Banner Elk

The thread of western North Carolina seems to have woven itself through the tapestry of my life. It began with a summer vacation to the Great Smoky Mountains, one of only a two family holidays I distinctly remember. The magic in the babbling brooks, verdant mountains, and clean, clear air captivated my young imagination. Since then, their beauty has drawn me back nearly a dozen times for camping trips, Boy Scout camp, driving excursions, novel research, even for Karen’s and my honeymoon. So naturally, this year, we chose to revisit that same inn in Banner Elk for our twentieth anniversary.

I know a lot of geeks, so I regularly hear the pointed questions: Where are our transporters? What about our teleporting stones? I contend that technology already exists, if you know how to squint and look at it. It’s just slower than we’d like. First, we get into small, familiar chambers decorated to our individual tastes with our individual choice of music. Then, we hang out in a large room where we replenish ourselves with familiar brands of coffee and prepared food before we trundle into seats in a long tube to fill the time with that same familiar soundtrack along with our books and other entertainments. And when we eventually emerge a few hours later, we stare out onto a vista of someplace completely different.

Though the settings of this Slow Glass machinery can be bit arcane. If you aren’t careful, you sometimes make a pit stop somewhere back in time. Such was the case with Charlotte airport with its numerous shoeshine stands and full-time restroom attendants (complete with bowls of peppermint candies and tip jars). At least they’ve graduated into an era of pink power tools, you know, for the ladies.  But that was just a thankfully short diversion before we found ourselves standing at the gateway to the mountains.

From the airport, as if to reinforce the magical, teleportation theme, Karen and I drove up mountainsides and through river valleys shrouded with mystery and fog. While the car interior was a little larger and slightly more barren, from its speakers the songs remained the same. Once we finally broke free of the low-slung clouds, the scenery beyond the windows was composed of almost entirely of wood, water, stone and deep blue sky.

Archer’s Mountain Inn perches just over halfway up Beech Mountain, almost a mile high, looking south across the valley toward Banner Elk, Linville and Grandfather Mountain. After a brief stop for provisioning at the local grocery (with a tidy section of organics and a selection of good wine), we settled in for the next five days.

On our honeymoon, we remember touring nearby Grandfather Mountain, Linville Falls, Linville Caverns, and the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We discovered an Everything Scottish shop and a local pottery outlet, both of which seem to have slipped beneath the surface of the lake of time. That trip, though not this one, we brought our hiking boots but didn’t find many public trails.

A few years ago, North Carolina remedied that deficiency with the addition of 2600 acres in the form of a newly christened Grandfather Mountain State Park. The precise moment of the spring equinox found us beside a tumbledown stream on its Profile Trail. Over the next two days, we hiked several miles of trails, the Asutsi and the Nuwati, down a section of the Boone’s Fork and up to the panorama at Storyteller’s Rock. We revisited all three overlooks at Linville Falls, and wandered around the grounds of the Moses Cone Manor. Even without boots, we managed almost nine miles in three days. And I discovered Birkenstocks make perfectly good trekking shoes even over rocky terrain. 

When we weren’t hiking, we were driving along the Blue Ridge Parkway with its bright yellow bouquets of roadside daffodils. Robins darted through the wine-stained branches of the maples that had just begun to leaf. Forsythia and dogwood were already in bloom, with mountain laurel set to be next up on the stage. We roamed across twisty back roads whose fields and farmsteads reminded us of Wales without the castles, Scotland without the sheep. We stumbled across places we’d researched for Aluria’s Tale (my novel). We poked through two of the shops of the Southern Highland Craft Guild, the Parkway Craft Center near Blowing Rock and the Folk Art Center in Asheville.

A couple nights we sampled the cuisine at the adjacent Jackalope’s View Restaurant, and one other at an Italian bistro down in the valley. After dinner each evening, we warmed ourselves by the fireplace in our room, Anonymous 4 on the iPod, books, wine and chocolate in hand. Which is also how we spent the last full day when fog, rain and a few snow flurries with a threat of ice kept us atop the mountain. Neither of us felt up for tackling the switchbacks in a foreign SUV. By the time the fire burned to glowing embers, we found ourselves standing by the bank of windows taking in the view. A comfortable silence spread over us as we gazed across the valley at a tangled web of lights, the pauses between them somewhat shorter than they’d been our trip before.

