I am a child of Appalachia. I hail from the mountains, the land of bluegrass music, bootleg whiskey and blood feuds; deep coal mines and blacklung, to high mountain vistas that can also take your breath away. Tobacco is in our blood, in spite of government efforts to make us see its evil.
Some have called us Southern Highlanders, where family/clan is your identity, and we just want outsiders to leave us the hell alone. If you are from the goverment, you are definitely NOT here to help. More than once in my younger days I've crossed somebody's land hunting and been asked, "Whose boy are you?" The last time it happened, I was 21 years old, back from college.
Most of us have Scots-Irish in our blood. Our music betrays the heritage. When you hear it, you hear the influence of jigs, reels and ballads. Nothing stirs my blood more than good Celtic music or heart-felt bluegrass.
I can raise a garden, raise cattle, butcher cows and pigs, pressure can vegetables, fish, hunt, shoot and survive in the woods. I know how to split wood, start a fire, and use a wood cook stove. I love the smell of wood smoke when the weather turns cold and the illusion of mountains on fire when the leaves turn. I love the space, the elbow room to breathe and grow as a human being should.
I left it all when I went to college and have felt lost ever since. You can take a man out of the mountains, but you can never take the mountains out of the man. I have worked in cubicles and office buildings and feared suffocation. I've seen people treated like rabbits in a cage, and never could get used to the indignity of it.
I left 80 wild, mountaintop acres to live in a low-land suburb with "community ordinances." I've joined the masses in my attempt to maintain an emerald green yard, but can't shake the nagging feeling of stupidity when spending so much time, sweat and money on grass. Its all very clean, pretty and neat, but its not me. Looking over the manicured yards or parks in the city doesn't feed my soul like the woods, rocks and mountains back home.
I left because the world has changed. The small family farm went the way of the 8 track. There was no work in Appalachia, at least none that earned money. Even now I know how to do hard work, but not how to make a career.
I watch my kids grow up in suburbia. They can't understand my grief for a world they have never really known. It seems the virtual world of TV, Xbox and Wii has overcome the woods and fields I loved. But this is the world as it is and I do my best to make peace with it and pass on the independence, self-reliance and hardiness of my heritage. I just hope heaven has mountains, high places with hanging valleys, bold streams, pipe smoke, fiddles and a moonshine still hidden in the laurel thicket.
