Deep in the Southern Appalachian Mountains on January 30, 2010

Why would anyone want to live deep in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, on roads with dangerous conditions? In my best observation, this is the coldest January, the January with the most snow, being snowbound, the list of days with "cabin fever", and not the best of health, the worst ever January.

On the phone last night, I told one son it is the most beautiful sight. I do fully believe he would find it breathtaking. I did not tell him if his father and I had experienced this January in our first year here in the sixties, we would have tuned back. There would be no "back to the land" and none of our family history on this mountain, I am certain.

This morning I told a friend that this bitter weather reminds me of the January in the seventies when my father died, my husband left, my oldest son graduated from school and went to college, another son left the following year. The friend said, "Your father died and your husband left the same January?" We've been friends for many years. She did not know this. Yes, I admitted, and I told her, "My life as I knew it ended." That one time has been brutalized with January memories for me to dread. I now cannot even remember when I recovered from it, but I did.

It is different now. I made a new life for myself. I went to college. I became a certified teacher with 26 years as a NC State Board of Education educator. I became a practicing poet, an M.F.A. graduate, an instructor of writing, an author of three books of poetry, became a N.C. Arts Fellow, became a worker for NC Writers' Network and cofounder of NCWN West.

I am a woman who found happiness, with my full sun garden in the middle of a forest, on the northside of the same mountain. This morning when I saw my rhododendron bent to the ground, encased in ice, it troubled me. I know some of the perennials will come back. Some will not make it. All day today as ice breaks branches, I cringe.

Although in a lifetime, this is one of the worst Januarys for me, I will stay here on the mountain.