The “changing of the glowing guard” made me question whether light in life was similar to the “light” of knowledge. Neither was consistent as it meandered through its conduits, and I felt there was a similarity to avenues of thought and paths of light, though I couldn’t yet explain how. I was merely left with the question, “How far do we have to travel to grow into consciousness and is there any way to predict where the road leads?”
I was scribbling about this as we drove to Davenport Gap to scout Jim’s next hike on the Appalachian Trail. We faced some wild weather as moments of intensive sunlight were followed by obliterating clouds that seemed to devour the car, spitting sleet and snow before they swirled away to reveal another spell of glaring light. The sunset was blood-orange as it bathed the hills and trees in tones that made them seem as if they were born of fire. Everything was tinted in warmth, which was such a paradox given that it was brutally cold beyond the windshield.
We stopped at a restaurant nestled into the front rooms of a log cabin where there was a glorious fire in the fireplace. The ladder-back chairs were hard and knobby but the flames bathed the room in welcoming heat. One woman tended the restaurant—waiting and bussing tables, and keeping the fire ablaze. We were the only customers and after she read us the specials, she removed the large screen covering the yawning opening of the stone fireplace, then teased us about not bringing in any wood—a comment that had Jim sliding back his chair in order to grab some logs from the porch. She put her hand on his shoulder as she passed, telling him that she was teasing. When she reentered—followed by a blast of frigid air as the screened door slapped closed behind her—she had an armful of small logs that she tossed onto the back of the fire. The blaze caught but the flames were still a bit softer than they had been when we’d first arrived.
“Now come the big ones!” she announced as she disappeared through the door again. Jim couldn’t let her carry them by herself so he went to help her, following her back inside and standing like a good Boy Scout as she picked the pieces of wood from his grasp, placing them in a careful pattern atop the flames. “I’ll scotch it now!” she announced as she placed one in the back. “Did I do alright?” she asked as she returned the screen. Jim told her she’d built the best fire he’d ever seen and I could tell he meant it. When she came to take our order, I noticed she wore no makeup and I wondered if every facet of her life was so free of pretense. I thought about her as we drove home in the dark: there was something about this woman that was so genuine it deserved attention. It didn’t matter that her clothes were rumpled and her hair was disheveled. In fact, it could have been these very details that made her so interesting to me because they were the ones I couldn’t shake. These bare facts made her seem more real than anyone I’d ever met, especially the women in my life who were dressed to the nines and wore slathers of makeup beneath their perfectly coiffed hair.
We were going through one of those periods of being deluged with parties, which meant we were spending far too much time with the “perfectly put-together.” I was hanging on for dear life yet again, and I wrote my notebook, “This writer feels empty: no words flow willingly from her pen.” The only thing that soothed me was nature and her inexplicable moods. She brought me a sparkling gift when she left a blanket of snow on the bluff—so softly and gently it fell, muting the world and making me feel like a child tucked into a nursery wearing my footie pajamas. I was noiselessly padding my way through my cloistered world when the sun came up, the woods glistening and the trees turning to pristine lace. Spaced down the bluff as they were, the frosty progression of limbs joined with the liquid that had frozen as it cascaded over the mountain’s edge to create the illusion that a beautiful bridal veil had been unfurled. This was Bridal Veil Falls, as it had been named decades before on just such a day no doubt. The house was so blissfully quiet in the snow-pack that I could hear the steady rhythm of my shallow breathing. What a miracle for a winter morning!
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This is a participating post in #LetsBlogOff, which begged the question "What is your favorite color?" Could you tell my were autumnal in nature? To see which hues my other blogging pals chose, click here.
Mountain Song
* * *
We sprinted through the Miami airport to make our connection because the customs queue through which we had been processed from Costa Rica was a bogged-down mess. Once we were finally on the plane to Atlanta, my excitement was making it difficult for me to write—the fragmented thoughts, scattered words and jumbled feelings exploding onto the page in an incoherent mish-mash of joy and impatience. A friend of ours, Jerry, had made the trip with us, as had our priest from Chattanooga. It was the first time I’d been around either of them for as long as a week and I’d grown fond of Jerry’s voice, the inflections that made his southern drawl so friendly had a lyrical charm that only a down-home boy could convey. He and I had laughed for days about the fact that when Jim sent the Padre to the hardware store to buy rope, he’d asked for ropa, which garnered him nothing. The clerk obviously couldn’t understand why he was intent on purchasing clothing when they didn’t sell garments there!
