nostalgia.
I'm riding in the Rhino with my father and i have this sick feeling in my stomach. It's not really a sick feeling as much as it is an aching, uneasy, unhappy, emotional, weird feeling. One that is hard to define by word but that is felt. It is the same one you feel when you stumble across a journal from the past or see a once admired lover with that new someone, that same feeling that you get when you visit the cemetery of a loved one.
I am home visiting my parents for one last time prior to heading back up north to Boston. I've been living in East Tennessee for the better part of the Summer trying to asses my desire and ability to live back down south. I have decided that both professionally and personally being back in Massachusetts is better for me. Anyway, I am visiting my parents to have some fried chicken, green beans, coconut cream pie and a ride on the Rhino to "the mountain".
The mountain, Chitwood Mountain is a place of my childhood. It's a place of mystery, of my father's and subsequently my ancestry, it is a place of rhododendron bushes running wild, of cold wet mud laced with that redish white clay, of small family cemeteries perched on the sides of mountains, of rutted out logging roads, of mud puddles big enough to swallow a Rhino, of snake hunting and shooting pistols, of hunting squirrels, of family hay rides with our "relatives from up north", of wild sour blueberries..."huckle berries" as my father calls them, of chopping wood for the winter, of rocky ledges filled with savage Indians, and of mystery enough to capture the imagination of a little boy raised at the foothills of a mountain that is part of the Cumberland Plateau in Eastern Tennessee. It is a place that has both frightened and amazed me since my childhood.
We are riding along the rutted out road along the tops of the ridges listening to the hum of the engine. My father points out different points of interest along the way while I start to sink into a hole of nostalgia. I start to remember not just the mountain but the people. The many trips made here as a child. My grandfather telling stories. My father telling stories about his aunts and uncles walking from the top of the mountain into town to get groceries, an entire day's journey. Of the hard times and poverty and of the freedom of living on so much land.
I am awakened from my nostalgic haze when the Rhino plunges to the left into a large rut and we almost tip to the side. After engaging the four wheel drive and me shifting uncomfortably in my seat we make it out. I am struck by how rough some of the roads have become. My father informs me that there is "more logging going on up on Chitwood these days." To further support that point we unexpectedly run out on to a newly graveled road. A road that seems so out of character for the surroundings it might as well have been a four lane paved highway. I was shocked. My dad said, hmm....looks like they are making way for more of those natural gas wells." Natural gas wells....hmmm. "Yeah, they are also drilling for oil up here these days, my dad added" Oil, I ask? "yeah, it seems back in the 70s they hit oil on certain parts of the mountain but just capped them off at that time because there wasn't a huge demand for it. With gas prices the way they are now it seems that someone is ready to make some money off of it now!" I was shocked, saddened, surprised....overall not really sure how to take it all in.
As we continued around the mountain we passed a huge truck full of logs headed down the mountain. Where were they going? I somehow imagined the logs saying goodbye to their home as they headed off to the lumber mill to become lumber for homes or other buildings. As I was contemplating this thought as I saw other trucks, a bulldozer, and a few other pieces of equipment off in what used to be the forest and now is somewhat of a clearing in the woods. There is a large cedar tree laying half in the road. We drive up to the tree and my father pauses a moment. He says, "that used to be the Boswell home place. That cedar tree used to be growing right in their front yard in front of the house.....I remember playing around that tree as a kid." There was a sadness in his eyes, almost as if that tree were an old friend laying in the road. I was sad for him. I was sad for the mountain, for the trees on the truck headed down the hill, for the changes that were happening.
I asked my dad who was buying the trees, where were they going. I expected him to say local builders or perhaps that they were being sent to other parts of Tennessee or around the south. What he did say shocked me beyond belief. He said, "the Japanese are buying them!" What, I asked? He said that as far as he knew the Japanese were buying the lumber, shipping it to back to Japan and burying it in the ocean where it would be perfectly preserved until they were ready to use it. I was floored...it simply didn't make sense to me. My trees, the trees of my childhood, those trees filled with mystery and Indians and other worlds were themselves being sent to another world. My sense of nostalgia and loss was even greater. Things really were changing. The Japanese were coming to my mountains.
My parents are finally retiring.... getting ready to start spending Winters in Florida and traveling about. Half of my grandfather's farm has been sold and a new house is going up where the chicken houses and farm equipment used to live. My perfect little niece is now 17 and going into her senior year of high school. Life is different in Oneida these days. I guess that's good...i have changed so I suppose I should be OK that my surroundings have also changed.
I've recently left Tennessee to return to Boston....to make the Northeast my home and to finally settle in a place that feels good, comfortable to me. As I was driving up interstate 81 last week making my way back to Massachusetts I imagined those trees...those trees of my childhood, from the "Boswell home place", from Chitwood Mountain East Tennessee on their journey as well. Strong trees with mountain roots and spirits making a long one way journey to a far away land....to Japan....and I was sad.
