My first experience with the High Country of North Carolina comes, surprisingly, during band camp.  My high school would do a week long intensive at Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk.  Colleges, I learned later, routinely rent out their dorms and dining facilities to camps — science camp, band camp, rocketry camp, theatre camp, 4H camp, football camp, soccer camp, Presbyterian Camp, Unitarian Camp (they apparently had co-ed bathrooms … scandalous!) — to help pay the bills and keep staff employed during summer.  (This income stream has been cut off due to Covid.)  

Summer in Raleigh is miserably hot and humid, and escaping to the mountains to learn how to walk and play music simultaneously was much preferable to staying home.  In 8th and 9th grade, before moving to Raleigh, I had done band camp in the lowlands.  I remember neither year as a pleasant experience.  However, Banner Elk is a beautiful mountain community surrounded by the majestic Blue Ridge, so chilly at night (and sometimes during the day) that even in late August we wore sweatshirts.  My mom came as a chaperon my senior year, mainly to see what I’d been raving about.  That was 1997.  Almost every year since we’ve been back, sometimes for summer, sometimes for Christmas, sometimes for birthdays, sometimes for all the above in the same year.

For sure high school is an intense period of time in one’s life.  Your brain isn’t quite finished baking (it won’t really be done till your mid 20s), and the emotions are vivid, powerful, and all-consuming.  I have such intense memories from those camps and the area around Lees-McRae.  It caused lots of feels to go back and visit these old haunts. 

So is this where my love of the High Country comes from?  Perhaps.  Several years ago I took a DNA test to learn more about my genealogy.  My father was born in Damascus, and much of my genetic material comes from the areas the Assyrian Empire conquered.  This is basically all the land surrounding the Mediterranean Sea.  Some of my genetic code comes from Eastern Europe.  In series 5 of this travelogue, we visited Latvia and learned about my maternal grandmother, who immigrated to the U.S. before World War 1. 

Half Arab, quarter Latvian, and the other quarter?  Funny story.  It turns out my maternal grandfather’s family hailed from, and I’m not joking, Appalachia.  In the 1700s “my people” left England and Scotland and settled in what is today considered Central Appalachia – Kentucky and parts of eastern Tennessee.  After World War 2, many moved north to Ohio.  Members of my mom’s father’s family still live there today.  According to Ancestory.com, I have distant cousins all over Western North Carolina.

Maybe my love of Appalachia and the High Country come from a week-long band camp my sophomore, junior, and senior years of high school.  Or, perhaps, it’s something deeper and unknowable.  Something that reaches through time and pulls me back across generations, no matter where I live or travel. 

After so many years away, maybe I am coming back home after all.

This concludes our time together, in this most interesting year of 2020.  Thank you for coming along.  Self expression needs an audience, and I’m grateful for your time and comments back.  

As I mentioned earlier, if there is picture you’d like a copy of please let me know.  

If you have any thoughts or suggestions for me about these travelogues, please send them along. 

I really recommend Appalachia:  A History by Williams.  Great read.   

It is unclear when we’ll next travel.  Supposedly we are going to Africa in November, but that looks increasingly unlikely due to the U.S. Covid numbers.  Same with Hawaii in February 2021.  Hopefully later in 2021 we will be able to travel again with greater ease.  

I look forward to when we meet again.