Moving, Dog Days, etc.

Though it is filled with ignorant, selfish people; though the air chokes me most days, and the pace stifles my very soul, I must admit that I will miss Roanoke just a tad. More specifically, I will miss looking in any direction and seeing mountains - not big hills, but real, honest-to-goodness mountains - lipping the horizon.

Seeing as our move date quickly approaches, let me say for the record that I will miss my slightly goofy looking Tinker Mountain most of all. Driving down 81, I always feel a sense of peace, or at least resignation, when I see the double-peaked hummock under which I've lived for the past three years. It wouldn't be fair to so cruelly abandon her without some mention of the solace I've found in pondering her oddly shaped body.

Also, let me mention that I am trepidatious about moving out of my sheltered, gentle cup, not because I expect our new home to be so foreign as to be uncomfortable or somehow unwelcoming, but because the landscape is so different. Landscape matters. Land tells us not just where we are, but WHO we are when we're on it, in it, beneath it. When I was in Arkansas with my soon-to-be husband, we were rooted, grounded, planted in our spot, happily growing along with our zuchini, cucumbers, spinach, greens, peas, peppers and our one, sad tomatoe. I WAS my extravagant, luscious basil garden. I became the licorice spice, the broad green sweetness of each and every leaf.

So, the thought of moving to such a different landscape, well, it's a little worrisome. I've spent so long living with a limited view of what's ahead - what happens when I can see a little further?

The thought of seeing what lies beyond the Ridge of Blue is both exhilerating and terrifying. I keep thinking of a trip I took to the Mississippi delta, where you could literally see the earth roll off the edge of the horizon, and how incredibly unmoored, disconnected, unsettled and depressed I felt during that jouney. Granted, I was studying the bio/enviro/socio-economic reason The Blues are The Blues (always a good way to get depressed and listen to awesome music at the same time) but still - the instant we rolled into Oxford, which is in the foothills, or at least has some contour to it, I felt whole and immediately happier than I had felt since leaving Virginia. I attribute this solely to the shape of the land beneath our wheels, the crest and fall of the undulating hills in the distance.

To counteract that fear of endless nothingness, flatness so profound the earth itself cannot summon the engergy to mend it, I think of the comfort of trees arching and swaying over the road to our new home. I yearn for their green susseration, the sweet music of rain on leaves, the smell of deep dirt nearby, the sharp ridge of the hill behind the campus - all of these things call to me where I hide behind the apron strings of my gentle giant.

But Tinker, my sweet mountain, will not shelter me. I will no longer be held, for better or worse, in the very palm of the earth, but will fly wildly to the tips of her fingers, just about dipping into the blue swells of the Atlantic.

The promise of new paths, a deep sinking into this place with roots, the thrill of a garden - for these things and the fine tuning of myself I will leave Roanoke gladly, but I will mourn the mountains, I think.