I wrote this back in 1985 the night I made this drive. It was an astonishing solitary hour's journey and I still think about how what we often see is not what's really there. Your critical comments on the writing and content would be appreciated. Thanks.
Leaving the concert late, I start the winding journey across the barrier--the Mountain-- high and treacherous marked with a crooked road. Two paths to chose, but in the dark, one is never used, so I take the safer path. Tonight will be foggy, a hated circumstance on the poorly marked, unbarricaded-shouldered highway up the side of this forbidding mountain. Even in this day of paved road, many have never coursed this dreaded hump rising up from the earth, exposing the layers of ages long past.
The car ascends, turning and twisting, passing few others attempting the crossing, and no coal trucks, now resting after their long week of continual journey over and across this age worn road. My car can dominate the road now, the lights of Harlan below quickly disappearing, leaving only the hazy glow of lamps from homes along the roadside--houses built on rock, hanging from those rocks as ancient cliff dwellings. Childhood thoughts of clouds, cotton to the touch if only you could reach them, dispelled as I drive through tiny drops of water, making the road difficult to see and making those clouds become unromantic fog instead.
Passing Hanging Rock I leave the cloud and the sky opens bright above me. Stars glisten down, though the moon bullies them into second class with its overpowering glow. On through the gap, I enter a new world. Now below in the valley that begins the Cumberland Plateau is a lake of clouds, as if the TVA has made a sudden appearance in Bledsoe. The moon makes the mountain tops glisten and a whole new landscape appears to me. Tiny lights from houses that perch on the mountain tops are visible but the settlement below is gone, as if forever buried by a new lake, built by the Corps engineers, meddling in the Earth's surfaces. Who asked them to disturb our houses? The beauty of the lakes seen only by new generations, but not in the eyes' memories of those whose houses and memories are buried beneath the murky water.
I, new generation, look at the wondrous sight, the calming of the water lapping on the shores. As if I cannot fill myself with the sight, I stop the car and turn off the light, heightening the moon's brightness in my eyes, and gaze at the sea of clouds, reaching across the Cumberlands, covering, like a bandage, the scars of strip mines cutting into the mountain sides. I sit in the seat, the car itself parked on a big scar, the rock quarry, watching the healing of the mist, as it lays across the wounds of the earth.
Resuming the car's descent into the sea of clouds, the moon continues to pierce the cloud, even as the car winds around the curves of the mountain's north side. I do not need to squint my eyes to make the landscape appear fuzzy. The fogginess has made everything as when I, childishly, half-close my eyes to make the bad things, the litter, the scars fade, and only the outlines and the beauty stay.
Coming up the path to the house on the mountainside, the moon again outlines a tree, winter bare, its stark branches into the mist as a ghostly apparition reaching up to the top of the giant into which it plants its roots.
Though I take this dreaded path across the mountain every day, and more, the solitary journey tonight, full of beauty, can flood back to me, when I must make the crossing in rain, coal trucks creeping up the grade, holding up my progress, covering the car with mud and coal slime; when the snow and ice on the top of Pine Mountain makes the journey fearful and forbidding; when I must hurry in hoping to make the drive quickly, knowing the winding, the dangers, the slow trucks and fast cars will always make it long as usual. This one trip across should never have ended. It could go on forever.
Copyright 2006
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Comments: 17
There seemed to be a slightly jagged transition between the third and forth paragraph. I felt a little lost when you wrote " I, new generation," Maybe something clearer here would help create the contrast you want.
Other than that = I think this is an important piece. This world is hardly known to us on the West Coast. My wife has told me about Harlan and I find it fascinating.
I think the difficulty with the transition is only due to the white space between the two sentences that would link them. The new generation that sees beauty where the old generation sees loss and you are that new generation (but not really). I had some trouble with the use of the word murky in the same sentence with beautiful ... perhaps adding that the oldtimers "see" the water as murky (it conceals their homes).
Hasn't the settlement been permanently buried by that lake? I am not sure why you used the term " when describing that alteration.
I was surprised to see that you drive that road daily . . . and wonder if it might not help to mention in the opening that even though you drive it daily that it never loses its sense of danger and that most people never even attempt to take that road. You also don't tell us why you take it or where you are going.
