"Echoes from the Hills"

“I’m a long ways from home, and that blue mountain dome, still I hear the echoes from the hills.” My father’s favorite song from my childhood. It seemed that every time we got in the car, he’d comment on those beautiful hills and launch into song. It’s an old folk song you can find on youtube now, by the Elderly Brothers, no kidding, you’ll be showing your age if you get the second pun in that one.

I grew up in the hills. We picnicked at the Pocket: mayonnaise and white bread sandwiches with pork ‘n beans on the side. I never like beans until then and they’ve never tasted as good since! We camped in Blue Ridge and hung snake skins from the trees. We always went for Sunday rides in the “mountains” when the laurel began to bloom. Rides were a treat for a generation not raised buckled into carseats and chauffered from one activity to another. Going for a drive meant getting to hang our heads out the windows like only dogs get to do now, and an occasional 11-year old boy allowed to be wild. We would pluck the blossoms from the trees and daddy would place them in his handkerchief (always with him, another dying custom) and crush them so we could smell them all the way home.

I know I’m not alone in longing for my childhood home. Many of us grew up exclaiming, “I can’t wait to get out of here.” It’s the call of the wild, the vision quest, the rites of passage so missing from our modern times. I had to break out, get away from this hick town, see the world. But, everywhere I went, I found myself longing for the smell of red Georgia clay, the sound of crickets and katydids, the feel of warm humid southern nights.

The first time I left was for the West Coast. In 1977 in Oregon, it was the year of the drought. I enjoyed an Oregon like no other, beautiful sunny days with a crisp breeze blowing off the Pacific Ocean. So, after that year, there was no going back, that Oregon was gone. It rains daily now.

Next stop Cali. Life in the fast lane left no time for chit chat in Silicon Valley. It was hard to find Prince Charming when he was barreling down the coastal highway in his “Beamer” doing 90 to nothing or stuck in traffic jams that made Atlanta traffic look like a walk in the park, if you don’t mind a slightly-mixed metaphor. The weather forecast was “another day in Paradise” which, quite frankly got boring after a while. And earthquakes aren’t nearly as predictable as tornadoes! There is no southern hospitality in southern California. And, when you are raised on it, nothing else will suffice.

In Utah, it was so dry, in southern colloquial lingo: spit would dry before it hit the ground. My tears would dry long before they finished their run down the contours of my face. I packed it up and came home. After thirty years gone, there was no band playing at the airport, no crowds to herald their joy at my return, but my heart is at peace now, no longer do I roam… I’m home. I no longer have to struggle to remember what the air feels like, or how the honeysuckle smells, or how katydids, crickets and july flies sound, I only have to sit on my porch. They are the only welcome home I need.