Once home, I managed to capture a few days to myself because Jim was off on a business trip. Sam slept beside me as I journaled the first morning—all fours up in the air, a snoring mass of golden-hued hair. As I stroked his belly, it occurred to me that the value of home was truly priceless. Storms had roared through the night before, trailing in their wake a shooting star. In another mood, I might have taken that as a sign of promise but I was weary and bereft. My goal for the day was to let go of my gaunt frame of mind so I could enjoy the atmosphere in which I was luxuriating as Bridal Veil Falls sang over my shoulder in an earthly percussive arrangement of smattering water against unyielding boulders. A dove’s contented coo reproached me for having any feelings other than gratitude given that I was finally tranquilly at home. I’d been pouring words into my personal journal, which had helped to clear my head somewhat—there was something about spilling the quandary of my life onto its pages that always made room for a modicum of ease. The sun, which had made a personal call as it rose above the fog-choked valley, was casting long shadows on my writer’s notebook and causing the point of my pen where it met the page to gleam.
I was made for this quiet, this solitude, this calm, and I reveled in the fact that Jim’s trip had given me the time to myself, which I believed would help me sort through the mess we’d made of things. As I sat there wondering what changes we could undertake that would help us right our wrongs, the wind rode up the mountain, whistling like the engine of a speeding train. It was then that I noticed it was happily marking time on the porch, its rhythm moving the rocking chair as it took a breather. I loved the idea that the undulant currents wanted to take a respite, and the fact that they had chosen my deck as a hangout delighted me to no end.
Questions as to the quality of my writing were surfacing—the realization dawning that when it was rushed my work lacked the vivacity of the material created during times of complete absorption. Had my work reached the level at which I should be so concerned with publishability? I wondered. I longed for more time for revision, but I had also seen that the process was not always my friend; that the flesh of my poetry was too tender to be ripped apart and expected to heal without exhibiting scars. Was I a skilled enough practitioner to prescribe the proper ointment for the treatment of these lesions?
This question was a quirky one because I wasn’t inclined to write what would be considered “publishable” work anyway. I simply didn’t see myself creating the type of poetic constructs I saw in most of the magazines I read because I felt the work I came across in the mainstream press lacked a certain narrative beauty I wanted to achieve. And yet, I had to admit that I wrote for the approval of others because. “It’s impossible for me to give myself the very thing that I need to feel accomplished: an appreciation from a source other than myself,” I wrote that morning. How vulgar this looked in black and white! I thought; yet, vulgar as it was, wasn’t this the truth for every writer? Even if a writer was unaware of the fact that he or she needed this give-and-take, I bet there were none among us who didn’t crave attention for what he or she produced.
I finished my coffee as these thoughts reached an unresolved end, stilling my mind to focus on the sun as it broke through the cloudbank. The scene was hyper illuminated as she infused the towering billows that fanned out like a long ball-gown with her verve. How glorious would it feel for the upper reaches of your hair to burn—a filmy, shimmering cotton, torn, singed and arranged in a glittery display? I wondered. As I stared into the blazing harshness, a hawk skirted past, dipping just below our rock outcropping as silent as night. I picked up the book I’d chosen to read, watching as the attentive raptor made several circles above the falls. As I caressed the tattered cover of Strains from a Dulcimore, a book of poems by Emma Bell Miles, the hawk keened twice and then dove earthward.
I thought the moment was remarkably serendipitous, as Miles had once ambled along this very bluff gathering inspiration for her writing, her watercolors and her sketches. Had she also marveled at the quality of the light, the hawks, the waterfall as she traipsed through the woods so long ago? Her world—in the 1890s—was one of a densely forested mountaintop sprinkled only with the occasional cabin, a far cry from present-day Walden’s Ridge with its pricey real estate and busy streets.
Her other published works included The Spirit of the Mountains and Our Southern Birds, but it was her poems that moved me, and I felt grateful to have had the time to sit with them as the sun climbed ever higher in the sky, setting the yellowed surface of the worn pages I flipped through aglow:
Mountain Song
Sing me another song tonight—
Tell me a story, Love—
A queer old dear old dreamy tale
Of gulch and cliff and cove;
A song of wimpling waters where
The trout’s white bellies gleam;
A story scrolled against dark pines
In wood-smoke blue as dream.
Sing me a song, low, elfin-sad,
That mountain-folk know well;
Tell me a tale of candle-light
In cabins where they dwell.
For O my heart has ached to these
Ere love began to be,
And you, Dear, are but part of this,
The life you lent to me.