The last morning, we wandered out to an overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway and up an ice-sheathed path to an arched, wooden bridge to look down on one final fall of water over rocks. On our way, we saw our one and only deer. We daydreamed as we poked our way back to Asheville and wondered if this was a place to which we might retire as the morning and early afternoon slipped by.

At the airport, the spell was broken. All too soon we found ourselves back home, safely ensconced in our own bed once again, Nyala and Mara purring by our sides, vowing next time, we won’t wait too long before returning to our rejuvenating mountain retreat.


© 2014 Edward P. Morgan III

Teamwork (Spring Equinox 2014)

Teamwork - a reading (on YouTube)

Teamwork is learning to be silent while your wife talks to a contractor or salesman until he is focused on her and ignoring you, then snapping him back to reality when he says something stupid with a quick and deadly riposte. Throws them into complete confusion, opening up a flank. Like a pair of mated wolves, we circle, attack and retreat. We guard each other’s backs. And like our lupine totems, we are mated for life.

I learned early on Karen was not a typical woman bound to the traditional female roles. Fragile and high-maintenance she is not. She’s not afraid to get her hands dirty. And in the best traditions of red-haired Swedish Valkyries, she’s proven she will fight.

Karen and I had only been dating a little while. We’d gone to see a movie, something with a lot of action, maybe the first of the Lethal Weapon series. It must have been out a while. I remember the theater was almost empty. Except for two obnoxious guys sitting a couple rows behind us who had apparently seen the movie several times already as they commented loudly line by line.

About halfway through the movie, my annoyance got the better of me. I turned over my shoulder and in a fit of testosterone-fueled repartee said, and I quote, “Shut up, asshole.”

Silence descended behind us like a shroud, and remained in place from that point forward. Now some people might think that was a good thing, that my small blow for theater etiquette had actually accomplished something. That did not fit with my experience. Where I grew up, silence is an ominous development. And there was a quality to this silence, a stewing bitterness marinating a grudge until it was ready to explode into action. I sat through the rest of that movie not really enjoying it. Some niggling feeling told me the encounter wasn’t over. I really didn’t like having these two guys behind me where I couldn’t see them.

Now, some people will think I was just being paranoid, which I generally admit I might be. I’ve had friends from high school tell me they’ve never seen me sit with my back to a door. I always map out the exits and make note of anything that can be used as an improvised weapon. Not something I do consciously. Again, part of my upbringing. But in this case, that hyper-vigilance paid off.

The movie ended and the theater began to empty. In a fit of whimsy my wife, then girlfriend, decided she wanted to stay and watch the credits roll. I took the opportunity to glance behind me. Sure enough, my newfound friends were watching, too. My danger-sense kicked into overdrive.

I tracked them as we left the theater. They fell in just behind us. Karen continued chatting about the movie but I paid no attention. She isn’t always alert to her surroundings. Her upbringing has her oblivious to many threats. I didn’t want to worry her, so I said nothing, just kept watching the pair from the corner of my eye. I know, typical male.

By the time we hit the parking lot, we’d put some distance between us. For an instant, I lost the pair completely. There seemed to be a ray of hope.

We reached Karen’s car without incident. Karen had driven as her car was always more reliable. She had just opened the driver’s door when the duo behind us suddenly reappeared, rapidly closing the distance as I stepped between the cars. Two guys, one small, one large. The small one peeled off toward Karen’s side of the car to stand at the back quarter panel. The large one came up quickly behind me. The lot was full, so there was another car beside me. There wasn’t a car in front of us, but I wasn’t about to flee. To complicate matters further, this was one of the few times Karen had worn a skirt.

So I turned to face our pursuer and found myself looking up. At six foot one, I am not a short man. But he had two to three inches on me. Blond hair, broad shoulders, triangular chest, beveled chin. An Aryan post-child with a scraggly beard.

Now, you have to remember this was the ‘80’s. There were no cell phones. Automatic locks were not a standard feature on a car like my wife’s. We weren’t married, so I didn’t have a key. It wouldn’t have mattered if I did, as my own keys were interlaced between my fingers. The only weapon I had.

