Echoes of Appalachia

I write of Appalachia because it is a part of me, stitched into the very fabric of my existence. It’s the smell of woodsmoke on a cold winter’s night. It’s the roughness of calloused hands after a day of backbreaking work for an honest day’s pay. It’s the creak of a rocking chair on a front porch as the sun sets behind the ridgeline. It’s a life worth more than being summed up as a joke or a caricature.

As I write about Appalachia, I am penning a love letter to my family — those who instilled in me the meaning of pride. Not the pride that bloats itself, but the quiet, stubborn pride of sticking with it, of hanging on and carving a life out of rocky soil and deep hollers where others would have given up. These were people who raised big families with little more than hope, a garden, and the resolve to do better for the next generation.

I write of them because I don’t want to see them forgotten.

There’s a rich history here that most of the world does not know and too few bother to find out. The “Mountain Doctors,” as we sometimes called them, were the healers before hospitals found their way up the curving mountain roads. My granny was one of them. She knew the power in a sprig of boneset, how to steep jewelweed to soothe a rash, how to grind wild ginger into a poultice. She didn’t learn that from books — she learned it because life demanded it. When you were ten miles from the nearest town and couldn’t afford a doctor, you didn’t have the luxury of standing around. You learned what the fields and woods held. And if you were lucky, you had a mother or a neighbor who had learned it first.

I remember how she would mix tinctures and teas, how she’d place her hands on a person’s head and pray with a faith so strong you could almost see it hanging in the air. She wasn’t a doctor by diploma or white coat standards, but she healed people all the same.

And it wasn’t just the healing arts that made that generation unique. It was how they lived — how they kept food without a freezer. They dried beans by the bushel, hanging them up in great lengths to cook when the frost came. They canned every scrap they could get their hands on — tomatoes, corn, green beans, peaches. They stored apples in straw to last through winter. They buried potatoes deep in the ground and smoked hams in hand-hewn sheds. They didn’t waste anything because they couldn’t, and even if they could, waste was a sin in their time. Every bit of food was valuable; every ounce of labor was worth it.

They lived by the seasons’ rhythm, not by the calendar on the wall. Planting in spring. Hoeing and weeding through the hot summer. Harvesting and storing for the winter that would test every bit of their preparation. Work wasn’t just part of life — it was life. There was dignity in it, even when the work was hard, back-breaking, and thankless.

I recall family tales of seven, eight, sometimes a dozen kids living in cabins so small you could stand in the middle of the room and touch all four walls. They didn’t have much, but they had each other. They built lives not with credit cards and car loans, but with hammers, plows, and raw hands. And somehow, they raised children who knew right from wrong, who understood that a man’s promise was worth more than the paper a contract was signed on.

That’s why I write about Appalachia. Because I’m tired of others speaking for us. I’m tired of the jokes, the ugly cartoons that paint us as ignorant, dirty, or violent. I have seen the richness of generosity, the integrity of character, and the sharpness of mind that lives in these mountains. I have seen people give the shirt off their back to a neighbor, share their last meal with a stranger, and work themselves into an early grave just to give their children a better life.

Our culture isn’t something to be patted on the head and sympathized with. It is something to be respected. It’s rooted in sacrifices that few today can even imagine, in a strength that doesn’t need acknowledgment, and in a wisdom you won’t find written in any book.

When I sit down to write about Appalachia, I’m not writing about an idea — I’m writing about people. My people. Real men and women who went barefoot down dirt roads to church on Sunday mornings, who kept fires burning through the long winter nights, who taught their children to tell the truth and say “thank you” and “yes, ma’am” without being reminded twice.

I write so that they will live on after me. So that my grandchildren’s grandchildren will know where they come from — so they will know their heritage is the stuff of corn huskings and barn raisings, of gospel singing under wide skies, of kitchens filled with the smell of hot biscuits and home-canned jelly. I want them to know that being from Appalachia is not something to be ashamed of. It is something to be proud of.

And most of all, I want the world to see the real Appalachia — not the warped, ugly version shown on television, but the real heart of it. The stubborn, unyielding, beautiful heart that keeps beating even when no one’s paying attention.

And so I write. I write of the fields and the woods, of laughter and grief, of prayers uttered at bedside, of beans drying in long rows, of old songs sung in kitchens and on front porches. I write of the courage it takes to live here, of the beauty in a hand-built fence or a hand-stitched quilt.

I write because if I don’t, maybe no one will. And I will not let the memory of these mountains, or the people who built a life in them, fade into silence.

They are better than that.
They are better than forgetting.
And as long as I am able to put pen to paper, they will be.