Mountain Love

Our College Roommate’s Big Birthday Reunion in the Smokies 2021 was a big success and was over way too soon! 

I was so excited about my upcoming week with Deb, Nance, Beth at Nick’s mom and dad’s house in Sylva, I could hardly wait. Nick’s mom had made sure the place was sparkling before she left for parts East and I had made trips to Wal-mart to stock up on the supplies we’d need for the first couple of days of our visit — coffee, half n half, wine, vodka, oatmeal…, that’s about it. We had all agreed to share hostessing, shopping, cooking and cleaning duties, so all that was left was for me to wait for them to drive down from Beth’s in Kentucky. Deb had flown in from LA and Nance from Dallas to visit their families in Louisville, the perfect place to start their road trip to N.C.

I had not laid eyes or hands on Beth or Nancy for well over a year, although, fortunately Deb and I live only five minutes from one another. Even though our weekly Friday Zoom Happy Hours had served to keep the four of us connected during the Covid shutdown, we had not been able to visit one another like we’d done pretty regularly in the past decade. It was rare that all of us could manage time away at the same time, but often three of us could get together. We had been fantasizing about a big trip together because the four of us were celebrating milestone birthdays in 2021. (We all graduated Western Kentucky University in 1983, so you do the math.)

I felt like I would jump out of my skin waiting for my besties to arrive. I had been looking forward to this for months. I hadn’t realized how traumatic the shutdown had been on my system, how not seeing family and so many dear friends had affected my emotional health drastically. I’d been in a state of anger and overwhelm for a whole year. Deb, Beth and Nance were the antidote.

“I love this place, Les,” Deb squealed when she climbed out of Beth’s car. Deb had vacationed in these mountains as a child, camping with her family in Maggie Valley, so this was a home-coming of sorts for her too. I ran to them, practically pulling them out of the car to hug them. We laughed and talked over one another, making our same old jokes in the voices of our characters we created in college, Mama and Her Sweet Darlins (long story.) I showed them around the house then each of them claimed a bedroom of their own. Within moments we were gathered around the firepit on the back patio with glasses of chardonnay. I breathed a sigh of relief. The fears and annoyances of the past year started melting away. I was safe with these three. I was my authentic self. 

“Okay, so we’ve got the menu figured out for the week,” I said after we all settled a little. “So, schedule. I made a reservation for rafting on the Tuckasegee on Saturday. We can take some short hikes up in Cullowhee or walk down on the Greenway every day. We’ll do yoga every morning. There are a bunch of breweries in town I want to take you to. We’ll host Deb’s writer friend on Sunday night…”

“And that’s the only time we’re seeing someone else,” Nance chimed in.

“Yes, Nancy,” Deb said. “We won’t allow anyone else to speak to us the rest of the week.”

Deb was in talks with a local writer about a possible television collaboration. We had all read her work and agreed she would probably be cool. She lived in the next town over and was bringing a pie. We would need to be on our best behavior.

“So, I thought tomorrow I’d drive you over to Cherokee and show Nance our old stomping grounds,” I said.

“Bars, bars and more bars, we got ten live bars,” Nance droned.

“Yeah, no more live bears in cages in Cherokee any more,” I said. “You’re going to be shocked at how the place has changed since we were there in 1982, Nance. Since the casino has come in, the reservation has many more resources. The tribe is rolling in the dough.”

“Are they still doing outdoor drama?” Beth asked.

“Well, a version of it, but they’re trying to use local people instead of hiring young white people like us.” I said. Nance and I had both been hired to be dancers in Unto These Hills, the story of the Trail of Tears, the summer after our Junior year. I had also worked there the summer before when Nance had been employed at The Lost Colony in the Outer Banks. Beth had spent those summers at  Discoveryland in Tulsa and Deb in West Virginia.

I made some dinner and then we headed back to the fire pit.  Beth brought her guitar out and we sang all our old favorites.

The next morning, we loaded in the car and headed to Cherokee, fifteen minutes West. I drove through town and then turned between the Indian Fairgrounds and the Museum of the Cherokee, up to the living Indian Village. The girl at the booth let us take a nice hike around the village without paying admission. The day was overcast and mild and Beth identified plants as we strolled along. Deb stopped to talk to a local who was planting a garden of pole beans.

“I’m going to tell Rob,” I said. (Refer to the post, Morris’ First Flight for further explanation.)

I drove us up to the entrance to the theatre where we were able to walk right in and look at the stage from above.

“I wonder if we can get backstage and see the dorms and stuff,” Nancy asked.

“It’s got to be locked up,” I said. “But let’s go see.” I drove back down the hill a little way until I saw the drive leading up to the back of the theatre and the employee housing area. I turned left and started heading up the drive until I saw the iron gate which sat propped open with a concrete block.

“Oh, my gosh, you guys! It’s open! I can’t believe this,” I said.

“Can we go up and see the dorms?” Nance asked. 

“Nancy, do you remember the first time you came up here, because I’ll never forget the first time I did. The feeling that washed over me was…hard to describe.” 

