Inspired by Randy Woodley’s book, Becoming Rooted: One Hundred Days of Reconnecting with Sacred Earth, I’ve been pondering and doing a little research on the land I live with. Woodley got me saying “with” instead of “on.”

To start, I have a lot history with the land stretching from western McDowell county to East Asheville, NC. I have played, studied, worked, loved, laughed, and cried here. A good bit.

When my father announced in 1968 that we where moving from Oteen, a community east of Asheville, to the Atlanta area, my homing device clicked on. While it took me 47 years, I finally returned full time to my thinnest place on earth June 2015.

I currently live with seven wooded acres, on the side of a mountain, a few miles south of the town of Old Fort, NC. These acres straddle McDowell and Buncombe counties.

A generation ago, while I was running around in woods along the Swannanoa River in Oteen, the local boys in the Crooked Creek area outside Old Fort hunted and roamed the hills and woods that surround our cabin. I’ve found a couple of their glass coke bottles on the logging trail that runs below our place. For some reason, these boys, now old men like me, are a little taken back by the gate at the entrance to our community.

Before their time, there were loggers. I can still see the marks they left when they harvested the ancient forest.

Before them it was the pioneers. Many with a Scottish heritage that I share. They built Davidson’s fort, the fort that gives Old Fort its name. It’s said to have been “a crucial buffer” between the natives and settlers. As things played out, I am not sure the buffer went both ways.

Before the pioneers, it was the Cherokee people. And a little to the east, the Catawba, who give the Catawba River its name.

I often sit a the foot of the waterfall nearby and wonder if a Cherokee elder ever sat on the same stone. I wonder if he pondered things similar to the ponders that rise up for me as I watch the water pour over the cliff.

He has actually has become a little more than imaginary to me. I wonder if his grandchildren walked the Trail of Tears. I try not to think of my grandchildren ever enduring such.

Before them, a couple of periods I am not familiar with. There were the Mississippian people (800-1600 CE), whose people were mound builders. A couple of their mounds remain near here.

Before them, was the Woodland Period 1,000 BCE-1,000 CE). Perhaps the stone at the waterfall held them as well.

Speaking of the stone, it was once covered by thousands of feet of earth. That was when the Appalachian mountain range, perhaps the oldest mountain range on earth, was one of the tallest ever.

That’s about all the geology I have though. Sorry, Mrs. Bennett. (my sixth grade teacher who tried hard, and others represent her efforts better)

I have also learned (Perhaps relearned. Again, sorry, Mrs. Bennett) that the first Europeans in this area were led by a Spanish explorer named, Juan Pardo. His mission was to find a short cut to Mexico in order speed up the delivery of silver to the home country.

In 1567, Pardo left a fort he had built near what we now call, Morganton and headed toward Tennessee. I feel the need to note that the fort was built on grounds that were a gathering place for the Mississippian people. Likely a place of harmony and community for them.

I’m assuming that for the same reasons I-40 is presently there, Pardo marched up the Swannanoa valley, about eight miles north of my present home.

An article I read about this journey had some phrasing that I found interesting. It said that as they traveled, “they extracted food and corn from indigenous communities.” It went on to say that there was “Native resistance” and they “grew hostile,” eventually destroying the forts Pardo left behind and killing all but one of the soldiers that were there.

It may just be me, but I found “extracted” to be an interesting word for marching uninvited through people’s homeland, while taking food and corn they had stored for their families. It also read like resisting and growing hostile to such was something of a surprise.

Anyway, thank you Randy Woodley.

Land indeed has a story.