Back home in the mountains of North Carolina, down a forgotten railroad track, along a winding river, a dead village lies still beneath fallen snow, nestled within it’s protective cove, waiting for anyone, and no one. A graveyard, church, and a one-room schoolhouse was home for many families, and many years later, a commune for hippies exploring the wild beauties of the Nolichucky and being one with trees and grass and the wind and each other.
The pioneer families, spirits now, built their homes and lives here so as not to fight and die for slavery. So their sons and husbands would not fight and die for a cause not theirs. They rode the train, children and possessions in tow, into the mountain retreat, and created their own world with bare hands. Blood and sweat in the foundations and fields. They sold their white corn whiskey to a small town five miles down the tracks, and carried supplies on the train, or on their shoulders back into their mountain nook.
Spring came to them every year with the gift of young flowers, and fall brought cool wind and the crunch of orange leaves. Weddings and funerals. Rain and snow fell on their community, and was known only to them.
Old houses still stand, one or two. The school-house holds memories like ghosts of laughing children and years of learning. The teacher scribed a fare-well note on the rough-sawn lumber wall of the school house. Perhaps he did this so that future explorers might touch the past. Run your fingers along the words he scrawled along the wood. Feel the splinter from years gone by. One drop of your blood falls to the dirty floor and and in a very small, true way, you become part of the Cove’s history.
