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WRITERS & |
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| 1540 - | 1770 - | 1880 - | 1900 - | 1978 - | 2000 - |
| INTRODUCTION |
MOUNTAINS IN OUR MIND'S EYE
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SPACE & GEOGRAPHY, HISTORY, LITERATURE |
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Western North Carolina is rich in
mountains. They are, in fact, our defining aesthetic. Many who have traveled to
western North Carolina have written about, drawn, painted or have photographed the
geography of their mind's eye. In the art of those who live and have
lived here, mountains are in their brain. These many writers
and artists have left us their recorded impressions of the mountains and the
people, and it is out of this rich cultural repository that this exhibit
pulls its statement.
Long mountain vistas are described with rhapsodic language and enumerations of the many hues of blue find their way into almost all accounts. Some accounts relate factual information and quantitative assessments such as the relative mountain heights, the varieties and numbers of trees found in the forest, the industries and economics of the vast resources found in the mountain geology. Some reports are more fabulous tales that are pulled straight from the imagination. Other narratives look closely at the people who inhabit the mountains and their cultural life-style is dissected against the sub-text of mountain life. Artists and photographers, like the writers, have captured long rolling views of the mountain ranges, mysterious forest interiors, magnificent trees, tender rhododendron, and the gentle mists and fogs that lend a timeless sense to the region. Writers and artists have captured in their own voice, and through their own lens, the people as they lived, worked, traveled, and explored the region and some of these reflections are excerpted in this exhibit to help the reader to start the journey of exploration of our western North Carolina mountains. Some of the writers, artists and photographers have walked many of the familiar trails found in this region. These trails will become familiar to the reader, for they appear again and again in the descriptive travel literature and in the fiction of the region. Many of the trails and paths have been on the travel and tourist circuit since the late 1700's. Some are remnants of old Cherokee trails, but some pathways are new and are now part of the many back-raods and hiking trails used by visitors to the region. Some of the more interesting mountain trails are documented in the UNCA archive of the Carolina Mountain Club, a local hiking club still active today. Some of these mountain trails are well known, while others are remote and arduous. As the writers/hikers recounted their journeys to the deep forest and up the steep mountains and to unknown waterfalls and along "brawling" creeks and "sparkling rivlets," they have captured the terror of deep forests and wild animals and they have stood on the tops of our mountains and looked out across "wave after wave of blue." In their writing and in their images, they ask us to share with them the beauty and the awe of this mountainous region. Some of these accounts of the mountains were never drawn from the actual journey, but were constructed from what the writer believed to be the essence of the mountain experience. While the writers may never have left the hotel or never have ventured deeply into the mountains, mountains abound in their accounts of the area. It would be difficult to miss the ruggedly beautiful geography, as no travel to the area is possible unless a mountain is crossed. It is our pervasive geography that finds its way into their accounts, and in fact, that is credited with physically shaping what came to be known as the Southern Appalachian region. Yet, whether there exists a place called "Appalachia" has been called into question by recent postmodern debates. Just what defines this region, may be the picture that some say exists only in the mind. Henry Shapiro's Appalachia On Our Mind (1978) makes a strong case for this perceptual reality. The accounts of mountains, however real or imaginary, abound in this literature. Too, there is no doubt that text and image have helped to construct the reality of western North Carolina in the minds of those who live here, as well as those readers who have never set foot on our mountains. While some say the mountains have been shaped by the literature ---- this is of course foolish. We, who live here know that we have been shaped by the mountains. All the "shaping" that has occurred over the years has yielded a literature that is spatially redundant, unique, peculiar, colorful, uplifting, florid, depressing and complex. In all their manifestations, geography, history, literature, and the mountains themselves, appear in these collected works and they speak to us about what we have come to know to be the Appalachian experience. Urban and rural, rich and poor, depressing and uplifting, our mountain geography and our human geography are one. The arrangement of the exhibit is chronological and
