The Mountains; My Haven, My Heaven

People who know me know that I looooooove the mountains; especially the Appalachian Mountains! Whenever I am there, I feel like a wee babe pulled into the haven of my mother’s embrace. I feel content, safe; I feel home. 

I cannot explain this feeling of home as I was not born or raised in the mountains. I was born in Dayton, Ohio. The only way that I can explain it is that both of my parents and my family for untold generations back called those mountains home. I feel like something that I call ancestral memory lies deep in my DNA. The DNA that determined my hair color, my eye color, my bone structure, my affinity for certain diseases has also influenced my love for the mountains!

I have since coming up with my own term, “ancestral memory”, become aware of the more scientific term “genetic memory”. I admit that I need no science to back my belief in ancestral memory. I need only go to the mountains and there I feel it. When I am in the mountains, my ancestors “haunt’ me. I cannot travel through those mountains without imagining what the same trip would have been like for my ancestors.

When traveling in our cars, we are protected from the elements. When rain falls, we simply wiper the drops away and continue on our way. We travel in air-conditioned comfort over paved highways, sometimes even tunneling through the mountain. When we are thirsty, we pull a drink from our ice-filled cooler. When we are hungry, we pull over to Mickey D's for food, and when we finish our food we run into the restroom, where we have the convenience of a commode, sink, and even toilet tissue and soap! Then we continue on our way again, refreshed.

And how our ancestors did it is difficult to even attempt to imagine! They were moving entire families on wagons drawn by animals. They had to pack the belongings of an entire family onto a small wagon! I'm sure they could give us lessons on packing light and knew exactly what a "necessity" was. They had to pack food for the animals and themselves. They probably prayed that water would be plentiful along the way as well as game for part of their food. I'm sure that if anyone got to actually ride in the wagon it was an extremely rough ride, no steel-belted radials back then! What did the wagon even travel over? Unless there was an "established" trail, these folks had to blaze their own. Have you seen all those beautiful big trees growing in the mountains? How long do you think it would take to saw and hack a trail through them!? Lunch anyone? Well they'd have to eat cold trail food or hunt some grub, build a campfire and cook it, and don't forget to feed and water the animals! And rain, you know how slick mud gets. Imagine trying to go up or down a mountain with a load in the mud, and all of the time worrying about the safety of your family, which probably included small children and babies. How did they get across the wide rivers that have such convenient bridges today? Bathroom breaks; well that was a squat in the woods, making sure to steer clear of poison ivy and praying to avoid chiggers! I don't believe they could have done much traveling at night, but I'm sure that a big ol' bright full moon would have been appreciated nonetheless. Bet the mosquitos were a challenge, but they might have been the least of their critter worries. I imagine that there were probably many more predators back then and I'm sure that our ancestors had a healthy respect for them. I imagine when the full moon slid behind clouds, that respect probably grew a little, and the young children were probably downright scared! I'm sure they went to "bed" bone-tired, but an awareness of the ever-constant possibility of danger probably would have made a true rest unlikely. And how long would a journey of several miles have taken them; how many endless days and nights, each one perhaps more difficult than the one before? I'm sure that the hardships my imagination conjure up pale compared to the reality our ancestors faced. And yet, they did it! They were hardy, resourceful, tenacious... folks.

And of course, while driving through my mountains, along several parts of the interstate, I see crosses, the makeshift crosses made by folks who lost someone due to an accident at that spot along the road. Those crosses serve as a sign that someone’s loved one passed from this to the next life at that spot.

I cannot help but think about how years ago, many of our ancestors must have met their deaths along primitive trails. I realize that many were not able to gain comfort from visiting a grave. How sad to lose a loved one along a trail traveled. How much sadder for those who would gain comfort from visiting that grave, only to have to leave it behind, never to return. Perhaps, those lonely signs of a life passed, served to remind those who followed to love today as though tomorrow was not to be.

I imagine that many of those markers left behind by our ancestors have been reclaimed by nature, just as those I see along the highway will someday be. Perhaps they have been lost to the erosion of time, but it is somehow comforting to know that their existence was noted if only for a while. Perhaps some person will be plowing a field or doing some other work one day and find a forgotten reminder of a life that was. Perhaps that reminder will give that person pause to draw his loved ones close and cherish them a little more.

Each of my family members came from folks like those, and I for one feel so blessed that I did. After all, some folks just get to claim to be "royal". We get to claim to be Smiths, Nolens, Middletons, Allens…

So when I am in the mountains, my ancestors are ever in my mind and folks who know me know that I also looooove my ancestors. When I stop at the Bud Ogle cabin along my favorite Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail near Gatlinburg, I can almost hear the laughter of children rushing from their chores toward the house where their momma is calling “Dinner’s ready!”

                                                                                

 
The mountains also make me feel closer to God. It is so beautiful in the mountains and I can’t help but love every minute of it. It’s very humbling to think that God gave us the gift of such beauty and it fills me with such thankfulness that He entrusted that beauty to our care.

 

I can’t help but think, as we drive through this heaven, that God must surely love diversity, and I can’t help but wonder why His children don’t seem to want to follow His lead.

The diversity of His creation is such a huge part of its beauty, and as we drive we see evidence of it everywhere! We are surrounded by myriad shades of green, the greens of the grasses, the greens of the trees; no two greens exactly the same. And if we could see the trunks and limbs of the trees, how much variation in colors and textures we would find! God seems to like diversity so much that He is not even content for things to remain the same all of the time. A tree that bears rosy-purple blossoms in spring bears beautiful heart-shaped leaves of green in summer, fiery red to yellow foliage in Autumn, and bare branches in winter.

 

And the sky, the sky is filled with clouds, clouds of an infinite number of colors. Some are sullen, dark, dusky blues, others are smoky grays, still others bright white. And the shapes of the clouds! One cloud looks like it is bursting with love and has a heart emerging from it, another looks like a turtle and still, another looks like an elephant running across the sky. And the sky has infinite shades of blue, from the palest almost white blue to a vivid deeper blue, and it continually changes. The dark blue velvet of the night sky may seem to be covered by a scattering of brilliant diamonds. With dawn, the brilliant gem that is the sun rises on the horizon brushing the skies with golds and reds. Dusk brings dusky blues, mauves, and roses. All of this wondrous and continually changing diversity makes me wonder if God might have a short attention span.

Yes, I cannot help but believe that God loves His diversity. I love it too. I can’t help but think that if every tree looked like every other tree, if the sky was always the same shade of whatever, if the clouds were all shaped the same; well, how boring would that be?! If every person looked the same, thought the same, talked the same, believed the same; how utterly uninteresting a place the world would be!

So, I loooooove the mountains! I find my ancestors there and I find God there! Where else could I ever be happier and why would I not love to go back over and over and over again! In fact, I hope one day to build me a little house on my Grandpa and Grandma’s old home place on Anglin Branch in eastern Kentucky. There, hills rise all around and the Daniel Boone National Forest is right next door. There I can live feeling close to God, with memories of my grandparents, and thoughts of all my beautiful family that came before.

                                              Grandma and Grandpa's Anglin Branch Home