It was May of 1981 and I had driven the seven hours from Owensboro in my orange Maverick after being hired as a dancer for the outdoor drama. Mom and Grandmom had followed me down in my Grandmom’s big Oldsmobile. We drove South out of Kentucky, took a left at Nashville, drove three hours and then an hour past Knoxville, I started seeing mountains come into view. We drove through the kitchy town of Pigeon Forge, then skirted Gatlinburg, then when we entered the Great Smoky Mountains National Forest, the road started curved this way and that and vegetation grew thick and dense like it was trying to overtake over the highway. As we passed wooden signs for hiking trailheads and overlooks, the this foliage filtered out the sunlight. As we approached the highest point at Newfound Gap, the temperature dropped ten degrees. It grew so grey and misty that I had to turn my headlights on. I could barely read the sign for the North Carolina state line through a haze of cloud. It was mystical.

We dropped back down the other side of the mountains where the sun reemerged and the temperature rose again. We came out of the canopy of trees right onto the Cherokee reservation, a strip of sad shops lining the road. They advertised pottery and moccasins and ice cream, tempting tourists with the promise of seeing sad, skinny live bears in cages. Behind the shops on the left ran a beautiful rocky creek, the icy water a product of runoff from mountain snow. I followed the drawing of the map I’d been sent and found the right turn between the fairgrounds and the museum, following the signs to “backstage” and “employee housing.” When I passed the open iron gate, the road went straight up the hill through a cave of lush, green vegetation. Pines and mountain laurels closed over my car like a soft blanket. Dappled sunlight played on the swaying branches and I could swear I could see the underbrush of vines sprouting from the beds of pine needles covering the ground. I was immediately enchanted. I felt like I was being welcomed, embraced by nature.

From that moment on through that summer, the Smoky Mountains, both the people and the place, worked their way into my heart. I’d never ever felt a connection to place before. I’d seen many beautiful places by the time I was twenty years old. My Dad had taken my sisters and me from the Bay Area in California all the way up the coast to Vancouver Island. Gorgeous. Then the following year, we’d gone all the way south to Tijuana. Incredible. Even the familiar green, rolling hills and countryside of Kentucky and Tennessee were lovely in their way. But the mountains just got to me. From the icy streams to the foggy mornings to the inky black nights, I loved the place. I wrote poetry about it. I wrote songs to it. I befriended a group of young native girls who were extras in the show. When the summer came to a close, we said good-bye, hugging and crying. I promised them that I would return to these mountains to get married. And then I did.

“There’s the backstage, Nance!” I pointed to my left. “Right up there was the nasty bathroom where all of us dancers had to shower together.”

“Yeah, we had to wash off the Texas dirt that turned us into Indian Maidens,” Nance said. “Cultural Appropriation. That would never fly today.”

“And here’s the girl’s dorm on the right where we roomed together, Nance,” I said.

 “Except you never really slept in our room,” she said.

“Oh, and you did?” I said.

All four of us had tales to tell of our summer outdoor drama adventures, each summer offering a romance that may or may not have lasted into the fall semester at Western. We each grew up a little bit in the three months we were apart and we shared our experiences with one another in five- and six-page letters. When August rolled around, we reassembled for the school year, living together like sisters. We didn’t know we were forming a bond that would strengthen over the next forty years. I drove back down the hill feeling such warmth and gratitude for our shared history. 

The next four days passed in a blur of talking, laughing, reminiscing, hiking, daily yoga practice, singing around the firepit, drinking chardonnay and eating delicious food — veggie quiche, Beth’s famous Pork Butt, pasta with shrimp, Thai salad. We served pork tacos, black beans and margaritas to the local writer and somehow managed to behave ourselves. We walked around the cute little town of Sylva and stopped by the brewery on the river for afternoon beers. Deb received a nice royalty check for her novel so treated us to dinner and champagne to celebrate. We all slept like babies and woke excited about the next day’s adventure.

We did have a couple of low points, the first when we lost Nancy from the boat on the river rafting trip on the Tuckasegee. After getting cursory instructions from our 16-year-old guide, we suited up in life jackets and manned our spots on the inflatable 4-person raft, assigning Beth to steering since she had some boating experience. The rest of us paddled. We did fairly well until we hit our second Class II rapids (we were unaware that we would be navigating any rapids at all on this trip, but oh well!) and our raft hit a rock, catapulting Nancy two feet into the air. Beth grabbed a hand and I got hold of a foot before Nancy landed in the frigid water in “boat pose” exactly like our teenager instructed in case of going overboard. When she managed to haul herself back into the boat, Deb and I laughed hysterically, our voices carrying down the rock walls of the river in an echo chamber. Nance, always a good sport, laughed along with us, her teeth chattering.

The second low point came when we discovered the sauvignon blanc we’d left too long in the freezer. Enough said.

I always cry when our time together is over. It’s like coming back to reality from a dream state. I’m usually one of the people in the car shouting “thank you,” and “see you soon.” This time, I stood at the front door and waved as they pulled away from the house. Before they left, I made them promise that we would have another reunion in the mountains, maybe allowing the husbands to come next time. Showing them around, seeing the mountains through their eyes gave me renewed appreciation for the place that I’ve always loved. I just loved it more when they were with me.