I have always had a love for the mountains, particularly the Sierra Nevada range. When I was a little girl my Dad and siblings would camp near Red's Meadow for weeks at a time. See my parents were divorced and custody mandated that my Dad get visitation in the summer. He was a Professor of Geology and had class field trips during the summer, which left him not a lot of choice but to bring we kids with him. Anyway, we would fish and swim in the San Joaquin River. Red's Meadow was where I discovered the joy of pumice....rocks that would float. We kids would jump off high ledges to land into piles of pumice and sink down as in a pile of leaves. I would hike passed Devil's Postpile and on to Rainbow Falls with my Dad and then on to various points along the John Muir and Pacific Coast Trails. I had the advantage of my Dad being a Geologist, so I would learn all about how the mountains were formed and looked on in amazement as we discovered granite that had been gouged and polished by the ancient glaciers that had once been. As we hiked the trails I always hated to turn back, I always wanted to know what lay ahead. One of my friends from High School must have shared that same feeling and trekked the entire Pacific Trail. You can check out his journals here and be green with envy as I am: http://delnorteresort.com/.
But every summer, the camping came to an end and it was back to the San Joaquin Valley. Which wasn't so bad as it was surrounded by my favorite mountain ranges. Later, from the age of 12 through 15, I would live in the Southern Sierras. Some of the most magical times of my life.
As always life changes and I was brought to live with my Dad full time. He lived in the shadow of the another smaller mountain range, but I was no longer in them. I would look up at them and yearn for the pine breezes that I knew were there, but was stuck in the dust and flatlands of our horse ranch. I truly felt like Heidi who longed for her mountains, who felt that she could only be herself THERE. That love for mountains had to have come from somewhere.
My Great great Grandma was born in Cades Cove. She was the 7th of 10 children born to her parents and the first one to be born in Cades Cove. She lived her life there, meeting her husband and bearing children. Life in Cades Cove was one of much self preservation. She and her husband were farmers. They owned about 180 acres, which wasn't enough to sustain the family, but even in the 1880's, all the land in the Cove had been taken, leaving my GGGrandparents no other choice but to leave in order to own a bigger farm. My GGGrandma had never been out of the Cove until she packed up her family and by wagon headed out of the mountain valley. My Grandparents would later settle in Texas. There are not a lot of mountains in Texas. Although the Smokey Mountains are not a grand mountain range like the Sierra Nevadas or the Rockies, they are the mountains that Tennessee and North Carolina have to offer. I can only imagine that my Grandma would oft times think wistfully of her mountain valley home and long to be back there.
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1 comment:
Your grandma is so proud :*) Good job !
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