And We Must Go

On beginnings and endings, change, and staying un-stuck.

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Something there is about the ends of things, the delicate parts where the golden light shines on everything about you before it fades to dusk. Something there is when you know that ahead, just across the horizon, lies the big, the unknown.

For the past nine years, our growing family has made its home in a quiet neighborhood dotted with brick ranches and mature trees. For nine years before that, we lived a few hundred yards away in the next neighborhood over in a cozy split-level on a cul-de-sac.

Kelly is a native of this town, born in the old downtown Davis hospital the college razed a few years ago. She grew up in another brick ranch and tall treed neighborhood not much more than a mile from where our house stands now. She attended school in the same building where she now works, the same place our children learn. Save for the four years she spent away at college, she’s never lived anywhere but within a handful of several square miles in Statesville.

Those college years were formative in many ways.

I remember the first time I visited Western Carolina University, where Kel had started her undergraduate studies two years before me. Its people were warm and quick to greet you. The professors were engaging. Cullowhee, the university’s small town, was cradled in a beautiful valley, tucked in on three sides by the Tuckaseegee River, and blanketed by national park land. Its geography lent to easy higher education metaphors–climbing mountains, reaching for peaks, and so forth.

We spent our student days working hard. (Kelly, I should note, worked much harder than I did. Summa cum laude-hard.) On the weekends, we would venture off to hike waterfalls, or drive the parkway to Asheville, or pad around little downtown Sylva. Eventually, I found my way into the small Episcopal church tucked in the woods behind the football stadium. A few of my English professors would reliably be there, and they often held a fellowship hour with free snacks and a couple of bottles of wine served indiscriminately after the service. It was an easy crowd to appreciate.

When we graduated, I mourned the idea of leaving. I had forged a good bit of my identity in those hills, and I was always anxious to come back. I looked for any excuse to make a return visit.

Life, as the tired saying goes, moved on. We married. We worked. We bought a house and sold a house and bought another. There were times we had money, and times we didn’t. I changed jobs–careers, even–and then we brought home a little baby girl and moved again and added another pair of kiddos. Then, another job. Another degree. It all happened so fast.

Then, the pandemic hit, and it was as if everything entered a time warp. The resulting world-tilt left me in a strange place, initially, as we were all sent home to shelter in place. For the first time in a long while, I felt balance between my life and my work. I enjoyed having time to sit outside, to see the stars shining clear through the tree canopy at night. Life was good.

Of course, it couldn’t stay that way forever, even if some part of me wished it could. Gradually, bit by bit, we restored those suspended parts, spinning them back into their natural orbits, adding the satellites one by one until the sky was cluttered once more with blinking lights and signal noise. Our feet became mired in the sludge that was the first attempt at returning to regular life; the Delta variant added more quicksand.

There were times during the pandemic where it felt like we had no guide, no shepherd to lead us back. We had wandered away into a new reality, and there were no totems or touchstones to indicate where we were in our journey. We never knew if we were coming out of the woods or still heading inward.

Now, suddenly, Kelly and I find ourselves looking at an end of sorts–not of the pandemic, but of our time here in Statesville. This January I will begin a new role working for my dear old alma mater, Western Carolina. Kel will leave her 21-year career as a music teacher and go all-in on her small business, My Zero Carb Life. The mountains have called us, and we must go.

Last weekend, Julia’s soccer team won-out the city league’s 12-U tournament, notching an undefeated season and capping what has been her biggest period of athletic growth yet. They played their last game on a windy, chilly Sunday afternoon on the field through the woods from our house.

The kids faced their best opponent yet, and for several minutes the score stayed tight before Julia and her teammates pulled away. All season we’ve watched Jules–the only girl on the team–find her place among several talented players. Each one found a role and earned a place. When they all worked together, they were nearly unstoppable. (They outscored their first and second tournament opponents 19-0.)

The final whistle blew, and the team erupted into joy, and afterward there was an end-0f-season celebration at one of the picnic shelters. In the fading sunset light, we watched as they palled around–Julia and the boys, racing off to jump the creek and play tag on the playground. Kelly and I stayed back with the other parents, each of us starry-eyed at the accomplishments our children had just earned. It felt surreal to think this cheering moment was a sort of end.

Our lives have been deeply and safely rooted here for so long. And to a degree, it feels risky to attempt to transplant everyone somewhere else, even if that new place is known and loved. Will their roots grow deep? Will they thrive?

I am reminded, though, of our children’s resilience. As we grown-ups have endured the great uncertainty the last 20 months has cast about us, they have grown and prospered. When they are challenged and stretched, more often than not they find ways to persevere.

John Muir’s oft-quoted bit about the mountains calling has long been a ready-made slogan for any Smoky Mountains booster. But that’s the shorter version. It’s worth finishing his original sentence:

“The mountains are calling and I must go, and I will work on while I can, studying incessantly.”

Our challenge is to work and learn while we can. And to keep our eyes on the next, new peak ahead.