Since moving to Highlands for this program, I have found myself in the same place many times this semester: legs sore, gasping for breath, walking up a mountain. Sometimes it’s because the incline is very steep, and I find myself having to scramble over huge rocks that might be a single step for someone taller, but for me requires using my entire five foot body to clamber over. Sometimes it’s not even that steep, but a falsely gentle incline that curves around the edges of the ridge and yet it still requires me to take little breaks to catch my breath. But even with all that trouble, I still keep doing it.
I had never considered the mountains my home, I grew up on the North Carolina coast, so too many aspects of the Appalachians felt foreign. Life on the coast made sense, the rolling waves facing out to the edge of the world, the salty wind that stung on your face, and what’s most relevant: the unending flatness of the coastal plain. Life in the mountains didn't make as much sense. Somehow, where I found the vastness of the ocean comforting, the darkness of the rivers and creeks felt dangerous. Where I could feel the wind and see the horizon, now I mostly felt enveloped by trees surrounded by stagnant air. But then there are the mountains. The mountains that have given me such grief trying to climb up them, but have also shown me such incredible beauties.
One of my favorite beauties is the balds. Before this semester, I had no idea what balds were and definitely didn’t know we had anything like them in North Carolina. Balds, as I’ve learned, are mountaintops with grassy peaks with an unusual lack of trees. Most likely they were maintained by herbivorous grazing and have (mostly) lived on today with many unique and unusual plant species. Looking at pictures of them online, they seemed cool enough, but experiencing them was entirely different.
Early in this semester, I spent an evening camping at Big Bald north of Asheville. A few of us drove up to meet some of our other classmates who had backpacked with a group of current and former IE students to set up bat monitors at the bald.
We were coming to camp there at night and help at the bird banding station there in the morning. We had a much easier time getting there than the backpackers, and basically consisted of us driving up most of the mountain and taking a short walk to the campsite. Even that short walk up the mountain got me a little out of breath, but boy was it worth it. Having never seen a bald, I was immediately taken aback by how open it was as we walked up and out of the trees. After setting up camp, we decided to walk up the big bald to the peak to watch the sunset. I found myself yet again struggling to make it up, but as I climbed the slow ascent I started to feel more and more at home. The wind, which I had missed so much in the forest, was whipping and flying every which way. At the peak, all you could see were mountains everywhere you looked, it seemed like the edge of the world once more. I felt like I could wade through the waist-high grass, and spend the rest of my days watching the sun go down, the nighthawks come out, and the milky way light up the sky. It was then I learned it maybe wasn't so hard to feel at home in the mountains.
This feeling of living my life at the tops of mountains seemed to stick with me wherever we went, whether that was a small outlook at Pickens Nose, a flowery hillside atop Purchase Knob, or again at a grassy ridge in Roan Mountain where the fog shrouded everything except the few evergreens that dotted the landscape. These sights began to feel less foreign, and more comforting (even if I still felt like death getting up to them).
Throughout the semester, I’ve continually surprised myself with how much I connect with these mountains that I have never been close to. Even after moving away from the beach and into the Appalachian outskirts of eastern Tennessee, I never quite felt at home. But coming here to Highlands, splashing in bust-your-butt falls despite not being able to see the bottom, climbing mountain after mountain to appreciate views that take your breath away, even just watching the leaves change into a million different colors I didn’t even know possible, has allowed me to find another home.
(but the beach is still pretty cool)
- Susie Cantonwine