Recently, I've seen several posts and articles about people “escaping” their small hometowns. These people left for college, jobs, family, and all sorts of other reasons. While I agree that they left for good reasons (and, in some cases, didn’t have another choice), I have a problem with the word “escape.” It seems to imply that these people felt trapped by their small hometown – the people, the culture, even the landscape itself in some instances. I’m here to say that, while I did leave my small hometown, I did not and would never want to “escape” it.

As a girl from a rural little coal town in Southwest Virginia (and no, I don’t mean Roanoke), I know that my town is about as small town as you can get. I was brought home from the hospital to that town. I have lived in the same house since I was eight months old. My grandparents live in the same town. Most of my aunts, uncles, and cousins live in my little town. It would be safe to say that I know most of the people who live there and probably know one of their relatives if I don’t know them. None of this changed at all when I left. In fact, I could feel the lasting impact that that has had on me while away at college. There was this preexisting subconscious desire to at least know everyone’s name. That came from my small town. It pushed me to make the friends that I couldn’t imagine my life without now.

As a little girl in that small town in the Appalachian Mountains (App-uh-LATCH-un), my summers were spent romping through my expansive backyard barefoot, a new adventure every day. My winters were filled with sledding and strolling down a snowy main street. Fall was dedicated to bonfires and Friday night football while Spring was for helping (mostly just watching) my mom and grandmother plant new flowers and talk about how soon summer would be coming. Nice days were for drinking sweet tea on the porch and not nice days were for books, games, and TV inside. These memories and lessons are things that I can never escape and would never want to. They make me who I am.

The people and events (or lack thereof, some would say) in my small hometown have shaped me into who I am. My mountains (and, yes, I do feel like I can call them mine) never felt like a trap. My small hometown and everything that it entails gave me my wings, cheered when I stretched them out to fly, and always have open arms when I land there again. While “landing” in my hometown permanently is not realistic, I know that I will always carry it with me because escaping that wonderful little place would be as impossible as escaping my own heart.