The mountains' call
The smell of Appalachia in the fall is as close as you can get to proof of a higher being
I’m blessed to live by the beach in Newcastle, Australia, but nowhere on earth compares to the Appalachian mountains.
It’s autumn here in Australia, and I find my mind drifting like the leaves back to the mountains. Every Fall growing up, I went with my parents and my brother to Brevard, where’d we’d stay in a nearby cabin. It was a beautiful three hour drive from our home in South Carolina, the road got windier and the air got cooler as the Toyota Camry climbed higher and higher into the orange hills.
I loved it so much that I decided to go to college near Asheville, graduating in ‘09 from Warren Wilson College. I arrived at age 18, I presume, like all college freshmen, young, idealistic and terrified. I was coming from a public school in South Carolina, in the heart of the bible belt to a new place in the South, a place with a different culture. (Asheville is sometimes called the San Francisco of the South.)
”We’re not for everyone… but then, maybe you’re not everyone” the college’s logo famously said at the time.
I recently went to a college alumni group to ask for photos of the pristine campus. Most of mine are from another era, when Facebook was only for college students. Back then we showed each other (and no family members nor potential employers) pictures of how we wanted to be seen. Here are two examples I pulled from the Zuckerberg archives.
There was something profound about attending Warren Wilson, although I had no way of appreciating this while enrolled. The windows were open in my dorm room as autumn approached. The crisp mountain air hung out in our space with my roommate, Chelsea and the other rambunctious hallmates. Here we had a rare chance to learn who we were and explore it in a relatively safe way. Paradise protected us. Mother nature was kind to our group of friends. The land of the pines was our playground. The smell of Appalachia in the fall is as close as you can get to proof of a higher being. I wandered around naively, no idea how privileged I was to be living, learning and roaming with little purpose beyond obtaining a creative writing degree. Everyone would benefit from a freedom like this.
You can’t recognize that you’re living in the moment until the moment’s over.
A combination of realities made my college experience sublime, and the proximity to nature and the ease of accessing it mattered the most, I now understand.
Either Chelsea or my friend Mandy first got me walking with them on the trails. Later I would be bold enough to walk by myself. As a kid I would happily hike and walk trails with other people, but it was a mission. Trails were a place you had to drive to get to. At Warren Wilson, they surrounded us. On a 1,100 acre campus, we had random seats, hammocks and picnic tables. We had grassy patches to sit and think. With 800-900 students, the property had enough nature to go around. Everyone could find a place for peace and other forms of entertainment.
The trails around the Swannanoa River offered me something different to what I’d known in my childhood, although I spent time outdoors growing up. We had a woodsy backyard.
At the time I was curious about any type of experience different from my wholesome suburban childhood. I judged the kids I grew up with: religious, conservative, uncultured and ignorant. In retrospect I was too harsh. Where you come from is a part of who you are, no matter how far you run.
Warren Wilson is a progressive, private, liberal arts college with a reputation for politically active, environmentally conscious students. Many of the people I went to school with were Montessori kids, homeschooled kids, private school kids. Most were from the West Coast and New England. Students were required to work to help pay for their tuition. Students worked in the cafeteria, the garden, the farm and the faculties. Along with academics, we all had to complete 100 hours of community volunteering by the time we graduated. (Work, academia and service, the famous triad.)
I went to school to experience EVERYTHING and to fall in love with probably every single student on a campus.
I wrote cringe essays about sex and love, inexperienced as I was, thank you to Dr. Catherine Reid for supporting me anyway.
But now, what stays in my bones are the trails, the sky, the trees, the snow on the bridge in the winter, riding my bike up harrowing hills. I have so many memories of the sky. We’d smoke and hang out on the roof of the dorm (“Ballfield A for life!”). We tubed down the Swannanoa river and came out sunburnt downstream, hitchhiking our way back to campus. I can visualize a sketchy but incredible treehouse in the woods with a rickety ladder (where was that?) One night Chelsea and I fell asleep under the pavilion as rain poured down on its roof. Skinny dipping was a regular and joyous occurrence, in the pond and river, day or night. Sometimes after supper at the vegan /vegetarian Cowpie Cafe, I’d lay on the grassy knoll and stare up at the tree branches. My geology professor took students on camping adventures up North in Tennessee. We’d explore rock outcrops and wade in rivers.
I wish I could go back and make myself appreciate it more.
Several people I know remember WWC fondly. The general consensus is “remember that crazy time when we lived in a bubble/ another planet that was Warren Wilson?” I’ve gone back since. It’s always amazing, but it will never be the same.
College was a crazy time full of so much creativity, change and growth. Nature was the blueprint for everything else that happened, in the classroom, the dorm life and in myself.
Dogwood Pasture is probably the most famous location on campus. It overlooks the winding Warren Wilson Road and the barn. Many young adults have done strange and hilarious things here. Mandy and I sat on the concrete slab one night singing Ani DiFranco at the top of our lungs. Another night I was heartbroken and lonely. I went up to the same slab and cried desperately to the moon.
It was a different experience in the daylight, but the field was always there for me, always beautiful, always happy to host me without judgement.
I went back to the mountains with my brother in the summer of 2022, just for two nights in Asheville. It was bliss. We saw live bluegrass music; we saw live bears! We drank organic wine and kombucha from the French Broad Co-Op. We drove along the blue ridge parkway and blasted folk songs on his car’s stereo.
When I contemplate moving home to the States, I immediately go somewhere in Appalachia. Maybe it’s on Warren Wilson Campus, maybe it’s one of the kooky cabins my family and I stayed in growing up, maybe it’s just a rocking chair at twilight on a front porch. The lightening bugs are coming out, the cricket chirps are competing with the cicada songs. Maybe it’s an early morning start, like when I had to get up before the sun to swipe students’ cards in the cafeteria for breakfast. I’m walking across that iconic bridge above the main road, seeing my breath in the air thinking about coffee and stars.
That’s all for now. Sorry this was a bit of a word rollercoaster ride with no clear start or ending.
Thank you to WWC, thank you to mama nature for your bounty and also my parents for saving up to pay for my tuition. Had you not, this charming experience might be viewed in a different and potentially resentful lens.
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Beautiful Alex. It sounds like a dream. I only briefly passed through South Carolina. You have made me want to go back and spend time there!
This brings back so many good memories for me, too. Thanks, Alex.