Outskirts Press, INC.

At Home in a Mountain Enclosure

Some might call this manuscript: Memoir for a Misfit. Most of us could be described that way at least for some segment of our lives. This journey took half a life to find the right fit. It is a true story. Some names and places are fictionalized for the sake of privacy. The labyrinthine path led into a convent, a contemplative monastery and two rough inner-city neighborhoods before culminating in wild and wonderful West Virginia at the bottom of Colt Run Holler, or as some might call it a "valley."

The journey was in search of solitude and simplicity of life. The deepest desire was to become attuned to the whisperings of the Creator. The next dearest wish was to identify with and learn from the mountain folks, wisdom, gleaned from humble lives lived quietly and close to the earth.

Sequestered by a mountain fastness there is no need for convent walls. Like the desert fathers and mothers in the early centuries of Christianity, the habitat provides natural solitude without man-made barriers. Brother Sun and Sister Moon, as St. Francis of Assisi used to call them, along with many other of Mother Nature's wonders lay at the solitary's doorstep where one is free to soak in an evening breeze or a morning's dappled pink sunrise bursting thru misty mountain silhouettes.

The mountain people, as I learned from caring for the sick in the far outreaches of Roane County, had lessons to teach that I could never learn from books. This memoir shares their true stories of life lived amidst these often forgotten hills.

A little cortege of family and friends followed the casket up a one lane gravel pathway amidst the cedars to Mount Olive Cemetery. The resting place looked down on a meadow dappled in gold flowers. Red bud trees with their lacy fuchsia foliage greeted the procession as an azure blue sky cuddled birds' songs. They seemed to sing: "Come on Home Jack."

With his passing it was as though an era had ended. Winding our way back down the mountainside I reflected on my own origin on the planet and how I found myself falling in love with this Appalachian land and her people.