-Emma Bell Miles
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A #LetsBlogOff Redux on The Road to Promise
It's time for another #LetsBlogOff brouhaha and the subject we are to address today is "what makes a good story?" I think that identifying what constitutes a satisfying read for each of us is such a subjective thing that it's impossible to define the art-form with sweeping statements. I attempt to practice the craft here weekly (usually for #WriterWednesday) as I reveal bite-sized pieces of this memoir I'm determined to write and publish in book-form. Today I celebrate my 63rd post with this #TravelTuesday trip to the Appalachian Mountains near where I grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I received a beautiful gift recently when Rufus, a #LetsBlogOff crony, featured my storytelling efforts on Dog Walk Blog. I'd be interested to know if you agree with his premise that what I am doing is indeed storytelling. Even if you disagree, I'd like to know. To see my fellow blog-off'ers' contributions, click here: you will be well rewarded! And now, without further adieu, this week's chunk of my journey along The Road to Promise:
Berating the Wind
One night, I drank in the beauty of the full moon’s reflection as it cut a wide golden-silver swath across the lake, zigzagging its way from the other bank to ours. It seemed as if the radiant disk was determined to take a shimmering journey—casting off in the darkness as it searched for a mirror in which to view its visage. I reveled in the fact that from my spot on the deck, the lake seemed to have become the moon’s rippling partner in its quest.
The trip to the mountains had made a tremendous impression on me—it was one of the most spectacular days I’d had in quite some time. The pleasure arose from a combination of things: my good mood, the gorgeous weather, the music filtering through my headphones and my heightened awareness of the things around me. I could remember everything so vividly, especially how the sun had drenched each flash of my memory. It was my companion that day, illuminating things so unforgettably that my drive along the twisting and turning highways of the southern swath of the Appalachians seemed hyper-brilliant.
I’d perched for hours on a high bald and from my position on a blanket spread on the dandelion-strewn grass, I read several quotes by other writers about their families, one of which gave me pause for the poet’s use of the word “isolation.” Yvonne Sapia had written, “Aristotle told us that tragedy begins with the family. Isolation begins with the family. I write about the situations that separate us even though we are one. I also like to write about change, self-discovery and recognition of things. Finding a sense of place. Finding balance.” I thought about Aristotle’s premise as I stared at the statuesque stone tower rising above the hilltop, looking taller than a skyscraper from my prone vantage point. Because the ground wandered down a slope, it appeared as if the monument’s shadow had gone and fallen unceremoniously off the hill.
The dandelions, which glowed iridescent yellow when the sun struck them, bobbed their heads as the wind whipped up the sloping ground. It was as if they were nodding in agreement that they were all the prettier for their luminosity. A bird caught my eye, flying in circles above me as it put on a show—all powder-dusted indigo and white-tipped arcing wings. I sat, completely motionless, and forced myself to stare into more blue than any human could possibly absorb even as my vision swirled and my eyes begged me to close them so they could rest from the sky's intensity. Jim had gone off on his hike, leaving me to read and write. The only other person in sight was a boy who was lazing on the grass halfway down the ridge. Surrounded by the thin air, I thought about how Siler’s Bald seemed very close to the top of the world. The sound of the bees buzzing was so strong in the silence that it was as if they’d been primed with jet fuel and had been given extra power.
The hardwood trees had not yet sprouted green and the last withered leaves of winter clinging to their limbs were chattering along with the sere grasses skirting the edges of the field as the wind buffeted any exposed expanse it could find. Looking off into the distance where the mountains fell off to meet the valleys, it seemed certain that were I to put a finger on the seam between them, I would find a pulsing, a velvety green vein more alive than the one that snaked beneath the pale skin on the inside of my wrist.
I was writing in my writer’s notebook about how frightened I had been at one point on the trail when I’d had to traverse a skinny path with steep drop-offs on either side of my feet. I had steeled myself for the ten steps in front of me and had kept my eyes focused straight ahead. It was at that moment that we walked through a cloud. I looked to the sky as it was drifting around me and it seemed to be flying at a precarious speed into the clear air beyond my grasp. I was giddy as it rushed by, and I wondered if birds felt this same excitement when they were skimming along through a puff of fluffy moisture. I’d never thought of clouds as fun but having penetrated one, I’d found an altogether new appreciation for the whimsical side of what amounted to atmospheric vapor.
The sun was hot in the little clearing where I’d spread my blanket and I was contemplating moving closer to a scrim of gnarled and twisted trees weathered by an excessive exposure to sun, wind and rain when a girl came traipsing from the shade they created. She was on her way to Clingman’s Dome and she sat to rest for a bit, telling me that the trees would not be greening because a beetle was killing them. A blight had taken out all the Chestnut trees several years earlier, she said, lamenting that there were fewer canopies left during the summer months that ever before because the trees were garnering so many enemies.
