Welcome home, how does that feel? to be socked straight in the heart? Turns out welcome home ain't all welcome. Still every time there is warmth of this; the view of the sorghum molasses boil from the hill above Julie's garden, the sound of fiddle tunes, and knowing that so many people I love are under that tin roof. Welcome home.
To see pictures of the process of making sorghum molasses click here
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Thoughts on visiting Margaret Miller in Meat Camp every First and Third Friday for the past Two Years.
This is the House your Father built. On the same road where your grandmother sowed seeds to the pattern of the stars; this is the land where your father planted in the Earth, not on the Moon. Those are the hooks in the fireplace where your mother hung her cast iron cooking pot, this is the kitchen where she fed eleven little mouths. There is the photograph of your oldest brother Marvin. In the hallway where your mother was told her eldest son would not be coming home from that hospital in Statesville; these are the walls that heard her heart break. Here are the stories you give me. On the first and third Friday of every month; these are the rooms where you show me the quilts your mother made, the smooth rocks you carried back from that beach in Canada, and that picture of you with your best boyfriend. This is the House your Father built. On the same road where your grandmother planted hens and chicks; these are the floors that remember your footsteps when your eyes don't see too well anymore. Here is the porch where I tell you goodbye and you tell me you love me; this is the promise I make to myself to comeback to see you again. "Forever taking pictures of mountains" will be carved into the rock above my head when I am laid to rest. I can't help that I am always remembering the structure of my backbone...
Last weekend in Harlan, Kentucky I gathered with folks whose backbone has the same structure as mine at the It's Good to be Young in the Mountains conference to discuss how to stay in Appalachia, and not only how to stay, but to thrive in Appalachia. Last weekend I had the energy of leaving Boone, the energy of being around other passionate young people. Last weekend it felt good to be young in the mountains. Surrounded by so many different kinds of mountain builders it was hard not to hold a vision of tomorrow. However, as a young black man attending the conference pointed out during the closing of the conference, that vision is not complete and we still have a great deal of work to do before we see tomorrow. Tomorrow cannot continue to be a vision of predominately white people, no matter how well-intentioned we are. Because tomorrow looks like understanding that Appalachia is not just in the hills and the hollars, Appalachia is Charleston, Knoxville, Huntsville, and Pittsburgh. And tomorrow? tomorrow looks like momentum... Momentum looks like the drive home from Harlan and a 20 minute conversation with Sam at a gas pump in Virginia about how we can love Appalachia actively and how not to just accept the parts that need to change. But momentum feels like your heart in your throat when a girl says that now she is going to write a poem about how the fire is not dead here. Todd Liberty Day Parade. July 4th 2015. Todd, Ashe County, North Carolina.
To be honest y'all I'm too tired to remember much of last week. So it goes. Come on in, you need rest. Your body hasn't been as faithful to you as you had always believed it would and you can remind yourself a thousand times that modern medicine can do wonders these days but that still doesn't stop that rising serpent called panic from constricting your chest, the slow kill. Come on in, take a load off. You have dirt under your fingernails and mud on your boots and your body is stronger when you work with the land and modern medicine really can do wonders and that serpent he's just a rising smoke.
Storm's Coming. In one of those rare moments where I am exactly where I want to be: returning to that mountain with Maggie and Jessica and the cows and horses. This is how you return to yourself. These women, just like them mountains, are your damn flesh and blood.
The weeks you work so hard your bones protest and every part of you feels heavier and your spirit is absent from the automaton that is your physical body, come these windows of presence when that automaton body of yours recalls its heart, and your muscles have missed your lightness like a front tooth, and dammit something has got to give! There is warmth in good company, there is stillness in the evening hours of spring, and there are mountains to be climbed with your best friend (because you know your spine is made from the same rocks and dirt that built those ridges)... damn, something has got to give.
Photographs I took during the sixteenth week of this year when there were few roads I did not travel after dark and I longed for the night to hold a little longer.
Last week, after less than a month, I lost my job at the Women's Fund of the Blue Ridge. A reminder that sometimes things don't turn out like you would like them to. This week re-ignighted a passion for photography and the place I am from that I have not felt since I was writing my senior thesis at UNCA. I went to the Appalachian Studies Association Conference at East Tennessee State University, it was wonderful and exhausting. I met so many fantastically intelligent people. I had a chance to meet Roger May and his amazing panel of photographers; Megan King, Pat Jarrett, and Kate Fowler, (If you are not following the Looking at Appalachia Project please check it out). Hearing them speak about the project I came to a glorious and terrifying realization: I want to be in Appalachia, I want to go to grad school to study Appalachian Studies, and I want to be a part of Looking at Appalachia through my own photography. Glorious because my heart quivers and quakes with purpose. Terrifying because my worried mind shivers and shakes with the logistics of making that move. Last week, after less than a month, I lost my job at the Women's Fund of the Blue Ridge. This week I didn't care so much.
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