Most of you know that ten years ago
I decided to simplify my life and move up into the Great Smoky Mountains of
Western North Carolina. I moved from several
different places until I found this particular mountain with its peaceful view
of the valley below and the sparsely strewed houses of the neighbors, all
either lower or higher on this difficult grade.
With that as a foreword, very few people know exactly where I live and
for the point of this anecdote, that is probably a good thing.
Each year hundreds of thousands of
people flock to this area to enjoy cool summer breezes, swoon at the beautiful scenery,
and indulge in the folksy history, art, music, dining, hiking, and golf. But very few tourists or “leafers” ever wander
past the well-groomed landscapes of the parks and attractions, almost no one
dares to turn off the safety of the pavement onto roads that seem impassible to
their cherished automobiles, and few if any, ever meander deep enough into the
woods or high enough on the ridges to discover where the real mountain people
still live. It is in these environs that
I choose to make my home. From the
county road at the foot of mountain, the first obstacle you encounter when exploring
the ingress to my home, is the need to drive across a running creek of
mountain-fresh water. The pioneers who
first settled this peak decided to build a stream-crossing rather than to bury
a culvert and divert the water under the road.
I appreciate their decision; it keeps the looky-loos off of the one-lane
road that is the only access to our houses.
When I first came to this place, I
met a couple of neighbors from the mountain that were like me, relocated
flat-landers in search of a different lifestyle, but in honesty, there are many
families above me that are determined to keep their privacy. With these hill people, the most interaction you
could expect is a wave of appreciation when one or the other of us has to pull
over onto a flat spot to let the other one go by heading up or down the mountain. Now you might think these standoffish
neighbors are waiting for me or another barely abided invader to make the first
move with some modest basket of food and spirits delivered to their door with a
heartfelt hello. I would beg to differ;
these people guard their privacy with fervor.
Many of these mountains are still populated with families that have
homesteaded here for hundreds of years keeping to the same piece of land. They are a people and a culture unto
themselves, and many still harbor deep resentment to those who built the
Fontana Dam and flooded thousands of acres of ancestral lands, or those who
decided that the Great Smoky Mountains need to be preserved for all Americans
to enjoy and confiscated generational lands, historic churches and meeting
places, forced the evacuation of working farms, and prohibited access to their subsistence
hunting grounds and fishing holes, all so that a few hikers and car-bound
tourists can come and enjoy the relics and ruins of a once peaceful and secluded
community.
There are a dozen or so names that
claim ownership to vast tracts of land in these mountains; family names that
can be traced back to the original land patents and down through deeds that have
been divided and subdivided through the ages.
Some of these names have overflowed into the businesses of the towns and
villages, to the plaques on the bank teller’s windows or the employee of the
month wall at the local grocery. Some descendants
have chosen to join the growing community of outsiders that have populated their
once isolated hamlets, but others have taken deliberate steps to isolate
themselves even further from the prying eyes of modern society. The once commercialized fascination of these
backwoodsmen in the movies (locally set Cold
Mountain, Nell and Deliverance) has turned to some impressive
documentary style exploitations of television in Hillbilly Blood, Mountain Monsters, Moonshiners, Mountain Men, and Appalachian Outlaws. I am quite familiar with all of these filmed locations
and in a few incidences, a couple of the actual characters. But still, there is danger in the hills when trespassing
where you don’t belong. It is an almost a
daily occurrence to be sitting outside and hear the sounds of firearms being
discharged. Sometimes it is hunters in
search of supper, often it is merely target practice, in the weeks before
hunting season, it is the “sighting in” of their long rifles, but frequently,
as evidenced by the rapid barrage and eclectic mixture of caliber rounds, it is
nothing more than backwoods fun with a not-so-subtle implication. Bottom line, I keep to myself.
Shortly after I moved in here, I
met the son of the builder who came up from Florida to build this house. The man asked me if I had ever been to the
top of the mountain; I hadn’t. He told
me a colorful tale of a four-wheeler expedition on some trails near the ridgeline
and locating the headwaters of our Hide-Away Creek. He told me the terrain was steep, dense and
difficult to maneuver, but that it would be worth my time if I ever get a
four-wheeler (a desperate desire of mine).
All that I have written here is the
preface to these next few words:
On a relatively temperate night
recently, my nurse-maid/friend, who’s been helping me recover from my recent infirmities,
and I were sitting on the deck that faces west.
She shushed me sharply and whispered, “Listen!” From the high regions just to the north of my
house came the unmistakable sounds of clinking mason jars. We had no outside lights on so we sidled to
the edge of the porch to watch and listen.
In the woods, no more than a half-mile from me and about 1,000 feet higher
on the hill, were lantern lights in an area where no house stands. We silently listened as bottle after bottle
was filled and stowed until at last the industrious night-workers extinguished
their lanterns and the mountain again became dark and deserted.
We traded jokes about hiking up to
buy some fresh moonshine, but jokes were all they were. I know where to safely purchase White Lightning, both the legal kind and
the untaxed local kind; I don’t think traipsing off onto a foreboding wooded
hillside is a good way to procure a little hooch. Even if I were able to locate their burner, mash pot,
thumper and worm, I doubt I would’ve survived long enough to consummate my
intended commerce.
Old-timey mountain life still
exists in these backwoods, and sometimes it is just up the road. People around here still miss and mourn for
the country’s most famous moonshiner, Popcorn Sutton. He lived and worked his stills no more than a
fifteen minute drive from where I live. Because
of the ample availability, I know there are dozens, perhaps even hundreds of illegal
stills operating within a few miles of my house. I wouldn’t want to mess with any of them, but
it is oddly comforting to know that the indigenous Appalachian culture has not
been usurped by the heavy hands of government regulations or the incursive onslaught
of the outside society.
Mason jars
clinking in the night, well that is just one more reason I love living in the
Smokys.
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