spans the period from the earliest exploration to contemporary times. The
most extensive literature about western North Carolina is from the turn of the century
and contains picturesque and sublime accounts of
forests and mountains in this region of the state. The accounts are
reminiscent of a stroll in a park --- in this our
largest park. Many of these
first-hand accounts have been included in this exhibit and allow us to
enjoy our environment through the eyes of those who came here in an
earlier time and/or who lived here in earlier times. The exploration and
exploitation literature provides solid observation of the area from the
sixteenth to the eighteenth-century. One, little-known work,
In the Heart of
the Alleghenies (1883) by Wilbur Zeigler and Ben Grosscup, is an
engrossing first-hand account of the area that is filled with facts and
figures as well as personal reflections on the natural beauty of the
scenery and natural life-style of the people. Charles Dudley Warner, said
to be a mentor of Mark Twain's
traveled here later in the 1880's. His account,
On Horseback (1888)
is a well-written and lively travel tale, that only reinforces the
journey taken by Zeigler and Grosscup. Margaret Morley, a
visitor to the area who came and stayed, wrote
The
Carolina Mountains (1913). The description of her home-town called "Traumfest"
[Tryon, NC] and other areas of the western part of the state, provides one of the most joyful and closely observed records we have
of the mountains and the people of western North Carolina. An
Ilustrated Guide Book is an effusive account of the region by a word-smith,
drunk on the marvels of nature and unwilling to leave the sanctuary of
Classical learning. Maria Louisa Pool's In Buncombe County, is a
little-known tale of a specific county in western North Carolina that closely observes the
juxtaposition of urban and rural life. Eloise Buckner Ebbs',
Carolina Mountain Breezes
is an "insiders" perspective on life in the western part of
the state that captures the region as it undergoes rapid change at the
beginning of the twentieth-century and can be compared to the extensive
body of work written by "outsiders.". Another "insider", Thomas Wolfe
, haunted by his geography and exiled by his people, never managed to
get "home again." Yet, had Thomas Wolfe lived, we do not
doubt that he would have "come home again," and his art is
filled with echoes of his origins. Most importantly, the enormous legacy of Wolfe can be found in the
work of many of the regional
writers, and also in those outside the region who return again and again to
Wolf as a mountain of wisdom and craft. The homage paid him by writers as diverse as Ray
Bradbury and others continues to remind us that this native mountain son, whose
"story of the buried life" touched a core truth in the lives
of many authors. Wilma Dykeman, Robert Morgan,
John Ehle, Lee Smith, Ron Rash, and
other contemporary writers are also of this geography and mountains run as sub-texts throughout
their work, or dominate them as is the case with Ehle and Morgan.
John Fox, Jr., James Still, Harry Caudill, Wendell Berry, Barbara
Kingsolver, Denise Giardina, and others who live in the Southern
Appalachians, regularly pull from the North Carolina experiences captured
by earlier writers from this region. All these writer's observations,
local and regional, are anchored to the mountains like trees to the
slope. Like those trees, their genres are some of the richest and most
varied anywhere in the country. Their literature abounds with the
historical "once" of those who came before, while carefully crafting the
"here" that is their lived experience. The new literature, while it
struggles to grow beyond the modern, borrows from the many postmodernisms
of this current age of crisis and change. While the structure of the new
writing may reflect the homogeneous "here" of our present space ---
the new human geography, and the new realities of a global
consciousness, --- the content still places mountains in the text in a manner
that foregrounds a deeply felt response to place. Today much in
"mountain" literature reflects the tensions of the here and now, tensions centered on contentious borders, immigration, class,
poverty, discrimination, industrialization, pollution, etc., and these
themes resonate with readers who recognize in them the universal human
condition. Yet, tucked into the narratives, into the writing, is a
sense of the mountains and their response to their geography. The
writer's reflections on
mountains found in this literary exhibit may not be our
language, or our view, but there is in these many views the very essence
of what we all know about the region and have come to be quite proud
of. These are our mountains and forests, this is our park, and it
is in our mind's eye and under our
care. |
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