This is My Story

 

I remember the day my sister called and told me that she thought our grandmother’s “people” came from East Tennessee. I capitalized “east” and am fully aware that East Tennessee isn’t a state. It is a place, a place in the world where the Appalachian mountains rise and fall, blue after blue, like gentle waves on a calm sea. When light breaks, the valleys puff up wisps of fog from their shadows. The Cumberland Plateau stretching from Kentucky to Alabama separates the east from Middle Tennessee another of the state’s “grand divisions." The plateau created a barrier isolating East Tennessee for much of the state's early history.  

I’m not sure what year Leanne called to tell me about her sleuthing, but I know I was talking on a portable phone, (an in-house wireless system that liberated us from the cord). I do know it was before I held a phone in my hand like it was an extension of my brain. 

Those in my generation would agree our historical timeline is divided like Tennessee is divided by geography. We have lived before the smartphone and after. No doubt, the technological revolution has changed the geography of our lives. The division is more than topography. The cultural shifts on this side of the plateau have caused great divides unlike any we could have imagined. 

My sister who was thinking we had family history in East Tennessee soon discovered that that "our people" lived in what is now the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. During our chat, I suddenly remembered the family name Cable was on a grist mill preserved in the national park. Cable's Mill sat beside a stream in a beautiful valley, a place once inhabited by the Cherokee and then pioneers. She determined that the Cables who ran the mill weren't in our direct line, but when Leanne had the lead into Cade's Cove and the connection to our great grandmother's surname, the rest was history. Literally.

I loved the Great Smoky Mountains before I knew about Peter Cable, the Baptist church he helped build, or stood beside the giant oak who could tell his stories, but my perspective shifted when I knew I had a connection to the place. I began to think how every generation has their challenges---realities that give honor and dishonor---including my "people."

I’m a mountain person even though I love to visit the sea. I find the mountains trails, the quick rivers, and the trees bending toward the sun in the valleys to be generous in their beauty even though the history in the park is curated, brushed over, and reflects a moment of time rather than the breadth of reality.

This is our dilemma in the changing landscape of culture we are living in at present: How will history tell our story?

I wrote a poem after hiking with Jeff back in January. We walked up into snow our first few days on soggy paths. The winter is a bonus time in the usually damp climate. The crowds are low and the temperatures chilly. There's no threat of bears or bugs. I love peaking through the naked branches to glimpse ridges hidden from sight most of the year. Winter is a quiet time to be in the woods---quiet, except for the sound of rushing water.  

I’m sharing my poem because I thought you might connect to it---no matter if you like history, or mountains, or are considering the division we are living in at this moment in time? Maybe you, like me, are wondering how the story of your generation will be written? If you are a believer in Jesus, do you have the assurance that His Story will continue as it has since time began? I hope so. It’s a beautiful story, a story of love and hope, and most astoundingly, a story of grace.

This is My Story

There were things

that made me even though

I was not present.

There were people

who never dreamed I’d be—

people living their moment even

when the ceilings were low

and the corn crib empty.

There were songs sung

into mountain air—

songs echoing still

in bright valleys,

humming unhindered

in hemmed-in hollows.

There were tears—

tears shed from places so deep

the rivers have never ceased

to carry their sorrow.

The stars, 

they witnessed it all

the preserved and the fading,

the hard and courageous,

not to mention the mundane—

if mundane is a thing?

I walk old paths and new,

logging roads,

and game trails, stop 

sit beside the stream,

listen to an epilogue

that will never be written.

Before I go,

I gather my orange peels

my walking sticks 

my blessed assurance— 

And do my best 

to leave no trace.