There are days when a light mist settles over sleepy towns, like those found nestled in the mountains of Western North Carolina. I had the sublime advantage of being raised in an enlightened pocket unlike any of the traditional provinces scattered around central Appalachia. Those small, huddled masses of conservative thoughts never stop to question the presence of this mist; I am alone in my asking.

Do the mountains themselves, ancient and sloping, exude it as fumes from the dark recesses of their blue ridges or cavernous cores? Rather, deep within the forest, it pours from pores in the rich soil, carrying with it souls of creatures long dead, their remnants distilling into humus coating the damp dirt and leaves.

I must return here, to my ancestral heritage, to find the muse that lurks in hollowed stumps, in the nooks among roots and the corners behind piled stones. Are these effigies the graves of our past, which we wish to forget and bury with the memories of bygone sin? Here, I will sit. Here, I will write. Here, I will question.

With the state of our nation as it currently stands, there is no shortage of questions to ask. It comes to me as a surprise that the earth has yet to physically reject the human race on account of the filth with which we have littered it, pollutants of nature, of society, of faith.

The asphalt thoroughfares that crisscross the land in blackened veins — modernity ripping apart history to make way for convenience — give me no comfort, put no determination in my step. Like the dream they hope to guide us to they are dead, still and unchanging. Why follow a road that leads to nowhere but empty promises?

On Sundays every door is closed, every window blinded, each lock secured as tightly as their closed minds; still one gate lies open to visitors, leading solemnly to the land of the dead, rows of headstones demarcating where those who were loved lie, or once lied, before the earth swallowed their decomposing forms and fed them to its children, nourishment for the things that creep and crawl in the darkness below. Such places are supposedly hallowed, waiting patiently beside a crumpled church for the day another congregate ceases to draw breath, and we open its maw to lower in its next meal; in them, the fate of our nation, and all humanity can be seen.

There is renewal in the foggy visage of such days and so I wander, vision obscured by milky white, hiding myself in the forest, away from this downtrodden monument to the folly of man. Wildflowers here have risen and fallen year after year with the chill of approaching winter, petals shed and stems collapsed, only to have offspring rise once more, towering above their decaying parents, children blessedly ignorant of their fate.

It is uncannily similar to how the dying traditionalist beliefs that rule our country with a punishing hand have nurtured hate in their heirs, who are ignorant that they will suffer the same downfall as their predecessors. There is no thought in my ambling step; I move instinctively, at last finding myself knelt in the mossy carpeting beneath this ancient display of living obelisks, crying out for answers lost in the rings of a toppled tree. I cannot read the writing of my mother, her arcane language indecipherable to my mortal senses, yet I crave comprehension of her messages written here.

God does not live in those crumpled churches, stained light filtering in among oft-used pews, their dark wood creaking like the bones of the elderly who occupy them. The truth that we crave, to which we are addicted with our entire being, lies not in the words of bible or a preacher but in the life that we hail from and are daily apart of, the life of this globe, so verdant and nurturing to all that walk upon its face, hurling its way through the galaxy in spirals around a burning star.

There is an ingrained desire to forget our history, so that the way we elevate ourselves over our brothers and mothers can be justified, but we cannot deny this: the Earth is our Earth, it is our creator and the giver of life, regardless if fate lies in the hands of some omniscient being.

Just as a mist settles over this sleepy, backwards town, so it settles over every person oblivious and unwilling to embrace our living, growing ancestry. It is then the duty of the rising educated youth to be our earth’s heralds, to inspire growth and change in those rooted in their outdated conceptions; for if these people listened with more than their ears, exposed the cavities of their chests to the hum of the earth and all that surrounds them -- perhaps, then, the mist would clear.