Do a fine tooth check, as well, for grammar "two paths to choose," and the like.
The final paragraph is a bit obtuse, if you are taking this journey tonight, how can the memory of it flood you during other journeys. Easy to clarify but not yet clear.
Fine, fine writing Carol -- memorable and haunting. Thanks for sharing.
in this magnificent paragraph.
"I, new generation, look at the wondrous sight, the calming of the water lapping on the shores. As if I cannot fill myself with the sight, I stop the car and turn off the light, heightening the moon's brightness in my eyes, and gaze at the sea of clouds, reaching across the Cumberlands, covering, like a bandage, the scars of strip mines cutting into the mountain sides. I sit in the seat, the car itself parked on a big scar, the rock quarry, watching the healing of the mist, as it lays across the wounds of the earth."
Your prose here and throughout the piece is eloquent, less of a jeremaid and more of a personal odyssey to find the freshness and beauty again of this frequent drive, which you accomplished for yourself and the reader here.
Marvelous writing and a moving theme, that makes us realize how fast our national "wilderness" can be appropriated by developers and lost forever, unless we find better policies that represent more of the actual voters and less of the interested (and already extremely wealthy) parties. That is to say, unless we becomes a "democracy again in this age of wiretapping, cynical manipulation of terrorist color coded "alerts", stripped away liberties and mad grab for the last nonrenewable resources left by elites who don't give a damn about "sustainability, and laugh behind our backs--big time!--with big rancher laughs at our gullibility in believing all the highfalutin' rhetoric of democracy and freedom that is just hot air from Washington to Crawford, Texas. Never has a twenty year old article been so pertinent, as it tells once again "the inconvenient truth" which at this late stage of our republic turned empire, we ought to take seriously instead of leaving less pristine natural habitats and more golf courses and big homes for people who don't much like bears or coyote on their new mini-estates in the new "exurbs."
I like this very much. I was there with you on the mountain road that suddenly takes on a different meaning in a different light.
The style experts and grammarians have already pointed out the possible needs.
The car's descent into the clouds, evoking the lights above and below, and your feeling of place (both time and geography) are all wonderful images to me.
Eric, I appreciate the comment about sense of place. I've noticed that many Appalachian authors seem to write with a sense of place and refer to that concept. Did it rub off on me in my brief years there?
I shall try doing some correcting of the suggestions and then republish it.
Critique to come.
My critique is a bit half-assed. I don't have much time at the moment, but if I put it off longer I wouldn't have gotten to it.
I like the tale and I like the feelings it evokes, but I think the piece could be more vivid. The problem is the tale is too passive, you use a passive voice too often, but more fundamentally, I think you failed to deliver the real source of tension in your story. That tension is between your fear of the road and the the beauty that treacherous path offers. You are flirting with danger and the reward is something almost ineffable.
I did a quick edit on the first two grafs and came up with the following. My edits need editing, but I think they give you an idea of what I mean.
I hope I haven't overstepped the bounds, here. It's a good article and deserves some grooming -- or I wouldn't have spent the time I have.
Kevin
"Leaving the concert late, I start the winding journey across the barrier--The Mountain. A high and treacherous wall scarred with two crooked paths. One is never used in the dark, so I take the safer route. Tonight will be foggy, something I fear even on the safer but still treacherous old highway up the side of this forbidding mountain.
Even in this time, paved in asphalt and under the sun, many have never traced this thread climbing over the dreaded hump rising up from the earth -- never seen the exposed layers of ages long past.
The car ascends, turning and twisting, passing the few others attempting the crossing. Blessedly there are no coal trucks tonight. The careless giants rest after their long week of looping journeys back and forth across this age-worn road. My car dominates the road tonight, the lights of Harlan below quickly disappearing, leaving only the hazy glow of lamps from homes along the roadside--houses built on rock, hanging from those rocks like ancient cliff dwellings. Fear dispels childhood memories of clouds, cotton to the touch if only you could reach them, as the decidedly unromantic fog makes the road difficult to see.
Kevin, thank you so much for your time and giving me suggestions. I'm going to copy them into my draft, beside the matching paragraphs and reread and try to use some of your suggestions. Thanks.