I am home visiting my parents for one last time prior to heading back up north to Boston. I've been living in East Tennessee for the better part of the Summer trying to asses my desire and ability to live back down south. I have decided that both professionally and personally being back in Massachusetts is better for me. Anyway, I am visiting my parents to have some fried chicken, green beans, coconut cream pie and a ride on the Rhino to "the mountain".
The mountain, Chitwood Mountain is a place of my childhood. It's a place of mystery, of my father's and subsequently my ancestry, it is a place of rhododendron bushes running wild, of cold wet mud laced with that redish white clay, of small family cemeteries perched on the sides of mountains, of rutted out logging roads, of mud puddles big enough to swallow a Rhino, of snake hunting and shooting pistols, of hunting squirrels, of family hay rides with our "relatives from up north", of wild sour blueberries..."huckle berries" as my father calls them, of chopping wood for the winter, of rocky ledges filled with savage Indians, and of mystery enough to capture the imagination of a little boy raised at the foothills of a mountain that is part of the Cumberland Plateau in Eastern Tennessee. It is a place that has both frightened and amazed me since my childhood.
We are riding along the rutted out road along the tops of the ridges listening to the hum of the engine. My father points out different points of interest along the way while I start to sink into a hole of nostalgia. I start to remember not just the mountain but the people. The many trips made here as a child. My grandfather telling stories. My father telling stories about his aunts and uncles walking from the top of the mountain into town to get groceries, an entire day's journey. Of the hard times and poverty and of the freedom of living on so much land.
I am awakened from my nostalgic haze when the Rhino plunges to the left into a large rut and we almost tip to the side. After engaging the four wheel drive and me shifting uncomfortably in my seat we make it out. I am struck by how rough some of the roads have become. My father informs me that there is "more logging going on up on Chitwood these days." To further support that point we unexpectedly run out on to a newly graveled road. A road that seems so out of character for the surroundings it might as well have been a four lane paved highway. I was shocked. My dad said, hmm....looks like they are making way for more of those natural gas wells." Natural gas wells....hmmm. "Yeah, they are also drilling for oil up here these days, my dad added" Oil, I ask? "yeah, it seems back in the 70s they hit oil on certain parts of the mountain but just capped them off at that time because there wasn't a huge demand for it. With gas prices the way they are now it seems that someone is ready to make some money off of it now!" I was shocked, saddened, surprised....overall not really sure how to take it all in.
As we continued around the mountain we passed a huge truck full of logs headed down the mountain. Where were they going? I somehow imagined the logs saying goodbye to their home as they headed off to the lumber mill to become lumber for homes or other buildings. As I was contemplating this thought as I saw other trucks, a bulldozer, and a few other pieces of equipment off in what used to be the forest and now is somewhat of a clearing in the woods. There is a large cedar tree laying half in the road. We drive up to the tree and my father pauses a moment. He says, "that used to be the Boswell home place. That cedar tree used to be growing right in their front yard in front of the house.....I remember playing around that tree as a kid." There was a sadness in his eyes, almost as if that tree were an old friend laying in the road. I was sad for him. I was sad for the mountain, for the trees on the truck headed down the hill, for the changes that were happening.
I asked my dad who was buying the trees, where were they going. I expected him to say local builders or perhaps that they were being sent to other parts of Tennessee or around the south. What he did say shocked me beyond belief. He said, "the Japanese are buying them!" What, I asked? He said that as far as he knew the Japanese were buying the lumber, shipping it to back to Japan and burying it in the ocean where it would be perfectly preserved until they were ready to use it. I was floored...it simply didn't make sense to me. My trees, the trees of my childhood, those trees filled with mystery and Indians and other worlds were themselves being sent to another world. My sense of nostalgia and loss was even greater. Things really were changing. The Japanese were coming to my mountains.
My parents are finally retiring.... getting ready to start spending Winters in Florida and traveling about. Half of my grandfather's farm has been sold and a new house is going up where the chicken houses and farm equipment used to live. My perfect little niece is now 17 and going into her senior year of high school. Life is different in Oneida these days. I guess that's good...i have changed so I suppose I should be OK that my surroundings have also changed.
I've recently left Tennessee to return to Boston....to make the Northeast my home and to finally settle in a place that feels good, comfortable to me. As I was driving up interstate 81 last week making my way back to Massachusetts I imagined those trees...those trees of my childhood, from the "Boswell home place", from Chitwood Mountain East Tennessee on their journey as well. Strong trees with mountain roots and spirits making a long one way journey to a far away land....to Japan....and I was sad.
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