home on my mountain
by kathryn magendie

The mountains called me home and I answered.

After more than thirty-five years in Louisiana, I moved to a mountain in Maggie Valley. To say it was unplanned and unexpected would be completely true. I was born in West Virginia, but my father moved around quite a bit when I was a child. We finally settled in Baton Rouge in 1967, and I never left. Until now. My husband, a New Orleans native, lived in Louisiana all his life, and moved to Baton Rouge about the same time I did, although our paths would not cross for many years. We met, married, bought a cute cottage near the University, and settled into our nice Louisiana life.

Mardi Gras and king’s cakes, deep, dark swamps and snowy egrets perched on Cypress trees, LSU football and tailgating, gumbo, jambalaya, crawfish, pralines, colorful people, and the Cajun rebel yell of “Aiyeeee!” And I thought it was good, but something was missing, something big—alive and rising inside of me. As I rocked in my chair and watched the flat land undulate with heated moisture, admired the oaks standing tall and strong like tough old men, deep inside some ancient place within my heart, I never felt I was home.

Then in October of 2004, as if invisible destiny-hands pushed us,we visited North Carolina after a visit to West Virginia. Almost twenty years had gone by since I had been to my birthplace in Charleston. We stopped in Maggie Valley on the way back because we had read that North Carolina was beautiful. Oh, it was, and it was so much more. And as if by magic (and quite a bit of terrifying stress) by December, a short two months later, we were moved out of our Louisiana cottage, and nestled into our log house—on what I now call “my mountain”. I hope that I am not presumptuous in claiming it as mine. I ask the native Western North Carolinians to forgive that presumption. They have been the friendliest people I have ever met, and I am grateful for the welcome.

Most of our friends, and all of our family, were supportive, but a few warned that we were rash, insane, “You’re moving to a mountain? In North Carolina? To live in a teeny little town without a mall or a CC’s coffee house or plumbing? And, you don’t know a soul there. What are you thinking? You’ll be eaten by a bear, mark my words.”

It was the best decision we have ever made. I am where I belong. And, of course, we have plumbing, and if I get a mall-attack, I’ll drive to Asheville, thank you. As for bears, I do not fear them as much as I did the crime in Baton Rouge, thank you very much again.

In the same rocker where I looked out from my sunroom at the Louisiana landscape, I now look out of my window as I write this, at the misty glow of thick fog that covers the valley and begins to creep up to my window. I imagine myself old and crooked, still staring out of this window, curled up with a throw over my legs. And, as I write, the fog quickly covers everything until I am surrounded by ghost-mist. I know that just as quickly as it comes, it will leave. I am amazed at the speed with which the fog, seemingly slow and sluggish, actually rushes in and out like sea waves. I am pleasantly startled at everything I see and feel and touch.

Every day, Roger and I take a long walk, exploring the mountain area where we live. My eyes dart, scan, and soak the images in, storing them for later use. I point to rocks and say, “Roger, look at those rocks!”

“Wow, these are nice rocks,” he says as he picks one up and examines it.
I crouch down and pluck a white beauty with thin dark lines running through it, “They’re so interesting, so unique. We’ve not seen rocks like these in Louisiana.” The rock is deposited in my pocket, where it is washed off and left displayed on the windowsill of this room, along side the others I’ve admired and plucked up. I am careful not to take any from anyone’s property—they surely love the rocks as much as I do. Those ever-forever opaque wonders that shift and then hold steady beneath my feet, for thousands of years they have lain beneath and upon the earth, shaped by wind, rain, and man, but always here. I feel grounded here, too. At last.
As we walk along, we both point out things that catch our eye. I stop and look out over the distant mountains and remember how a native North Carolinian said that these mountains are some of the oldest in the world. I catch up my breath deep into my lungs to take that thought inside, and leave it there, filling me up.

Yesterday, Roger picked up a tiny curly-twisted branch, “Look at this, Kathryn.”

“Oh, that’s strange looking.” I held out my hand to it, as if it was alive and would curl upon my palm and go to sleep. I suddenly felt like a tourist, but I couldn’t help it. I own that touristy awe at funny twigs and silly stones. “I wonder what kind it is?”

“I don’t know.” He put it in his pocket, as gentle as if it were a baby creature.

