This semester has been my most rewarding since coming to UNC Chapel Hill, and I haven't even been on UNC campus since the spring. It will also be my last semester, and this is the best possible way I could have ended my time with this institution. I’ve gotten to do work that actually matters to me. I’ve gotten to push myself to my limits, physically, in the most beautiful place I’ve ever lived.
I’ve spent most of it exploring, primarily at locations I am not at liberty to reveal. The ones I can talk about include various antique malls in Franklin North Carolina, the goodwill bins in Asheville, the soaring balds at Roan Mountain, the cheapest bar in Highlands (The Ugly Dog) and my personal favorite, the top of Satulah.
Satulah is my favorite because it’s miserable to walk up; a paved road surrounded by atrocious mansions on all sides, but you can ridicule them as you catch your breath. I’ve been trying to make an effort to be less negative when it comes to being uncomfortable or physically exhausted while hiking this semester, and while I hope I’ve mostly succeeded, it’s fun to point out architectural sins while you have the shin splints.
I came here knowing that western North Carolina is a place of inequality, with vacationers and “half backs” constantly encroaching on both the environment and the people who live here, but my time wandering has made that even more apparent. The mansions up on the top of the mountain surrounded by abandoned trailers and cabins and industrial buildings in the valleys below paint a very clear, aggressively on the nose picture. If I manage to return here for work or more education, I want to avoid being part of that problem, and do something to mitigate it. I’ve felt constant tension in wanting to live in a rural area, but also being someone born in the north east who moved to North Carolina due to a cheaper cost of living. I am someone moving from Durham, a place I grew up in and never wanted to leave, but have to because gentrification has made it an uninteresting and expensive place to live. And that’s not uncommon; there are a lot of people moving to western NC from urban areas, which kind of defeats the purpose. I don't know how to transplant myself anywhere that I would want to live without being part of that problem, but I'd like to think I'm now slightly more educated than most transplants about the consequences of it, thanks to our cultural history and human impacts classes.
This is all to say, I’ve enjoyed my time here and I want to come back without being part of the yankee migration. And as much as I have loved my time here, I cannot wait to leave this little vacation town and its very ornate homes. Macon County, I will be back.
-RD