Morning Mist on Old Summerour...

What a magical trip to work it was, this midsummer morning. Dusk made the sky slightly pink and the mountains a pale blue. There was a light mist lying along the hollows and bottoms. Raindrops, still clinging to the tall grass and wildflowers, caught my high beams, and a little rabbit risked his skin, darting across the road. The old road is familiar to me ~ I've travelled it many and many a time. The curves of it are like an old familiar tune. I come to a stop at Old Summerour Road, where the pretty old cemetery quietly beckons ~ reminding me that we are mortal, in spite of the immortal beauty of the place. Next is the oasis, I call it, where an odd little island of trees looms lush and black against the morning sky. Then, one of my old familiar landmarks, a line of hanging gourds, home to martins and a gardening tradition dating back to the Moravians, or maybe even the Cherokee. I climb the hill, watching for deer, to a secret, lovely lake, still as a mirror, with the mist just discovering the morning sun. It creeps away as I step out of the car, keys jangling, my mind already turning to my morning cuppa...

Old Weathered Cabins

I don't know what it was about the old gray, weathered cabins of the Appalachian mountains. Maybe it was that, in the early 1970s, they were already an image out of their own time and place. Maybe we subconsciously saw that in them. Or maybe it was just the visual drama of them, so stark and skeletal, among the red clay hills; velvet-black on rainy days. The red of the roof matched the clay, but it was the red of rust, not of paint. I don't want to think it was simple nostalgia. There was nostalgia, but it was a lonesomeness for a kind of life that was fading before our eyes. Every old, black cottage that we passed on the rural roads reminded us of our own kin. They stilled lived in those cabins. We would go to visit, only a few times a year; and to us kids, it was the novelty of the thing. It was a strange, new thing, to pump water by hand, to pull the rope in the old cistern and haul up dripping buckets of water; to sit and listen to our great-grandfather and uncles play the fiddle and the banjo; to eat the chicken-and-dumplings and chocolate gravy and biscuits and other rare treats of our great aunts and grandmother's cooking. We marvelled that the outhouse, a strange, mysterious and somewhat spooky place to us, was an everyday, matter-of-fact utility of theirs. What we didn't know was that we were seeing the last of Appalachia. We didn't see them going, but they went. They went the way of the American Chestnut, that Appalachian giant that I never saw, but only heard about from my elders. First went the old covered bridges; then, the rickety paved ones, that provided so much dangerous glee when we were teens in our first cars, and knew no better than to get up a good speed in anticipation of a breathtaking, roller coaster leap that would separate chassis from suspension, if only for a moment. Then the cabins, as they gave way to cozy, trim little cedar-sided and brick houses. The old barns, that used to be everywhere, and of such different designs, quietly disappeared from the landscape. We didn't notice as they disappeared, but we noticed when nearly all of them were gone. And finally, the people. Stern old women in faded sunbonnets and shapeless dresses... wiry, leathery old men in overalls, chewing tobacco and talking of sourwood honey. They, too, existed in such stark contrast to the bustling, chrome-plated and freshly painted world that sprang up around them. It was the dawn of the age of personal computers and cellular phones, but even we didn't see that (that was still a Star Trek fantasy). Those sturdy, coarse-yet-dignified personalities ~ seemingly as strong and ancient and enduring as the mountains themselves ~ simply disappeared as quietly as the old barns and cabins.

The oil painting of the old cabin (above) was perhaps my first landscape. I was only 15 or 16, and it was painted from memory, not direct observation. The details of the overalls on the clothesline, the broom, and the old outhouse, were sentimental, to be sure; the mountains lack form; but the depth and strength of the red clay and cobalt blue hills seem true to me even now.

Thunderstorm!

"The bottom just dropped out!" That's the way Mama would say it, when it came a big thunderstorm. "It rained like all get-out!" I don't know where she got that saying. Appalachian people never say a thing plain when they can embellish the words. The rain on our tin roof sounds like a loud roar, but wonderful in this time of drought. This kind of thunderstorm usually comes in the summertime. It rages and roars and the lightning flashes, wild. There's no fear ~ it's not a tornado. (We get tornadoes in spring.) I don't dread a storm. I love it!

Thunderstorms make me think of Huckleberry Finn, and the wonderful way that Twain describes the thunderstorms on Jackson's Island, when "it rained like all fury," and it "would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby." (Chapter IX)

We get the most wonderful thunderstorms in North Georgia, and flash floods that cause the mountain ravines to resound with crashing water. Our storm came quickly, dumped buckets of water on us, and faded quietly, as quickly as it came. Now there's just the soothing sound of raindrops and the glad knowledge that Muskrat Creek, all summer-dry and stagnant, will once again echo through these cobalt blue hills.

Those Beautiful Blue Hills...

Oh, those beautiful blue hills! The mountains are so lovely at this time of the year. Cobalt blue, framed by the deep red and yellow leaves of the hardwoods. Driving to work is a pleasure. The road curves and I take my time. I get to go the back roads the whole way. White and gray tree trunks cut upright windows in the woods, and bits of lake show through them. The lake itself is still, like glass, and reflects the most wonderful blues, grays and browns. On these cool mornings, a mist rises off of the lake. A thirty-year journey into this brilliant landscape, and yet each glimpse, each new perspective, is its own. This day is its own gift.