Returning Home: Back to the Blue Ridge Mountains
All photos by Rebecca Hinkle
When my partner and I were moving for a career opportunity, everything felt like it was going to be fine. Our careers were taking us to Raleigh, North Carolina. The state capital, a growing area for major tech companies. Although I was nervous about living in an urban environment, I took the advice given to me to try and see it as an adventure. Now two years later, we have moved back to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia to a small cabin right outside of a small town and feel nothing but pure and instant relief.
We were born and raised in southern West Virginia. Growing up, the Appalachian Mountains were my playground. I played in creeks while looking for salamanders and fish, had regular picnics with my family at various state parks, and watched the autumn leaves make the mountains even more beautiful each year right in time for my birthday. We had both traveled to large cities for vacations and school trips before, but had never lived in one.
What greeted us was a culture shift that is often heard when discussing the differences between urban and rural environments. In the small rural town we grew up in, friendly greetings were common, neighbors looked out for each other, and there was room to live and grow. What we found in the city were the usual complaints of over crowdedness, little to no privacy, and an overwhelming sense of isolation. These are the typical complaints that people are able to relate to if they have moved from a rural community to a large city, and some people can adjust fairly well to the differences; however, we only became homesick as we saw that life was completely different for us in Raleigh. The way we greeted others had to completely change. In our hometown, a smile or a friendly nod to friends, neighbors, and even strangers, is common. It is the way that you greet people while on the go. That did not work for us in the city. We tried smiling and nodding greetings to others, but we were met with funny looks. It was a shock for us. Being friendly in a rural community did not seem possible in an urban environment. What we experienced in Raleigh is what both of our Appalachian grandmothers would have called rude. Our accents were another thing that caused difficulty for us in the city. People tried to guess our accents, but they were always wrong. When we said we had grown up in West Virginia, looks of pity or disgust crossed their faces. Jokes about a certain horror movie series were common for us
to hear as well. The fact that urban people felt the immediate urge to judge us based on where we came from was hypocritical of them, and the fact they did not see the hypocrisy felt like some badly written joke. Some of the people I had met in the city claimed to have also come from West Virginia. When I would ask where specifically, hoping to find someone who knew the small county we grew up in, they would backtrack and explain they actually had lived in Ohio, but close to the West Virginia state line. I had to control myself each time not to educate them that Ohio was not West Virginia, and give them a United States geography lesson.
There were also significant issues with urban crime near us. The day we were scheduled to leave for a hiking trip, we had a helicopter flying overhead while law enforcement had an active manhunt behind our house for hours. They never found the man. It was something that we only ever seen in a movie. Only two days later, when we should have been on a hiking trail, I was instead trying to make a police report for a person we had caught on our security system trying to break into our home. I had the footage ready to send to law enforcement. Instead, I was dismissed, but I sent the video in anyway. We had constant alerts to car jackings, gang activity, and even a tragic mass shooting not far from our house. While there is crime in the Appalachian mountains, all the crimes we saw taking place around us each day were crimes that we had no experience dealing with, and we failed to see how these sad and tragic events supposedly made living in a city superior to living in the Appalachian Mountains.
We looked for several ways to try and feel closer to our Appalachian mountain roots. I read Sharyn McCrumb novels to try and feel closer to home. We displayed a wooden West Virginia state carving in our living room to look at each time we were homesick. We talked constantly of the day we would move back to the mountains, and all the things we would do once we were back. Most evenings at dinner, we compared Raleigh to where we had lived before, but Raleigh lost each time. We could not see the stars at night like we could in the mountains because of the light pollution. Despite being around the most people we have ever been, we felt completely isolated. The city could not provide us with the nature that we found in the mountains of North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. It just showed us that we needed to get back home.
If our experience of living in the city did one thing for us, it was that it reminded us of our strong love of the Appalachian region and that Appalachia is truly our home. I can honestly say now after my experience of living in Raleigh, that I am not a city girl at all. As we continue to unpack boxes and organize our new mountain home, we have both found peace back where we belong, in the Appalachian mountains that we proudly call home.