I was anxious to get back to my reverie so when she heaved herself from the ground, the twisted branch with its splintered ends she was using for a walking stick making an indention in the moist earth, I smiled politely and returned to my sky-gazing. The only thing marring the beautiful day was the incessant intrusion of bugs as they repeatedly made Kamikaze dives at me. It was as if every insect in the world had decided to spend the day sightseeing just as I was. I wondered if there was a published itinerary somewhere entitled “Best Bug Spots of 1988” with a ping on a map that let them know this was the place to be on this particular afternoon. Maybe it was written in the star patterns at night and we humans weren’t privy to the language that would allow us to decode the map.
On the drive in, we’d seen first a bear and then a fox, each of them going about whatever it is that wild animals do, which due to their proximity to the road likely meant avoiding getting run down by automobiles. I was hoping nothing that intimidating would show up while I was lazing in the sun contemplating the razorback ridges with all their conifers gone. I was heartened that at least the trees were thinning only on the peaks, proof being that I’d spent almost an hour walking through the hollows on our way to the top of the ridge, feeling swallowed by great clusters of pines and firs that were breathing a chilly muskiness down my neck. I’d shivered more than once at the dense life-force they exuded, the experience reminding me that I’d always favored tree-lined streets to open expanses because they seemed so much friendlier with their protection from full-on sunlight. “If all the trees disappeared, the world would become disagreeable indeed,” I wrote in my writer’s notebook from my perch on high. “When will we humans begin to take this seriously?”
Seeking a better vantage point, I had moved to a large, flat stone, which seemed so ample it could have been a throne. As the sun moved away from the bald with the waning of the afternoon, I noticed that the seat, which was cupping me so generously, grew cooler and damper than when it had been warmed by stronger light. As I studied the scenery splaying before me, it seemed clear to me that when the mountains were formed in this part of the world, it was as if they had awakened to their new surroundings, yawned and stretched their arms to find their rippling muscles forever frozen in a sinewy display.
Because there were absolutely no “people” noises—such an oddity in the dizzy rush of a world I normally experienced—I’d begun to notice natural sounds, such as the groans emitted by the nearby trees. One in particular was decidedly fussy as the wind had its way with its contorted form. It was the saddest of them by far, one side of its leafless profile covered in thick green lichen. I wondered in that moment what the forest must think of the noises we humans make. I mimicked the tree’s sound as closely as I could and was surprised to hear an immediate echo. I said the word “tree” aloud in the best tree-like voice I could muster but it said nothing back. Hoping that it would repeat my word was too much to ask, of course, because it would certainly have wanted to wait until I’d left this patch of near-wilderness before it spoke of the name I’d given it to its gnarled cronies.
Just as I noticed that my hiking boot was perilously close to injuring a clump of tiny purple bluettes extending their faces from beneath the stone’s base, Jim ambled up—satisfied that he’d conquered another strip of the Appalachian Trail, or, as he likely saw it, had put another notch in his hiking belt. We headed back to the car and as I was about to turn a bend at the crest of a nearby ridge, I was startled when I heard the unmistakable sound of applause. I rounded the corner to see a bank of rhododendron bushes slapping their thick leaves. Suddenly I was flanked by two steep walls of them, and the sound they were making was delicious. We exited the ravine just as a cloud lifted its thumbprint from the mountain and I noticed there was a pattern to the twitching the wind inspired.
As I waited for Jim to unlock the car doors, I celebrated the beauty in which I’d been steeped that day, thinking of Henry David Thoreau’s statement, “I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.” I had certainly felt magnetism during my time on Siler’s Bald and it was my turn to applaud nature for entertaining me so thoroughly that day.
During our drive home, I revisited Sapia’s musings, especially her desire to explore “situations that separate us, even though we are one”—there was a time when we were one with nature; a time when “finding a sense of place” would not have been an articulated issue because we were “of a place” simply by being in (and staying in) that place. My life had become such a frantic ebb and flow of movement that I had no idea where “my place” would have been. Isn’t that what makes me feel so off balance so much of the time? I wondered. We were two months away from beginning a new project in Costa Rica and I thought of the prospect with trepidation. How in the world would I find my balance with that challenge looming before me? I asked myself silently, not daring to voice my consternation aloud as the light leaked from the evening sky and we slid silently westward toward home.
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Object of Desire
The clouds passing lazily by would have witnessed death during those war-torn occasions when men went after men for the rights they upheld as dear. Did the wounded pray for darkness to overtake them so they could die in peace or were they bargaining with God in the off chance they would be plucked from the grass, even while it meant escaping impending death might mean facing uncertain futures?
