July
"O tenderly the haughty day
Fills his blue urn with fire;
One morn is in the mighty heaven,
And one in our desire."
—Emerson
Day 07.3 - Cherokee
14 June 2017
We are blessed over the last dozen years with many a summer travel mainly to different regions of North America. Much of our travels were curtailed by time and subsequent venues. Invariably in the course of every vacation, we were overwhelmed by the four Ws (who, what, when, and why) at the places visited. Nevertheless, in our mostly "see America first" journeys, we've learned and gleaned from the tapestry of our country's makeup. Scenery and landscape were always present in places we visited, though in varying proportions.
The pastoral beauty of the hazy Appalachian hills, interlaced with waterfalls and rivers, and further accented by congregations of fauna and flora. It is a region of unsurpassed beauty. And yet, all were merely scenic props. They awaited man's intrusion or discovery to give the region permanence and purpose; to give it a fuller and magnified landscape later preserved for posterity now known as the Blue Ridges and Smoky Mountains.
The Cumberland Gap and its environs were once serene and undisturbed wilderness, saved as a trace for the woodland buffaloes. Since it became a designated path blazed by Daniel Boone, as noted by Turner on the 12 June journal entry of "Cumberland Gap", "...the procession of civilization marching single file...the Indian...the pioneer farmer - and the frontier has passed by." Man has left a historic imprint on the Gap since the 1750s. Today, it still serves as a transit point westward. A century later at a place called Gettysburg, a stretch of farmland now preserved as a "hollow" and "consecrated" ground. As a timeless memorial imprinted on this field of blood, President Lincoln dedication this parcel of land to all the "brave men, living and dead." The scenery indigenous to both landmarks had served to establish, fortify, settle, and stir one's imagination to the historic importance, respectively, of these two landscape examples.
Cheorkee, NC, is a small foothill town at the southern edge of the Great Smoky Mountain NP. Located within a designated federal trust, the town also serves as the headquarter of the tribal community. When we arrived at Cherokee this morning, a rather dark chapter of our republic's history peeled back and opened to us. Surely, in the palimpsest of our nation's history, the Cherokee landscape had been paved with tears, toils, tragedies, as well as triumphs.
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