That’s when Stonewall Jackson stepped up right into my personal space and in his best redneck drawl asked, “Did you call me an ass…hole?”

Ship to shore radio, this is the Titanic. Man the lifeboats, boys; we are going down.  We were in parking lot in West Melbourne, which on the scale of civilization is one step up from Holopaw, or Yulee, only more densely populated. I could count on no outside help. We had parked in the outer reaches away from the densest crowd. The best I could hope at this point was that Karen might eventually retrieve me from a pool of my own blood after these two goons used me to vent their spleens.

But you have to remember, I was born a Southerner. I have Welsh and Abenaki blood. My people pursue entirely hopeless causes long past the point of sanity. If I was going down, I’d be damned if it be as a coward, not in front of my girlfriend. So stupid me, the Boy Scout who figured honesty was always the best policy, didn’t treat the question as rhetorical, and simply answered, “Yes.”

And that’s when Karen did something completely unexpected. Instead of retreating inside her car (and maybe unlocking my door), my wife, then girlfriend, who had no real commitment to me at the time, slammed her door, swore under her breath, and took a couple steps toward the smaller guy with murder in her eye, heels off and skirt swirling. I didn’t take my eyes from the monster in front of me, but I saw this was more than his hanger-on wannabe had bargained for. The little guy quickly backed away toward his buddy, halfway across the trunk of my wife’s car and still moving. Ok, so if it came to blows, it was just me against the Shropshire Slasher. Things were looking up.

I saw the Sasquatch had also caught the motion out of the corner of his eye. But instead of cutting his losses and calling it a night, he decided to double down like bullies always do. He stepped up nose to nose and demanded, “Why?”

Now, off all the words I’d expected might fall out of his mouth, that question was not one. A moment of crystal clarity followed. This guy had no intention of throwing the first punch. He was trying to get me to do it for him. I got the sense he’d done this many times before. But his lapdog cowering from an advancing woman wasn’t in the plan. Tactically, his situation had become fluid. His flank was crumbling. In an instant, he could find himself in the reverse position of his ambush, the odd man out in a three-way. And not the good kind.

But I wasn’t confident enough to test my theory, so I opted to stall for time. Bravery isn’t usually a conscious act. More often, it’s having little left to lose. So again, I answered his question honestly. “Because you were acting like one.”

They say Fortune favors the bold. That night the Roman goddess must smiled down upon both Karen and me. Before Bigfoot could puzzle out a response, a voice called over the roof of the car beside me. “Hey, Ed, everything ok?”

Both the gorilla and I turned to look. There, standing one car away, was a guy I’d taken a Creative Writing class with a year before, his girlfriend watching intently across the roof of his car. Though Karen didn’t know him, she had caught his eye with an imploring look. I must have made some kind of impression on him because, too be honest, I didn’t even know he knew my name. I certainly didn’t remember his.

I swung my gaze back to meet the great ape’s. Even this genius could do the math. Two men and two women against him and tagalong whose morale had already broken. He could no longer count on any of us staying out of it. He quickly re-evaluated and claimed the better part of valor. He told me to watch myself and slowly backed away, his buddy clinging to his wake. Then George and Lennie faded back into the night.

As soon as I’d reached the safely of the car, I damn near fainted. I turned to Karen and asked why she’d chosen to confront these guys in a way few men or women would.

“If there was going to be a fight,” she answered, “I’d be damned if it was going to be two on one.”

From the moment I first saw my wife, I knew I wanted to go out with her. As it turned out, I had to wait third in line. That night, I knew my perseverance had been rewarded. I doubt I would have survived that encounter unscathed without her.

Recently, I had a dream where a man explained why you always hit someone hard and fast. They freeze from the shock of the impact. Then you can seize the initiative. It’s all tactics. Though it also helps if you have a surprise in your back pocket, especially if she’s dressed up in a skirt.

Twenty-seven years later, on our twentieth wedding anniversary, I still very much love working beside my wife. To this day, I know I can rely on her in a way few men can. We’re a team and always will be. What the gods have joined, no man may sunder. At least without the proper sacrifice of blood.

Happy anniversary, love.


 © 2014 Edward P. Morgan III