I only intellectualize what might have happened, not going so far as to feel into their sadness as I lounged on the blanket with the wind strumming through the trees. I knew this was lazy writing behavior but I contented myself with watching the breeze set a rhythm for the clover, which seemed agitated in its vibrations. So much better to lie in peace than die in fight, I thought, even while I realized the importance of freedom for an entire race of people had been won during those battles. Tennessee had made a name for itself in that war—the volunteer state—and I did believe it was right to feel grateful to those who had died there, giving their all with as much meaning as they could muster, whether they truly wanted to be involved or not.
I had packed Richard Ford’s book Rock Springs with our picnic food and I kicked back after we’d eaten to see if I could interpret why he was being celebrated as one of America’s greatest minimalist novelists. I was caught completely off guard that I had such a tough time with the material. For someone who could speak so positively about the writing experience, his characters were so downtrodden I had to pause after making my way about halfway through the fourth story. “Good god,” I jotted in my writer’s notebook, “all of this is just too down and out; please not yet another depressing scene!”
The opening of the story “Sweethearts” was an example. Arlene, the protagonist, was saying good-bye to her ex-husband Bobby. The narrator, Arlene’s current partner Russ, unveiled the scene: “This was not going to be a good day in Bobby’s life, that was clear, because he was headed to jail. He had written several bad checks, and before he could be sentenced for that he had robbed a convenience store with a pistol—completely gone off his mind. And everything had gone to hell, as you might expect. Arlene had put up the money for his bail, and there was some expensive talk about an appeal. But there wasn’t any use to that. He was guilty…”
My immaturity as a person hampered me from putting the gloominess aside in order to see that his stories ask good questions, which he allows to unfold naturally. It occurred to me that I was trying to answer the questions I was posing in “Legacy,” the short story I’d been writing, much too neatly. A sinking feeling settled in the pit of my stomach as I realized this was one more issue to add to the long list of challenges I was facing as a fledgling writer, a complication I could ill afford as I already felt my creativity was being sapped by some unseen force. Memories washed in and out of my mind like the tide at Point Lobos but nothing would stick because there was so little time to record anything.
I had let Jim talk me into a day-hike to Clingman’s Dome and it was the perfect weather for it. I noticed as we drove into the Appalachians, passing the tattered houses along the roadsides, that the elderly backcountry folks I saw had the kindest faces in repose. There seemed to be a tremendous patience in them that was unique to these marginalized people. I wondered how Ford would have characterized them and I thought about making notes about them but I didn’t want to miss any of the scenery whizzing past my field of vision. The dogwoods were still blooming at the higher altitudes in the mountains. They filled the gaps with whispers of white, becoming gauzy plumes enveloped as they were in elemental hues of green and brown.
The tin roofs on the oldest houses slanted far beyond the interiors in order to cover the wrap-around verandas, making the homes appear as if someone had socked dirty floppy hats on their heads. As far as the eye could see in this part of the country, the rounded knobs of mountains protruded into the sky. Power lines—the intermittent reminders of “civilization”—cut gashes in some of the peaks, and where the mines met the road, the hearts of most of the hills were scooped out in the interest of culling their copper. I’d never seen dirt as red as the soil left at the scene of the massacre, which had left the entire region broken and barren. The bloody-hued hills spilled into the creeks like veins spouting sludge-like liquid, making quagmires of the soil-clogged rivers. The world seemed incredibly dead and I felt as if I were intruding on nature’s suffering, that all she wanted was to be left alone so she could grieve the scars she had yet to have the strength to heal.
I was listening to a Windham Hill compilation and the lyrical music stirred my feelings, making me want to touch the land somehow but I realized that given the immenseness of it, I was as lost as a desperate lover unable to reach the object of his desire. It was then that I noticed an enormous black crow standing at the hem of the asphalt, head bowed, contemplating the sparse grass beneath his feet. I wondered if the bird, who looked so wizened given his monochromatic severity, was a reincarnated monk who had come to listen to nature’s dirge. He was so intent I was able to fool myself into believing he wasn’t simply readying himself to drag a worm from the soil but was bearing witness to the earth’s pain.
My mood stayed somber as we drove along, even as the midday sun washed the rocks along the undulant Hiwassee River in quicksilver hues. They were so brilliant they set the thrashing waters of the river ablaze. The churning rapids, the plundered landscapes and the mirrored surface of the rocks sparked a question in me, even so early in what has become an environmentally conscious game to so many people who give lip-service to the cause without putting any weight behind it: “There is so much written about man against nature; what of the struggle nature faces against man?”
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