The moss here is different from the Louisiana Spanish moss. Spanish moss is like old witch’s hair, softly coarse, and weathered gray. The moss I pick up and admire here is tiny, green, and delicate. There are birds’ calls I do not recognize, and chipmunks, and tiny squirrels with reddish coloring that don’t seem afraid of me. One morning we saw bear tracks in the snow. And the snow! It falls like powdered sugar dusting sweet and cold.

Living in the mountains has an ancient feel, as if everything has stayed the same for centuries. Although I know that is not completely true, that is the feeling living in the mountains brings. The everlasting moon shines down on the same mountains, rocks, moss, and soil as it did since time began. Alternatively, Louisiana has an eerie changling quality, one that metamorphosis as the wet earth shifts and erodes. The Gulf of Mexico eats away at the Louisiana coast; hungry angry water chomping until I fear Louisiana will shrink all the way to Alexandria, or Shreveport, maybe even all the way to Arkansas. Baton Rouge is only fifty feet above sea level, whereas my home is at an elevation of over three thousand feet. I take a moment to feel myself flying high above, with clouds and birds, touching the sunrays that shine like the Creator’s smile, or in the evening, the gracious moonbeams that grin mysteries we only think we want to figure out.

In Louisiana, I step on soil that gives and bends and sinks. The high-humidity decays and erodes. Nothing stays steady. Even the granddaddy oaks finally must rot away under the onslaught of steamy corrosion. But here, the air is clean and dry as I take it into my nostrils, a slight sting of cold as the morning rushes into my lungs, where my organs expand and contract with pleasure.

I try to picture what the spring will look like, what kinds of flowers, trees, and plants will thrust up from the ground, or cover the vines that thread everywhere. The summer, not wet-hot and sticky like Louisiana, but sultry-warm? And the changing of the leaves that we missed after we left in October, how will it look? I can’t remember the changing seasons from my tiny childhood. Louisiana has one and one half seasons—humid cold for a very short while and agonizingly humid hot for rest of the year. The leaves do not turn, except for a few waywards that are lost in all the green.

Since moving here, I have bought sweaters, and a coat, and boots, thick socks, and gloves, scarves, and moisturizers—lots of Burt’s Bees. I laugh at my t-shirts and flip flops worn almost year-round in Baton Rouge. When spring arrives, I wonder if the rocks will be covered with plant life, and in summer, if there will be thunderstorms with lightening ripping the sky over the mountain. What will the other seasons bring to me? I still have so much to look forward to, mysteries that haven’t yet been solved. Mountain mysteries, my own mysteries.

In the morning cool, I say to Roger, “Can you believe we won’t need air conditioning even in the summer?”

Roger answers, “Unbelievable.” He shoves his hat on his head and grins. I think he looks like a mountain man, but as if I uprooted a Louisiana oak and planted it right on the mountain. I imagine his feet taking root where he’ll never want to leave. “I love it here,” he says, “It’s beautiful, quiet and peaceful.”

And I smile, knowing that he won’t ever leave. I say, “Yes, it is.”

The fog that covered me has now receded again, just in the few moments it took to write these words. Only a glowing apparition remains over the valley, an ethereal blanket, snuggling in the residents there. My eyes widen at the beauty of it. The sun winks at me, then shines on the raindrops that linger on bare tree branches, diamonds would be envious. Nature’s jewelry is more beautiful than anything I could ever buy at a mall.

I hope that I am always amazed at the images I experience. I hope that I never grow tired of looking out of the window at vaporous waves, steady rocks, the forever moon casting a glow over the howling wolf I hear. I hope this awed, magical, lucky feeling stays with me until I fall asleep for the last time in my rocking chair, the crooked old woman with a contented smile as the mountains cradle me, while I sing them all the way to the ancient forgiving sky.

For now, the mountains call to me, and I answer, “I’m here; I’m staying.”
Thank you, Western North Carolina.

 

Kathryn Magendie is the author of three fiction novels, I am Virginia Kate-A Memoir, The Unexpected Places, and The Affliction of Sweetie. She has written a collection of short stories that root out the quirky in us all, and a collection of creative non-fiction—all that will pull the emotion out of you, whether you like it or not. [ kathrynmagendie.blogspot.com ]