RUSTIC BEAUTY

I grew up in the Mountains. My ma and grandma were born there, as was my great-grandma. She was born in 1900. Her brothers went off to fight WWI. Her parents and grandparents and great grandparents lived in these mountains. We even had a small plot on one of the forest hills of family graves. Some dated back to "the war." When you say, "the war" in the mountains, they don't mean the world war--they mean the Civil War. That's how it is in these mountains.

We grew up in a farm house in the bottomland. That's the bottom part of a valley where a river leaves its soil to make for pasture. We lived on the fork of Williams Creek and Rock Creek. Up the hollow the woods got deeper. Plenty of old cabins up there, abandoned. Some of them at some point were moonshiner cabins, back in Prohibition. In fall, sometimes they shelter hunters. In summer, sometimes they harbor teenagers looking for a little privacy. You see, in farm houses, the rooms are small, the walls are thin. You can hear laughing, crying, cusing, fighting, and mattress springs.

When you're old enough, you want to get out something terrible. One summer, I spent as much time as we could steal up in a cabin in the hollow. I'll always remember the heat in August, and how I'd strip down. Swim in the creek, and at night listen to the whippoorwill.