Mountain Mama needs a fluff & buff before going prime time. Kids love splitting open geodes wondering what layers of color and crystal are hidden within. Sadly, men far less interested in crystals and color, invented the machines that can crack open a mountain for the black treasure that lies within. A homage of sorts to John Denver's West Virginia Mountain Mama, it's a beautiful state yet scared by strip mines reducing mountains once thought higher than the Rockies to piles of rubble. With a bird's eye view, we can see the scars; when the trees shed their leaves, we can see the homes speckled about, when we close our eyes, one might see what the first settlers and native Americans gasped at, a carpet of wilderness rolling away in all directions. We all enjoyed the benefits of cheap energy, but the cost will last for generations. We despoil our neighborhoods and then flee to the last vestiges of a virgin continent, the hills, mountains, beaches and wide-open spaces, only to turn these back roads into congested pathways to vacation & retirement homes thankfully hidden beneath a mature canopy of second growth forest. We invade the country, then cry out its infested with lions, tigers and bears - Ok, coyotes, wolves and a beaver or two. It's getting harder to 'get away', to rest one's soul, to disconnect by a mountain stream, alone, in the quiet of a tree rustle or song of a morning dove.
It's said the shadows come quickly in the Appalachian hills. Dark and mysterious its best be home before the shadows grow deep. Then again, the closeness of it all, the claustrophobia of never seeing the horizon beyond, brought folks together in prayer and song. A magical world of folk stories and lore, its slipping away, taken down by the ever urbanization of what was country. Be thankful you had the chance to see it before the only remembrance comes from faded pictures of a landscape lost in time.
Mountain Mama needs a fluff & buff before going prime time. Kids love splitting open geodes wondering what layers of color and crystal are hidden within. Sadly, men far less interested in crystals and color, invented the machines that can crack open a mountain for the black treasure that lies within. A homage of sorts to John Denver's West Virginia Mountain Mama, it's a beautiful state yet scared by strip mines reducing mountains once thought higher than the Rockies to piles of rubble. With a bird's eye view, we can see the scars; when the trees shed their leaves, we can see the homes speckled about, when we close our eyes, one might see what the first settlers and native Americans gasped at, a carpet of wilderness rolling away in all directions. We all enjoyed the benefits of cheap energy, but the cost will last for generations. We despoil our neighborhoods and then flee to the last vestiges of a virgin continent, the hills, mountains, beaches and wide-open spaces, only to turn these back roads into congested pathways to vacation & retirement homes thankfully hidden beneath a mature canopy of second growth forest. We invade the country, then cry out its infested with lions, tigers and bears - Ok, coyotes, wolves and a beaver or two. It's getting harder to 'get away', to rest one's soul, to disconnect by a mountain stream, alone, in the quiet of a tree rustle or song of a morning dove.
It's said the shadows come quickly in the Appalachian hills. Dark and mysterious its best be home before the shadows grow deep. Then again, the closeness of it all, the claustrophobia of never seeing the horizon beyond, brought folks together in prayer and song. A magical world of folk stories and lore, its slipping away, taken down by the ever urbanization of what was country. Be thankful you had the chance to see it before the only remembrance comes from faded pictures of a landscape lost in time.