Exiled to the piedmont region of North Carolina from his native mountains, writer Fred Chappell has been homesick for more than 40 years. In 2009, his third collection of short stories and 10th collection of poetry will appear, partially products of his longing.
I was born in the mountains of North Carolina, and think of myself as a native Appalachian. But I have lived for forty-some years eastward in the Piedmont, and when I travel to my old stamping grounds, I realize that I am now a tourist. Changes have come to my mountains and me. Home changed – and so did I.
In many ways I am pleased with the changes. The economic situation has improved, even though the improvement has come at some expense to the breath-catching, blue-green landscape that is the soul as well as the body of the region. I have gained maturity and can appreciate that landscape more fully now than during my brash, inattentive years. I see things I used to overlook: qualities of light at morning and at gloaming, the muscularity of the windswept oaks, the gentler contours of ridges as well as the more dramatic.
Yet I do not see some things I used to. Sides of hills have disappeared, sliced into highway embankments. The former, picturesque 20-minute drive from Sandy Mush to Leicester seems now to take five nondescript minutes. The weather-darkened cabins niched into pasture-cloaked hillsides have flown to Oz, caught up in the tornadoes of development. Changes are so drastic that if someone asked me if I knew where Saunook was, I could reply, Yes. Asked how to get there, I would answer with a helpless shrug.
Changes have taken place quickly. There are several farm museums scattered about and I like to step in and poke around. Some of the primitive tools they exhibit – drawknives, mule hames, plow points – are exactly like those I labored with as a lad on our little family farm. Seeing the labels, I feel like a survivor from the Neolithic.
Yet there are places I seek out and find small farms pretty much unchanged in aspect and custom from the old days. The folks who inhabit them are the age I am; some are even older. I recognize them as the same kindly, shrewd, patient, hospitable, skeptical aunts, uncles and cousins I grew up among.
Their neighbors, though, belong to a different tribe, a clan that speaks of organic farming, environmental preservation and “green” development. They hail from California and Oregon. They speak with outland accents and they dress differently. But the life they pursue is essentially identical to traditional mountain life. They only approach it with a slightly different attitude, with an inspired determination. I feel the difference: They have chosen to do what the natives always expected to do.
To me, it appears that a self-consciousness has come. We used to take place and custom for granted: This is the way it has always looked; this is how we have always done things. We took ourselves for granted: We are here because we belong here. Now we can see with new eyes: It cannot always be as it has been; we can never be again what we were, not entirely. Maybe we appreciate more deeply what is passing.
Now when I return, the sarvis blooms are whiter, the autumn vermilions more startling, the streams more voluble. As the past disappears, it strikes the eye more vividly than ever. Perhaps the hearty word Hail! already contains the melancholy Farewell.
