Riding the Back Roads
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Peaceful farm in autumn light, Possumtrot Creek, Yancey County NC
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For the column ‘Roaming around Yancey’
The Yancey Journal and Common Times
– by Robert Towe, Naturalist
“Riding the Back Roads” November 10, 2012
Yes, the face of Yancey is changing, and rapidly. At least that face most residents, visitors, and tourists see—the highway corridor giving access to our rugged, mountain-rimmed county, and to the ‘outside’ world. The widening of that route proceeds as the ancient mountain land is blasted and graded down to make room for it. Like most, I will enjoy the benefits of the four-lane. Yet I am also saddened a bit: by the road itself, altering the landscape forever; even more, by some of the changes that result from better access to places of natural beauty. It appears these things are inevitable.
But let’s get off the big road. We have better places to go. These blue and auburn days of late autumn are some of the finest of the natural year. Winding along the county back roads, we view a patchwork quilt of scenes. The cool clear air still has a wistful softness to it, as the year’s warmth drifts away like golden Monarch butterflies, or thistledown on the wind. . . The leaves have fallen. November’s low light and purple shadows reveal the underlying bones of the earth.
Working with mountain acreage includes the ongoing enjoyment of driving the country roads. I see a wide range of farm and forest properties, and meet a rich variety of individuals who live and work closely with the land. Interesting folk, with stories to tell. We have much to learn from those who grow things. They are often watching the sky, their daily lives are closely interwoven with mountain weathers, and with the lives of plants and animals drawing sustenance from the sun and the fertile soil. Indeed, some of our more unique residents have purposely hidden their lives off the beaten paths.
Most rural roads still wind alongside meandering courses of streams. That’s where the first settlers hewed out wagon tracks in the early to mid-1800’s, to take them from headwater homesteads to the rough-sawn muddy village of Burnsville. Many roads and creeks still carry the names of the original families who settled them.
Our roads were widened from much older paths of the Woodland Peoples, who traveled these same streamside trails for thousands of years. Bits and pieces left from their lives keep rising to the furrowed surface of bottomland loam. We hold the primitive pot-shards and arrow points in our hands, and wonder. . .
With all our visual and ecological impact, we Anglos are recent arrivals. How much knowledge and wisdom have been lost from the unpublished pages of the recent and ancient past. I admire those who attempt to discover and preserve the richly layered human record. Countless generations rise from the nourishing land, living daily upon it, returning to it at last.
So these same streamside back roads that we rush down each day have deep slow histories. The timeless waters often run shallow this season, with less precipitation. Rock ledges and beds of tumbled river stones are now exposed to the chill dry light. Soon this will change, as late autumn rains and winter snows return to the high country, draining into the network of tributaries filling the Toe and the Cane.
Along with stream levels, the sun itself is also lowering. Mountain shadows lengthen across the valleys. Until December 22, the northern half of Earth keeps tilting further away from the closest star. Daylight hours shorten, nights grow increasingly longer. Thus the air, the surface waters, and the land itself all cool down, as solar heat declines. The high ridges looming above us will be coated again with rime. Snow crystals come spinning down, and something buried deep in us wakes up and briefly becomes a child once more, excited about the fierce beauty, the delicate wonders of winter.
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Tree shadows, old rough-sawn barn
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A quiet stretch along the Toe (Estatoe) River, northern Yancey County NC
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End of Summer
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Now the Goldenrods are losing luster
bending with days, and dust, cooler evenings
down the dry backroads.
As they have for centuries, farmers
burn the timeless fields—the year’s sweetness
of smoldering stubble—drifts away
with wreaths of smoke.
The wide old river runs low this time of year
mostly silent now, sliding quietly down
its ancient wash of stones.
Scribbled black calligraphies of crows
hearken into the sunset blush.
Harsh cries fade with distances, and dusk.
Summer’s last fireflies are twinkling little fires.
Memory tries to kindle, keep what it can—some light
or scent from all that’s gone from us, like smoke.
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–Quilla
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“All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the LORD stands forever.” –1 Peter 1: 24-25
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Ruach 333, by Quilla 