Pastoral

It's changing here.
I know it.
Everywhere you look
somebody's putting in
a new road,
a new house,
a new business,
a new something-or-another,
and I know we're growing,
we need some of that . . .
but we're changing the beauty out of things.

It's not like
you can't tear down
a mountain.
Anymore, you can
and people do,
more or less?
So what's one mountain,
more or less?
Level off the tops,
we might have something to farm.

I never thought much about progress
until now,
and I certainly never thought of myself
as against it,
but it's turning out I am against it.
And it's not because progress is bad.

It's because progress--
the way we're doing it--
is so ugly.
A mountain is beautiful.

I'm young
I know that,
and probably rash,
but I swear
I hope I die
before the only thing that's left
that takes your breath away
around here
is the smell.

~From Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Yet :: Jo Carson

Change has felt so hard lately.  It feels like it's all changing--the weather, the way we raise our children, politics, my little town.  Some new businesses are coming in and at least one is causing a bit of a ruckus.  I can see why, honestly.  Time will sort out whether our demographics can support such things.  We've been watching construction at an old gas station, too, where it is rumored another fast food place will be going in.  It feels so strange to think of that quiet corner having bright lights and a drive-thru. 

I've seen the variety of "growth" in Appalachia.  People get desperate around here, and I understand what drives them.  Chain stores and restaurants bring a kind of security that a small business can't match.  I think about Jo Carson and her hometown of Johnson City, TN and what she might think in the six years since her death.  It's so built up there, so cluttered, so sprawling.  That's happened with another quaint historic town, Abingdon, VA.  After years of fighting a Wal-Mart, the county simply allowed one just outside the town limits.  They changed the beauty out of things in the name of money.

I often look out over the farm fields with a feeling of sentimentality.  I wonder how long they will stay that way.  I've already seen some big farms fold and sell the land for subdivisions.  I can feel a shifting as our older generations lose their hold on things.  It is bittersweet and uncertain.