Today marks the second full week of being back from my month of travelling in Georgia, Florida and Mississippi.
The last three days of the trip were spent holed up in a motel Brookhaven, Miss. The weather had turned nasty while I was in Prentiss, the western terminus of the Long Leaf Trace Rail-Trail. My plan had been to ride the trail the 40+ miles into Hattiesburg, stay over and return the following day. By then it would have been time to head to New Orleans for the post Katrina Mardi Gras, something I had been looking forward to for months.
However, the weather threw a wrench in those plans and I ended up in Brookhaven watching the rain pour down with the thermometer hugging the 30s the whole time.
The day before I was to head to NOLA I took a drive into the western countryside in the hopes of finding some place to hike. The only trail I found was in the Homochitto NF and it was closed due to Katrina damage. So I headed back to the motel via an interesting and scenic route and it was on that drive the old K Car started to tell me it was ready to head for home. A slipping tranny and an erratic throttle caused me considerable concern when I thought about how far I was from Morgantown.
I anguished about what to do for the rest of the day and part of the nite. I finally decided to call Tony and Donna and tell them I was heading home, even though I was only 3 hours away from their house. I knew if I continued on to NOLA I would not be able to relax for a minute wondering about the drive home. This change in plans also meant bypassing Nashville and Bob and Ann. Bummer!
So I turned tail and fled for home for what felt like a forced march for both me and the car. With every lurch of the tranny, my stomach lurched along with it. At one point when I exited the interstate, the throttle stuck wide open and stayed that way until I fiddled with the linkage and peddle and finally got it reset. Scary.
But - the car kept on going through what turned out to be a very scenic drive through Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Virginia.
When I finally entered into the Realm of the Mountains via the infamous West Virgina turnpike it was like entering an alien landscape. An entire month of flat and open terrain made the narrow and sinuous road feel claustrophobic and threatening. The low and forbidding look of the snow clouds seemed to be pressing down on the mountain tops themselves, making me feel even more boxed in. Trapped, with no where to turn.
But as I drove even deeper into the mountains I felt myself gasp as every twist and turn in the road brought forth another stunning vista before my eyes. It was this which cased me to feel an indescribable sense of joy and relief at being back home. The looming threat of the mountains and deep valleys though which I was winding my way now gave way to a feeling of being welcomed back into the bosom of my beautiful mountains, my beautiful home for which I had longed for so much at times.
These unexpected and previously unknown feelings have caused me to think muchly about where I live and come from and the people I know and have known. They are all a part of me and inextricably bound to me by the anchor of the mountains. Why this trip has caused these feeling to surface, I do not know. But I am grateful it happened. These mountains will never again look the same and I will never again feel the same about the place in which my very soul resides and could not live without.
FINIS-Mike
Hill Hunger
I think that something in the hill child dies
when he is taken to the level lands;
A man bred by the ocean understands,
and he will tell you that his sick heart sighs
For hiss of surf:and all his being cries
for roar of waves and spray upon his hands.
Ever beneath his weary feet the sands,
ever a sail before his searching eyes.
And so, I think the hill child always sees
that broken line inked in against the skies,
Where saffron sunset drops to meet the trees
upon the hilltop and the nighthawk flies,
And when his mind cannot recapture these
I think that something in the hill child dies.
-- Lillian Mayfield Roberts