Along The Scars

For years, my family has been making the 10 hour drive to Charlotte, North Carolina to visit my aunt. We'd go for various reasons, like thanksgiving, birthdays, a lazy weekend in the summer, anything really. The route we take hasn't changed over the years, though every time we drive it I feel as though I see something new. In years past, all I saw on this drive were the insides of my eyelids and the screen of whatever handheld video game console I brought with me that trip. As I grew to be old enough to actually help mom make the drive, I learned about differing parts of the country. Early on, when mom was scared to let me drive at all, she didn't let me drive the portion of the trip that cut through the Appalachians. So I became familiar with the vast stretches of farmland in northern Ohio, and how the strip malls and rest stops began to disappear; the ground rising into rolling hills and sheer walls as if the weight of all that consumption and cement had been holding it down. A little older, a few more years of driving experience, and I finally got to drive through the Appalachians, sometimes literally when we passed through some of the tunnels in West Virginia. Driving through the mountains can be a very dangerous thing and for more reasons than just the difficulties of driving at such slopes. The raw beauty of the mountain range (especially this year, having read A Walk in The Woods  and being able to better appreciate what a geographic marvel I was in) strikes me every time I get the privilege of driving through that stretch of the Virginias, and it's easy to forget about the other cars on the road at times because of it. What stays with me just as much as this sens of wonder, is one of melancholy. Seeing the abandoned houses on the cliffsides, the billboards asking if you or your loved ones have been diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer from working in the coal mines, the warning signs for rock slides, it strikes me how truly alien and inhospitable these beautiful places really are. Sure, the things I mentioned are brought about from different sources, but it all lends to a general feeling of unease. In these areas in the mountains, we have cut into the world and are still trying to live at the site of the wound.