Legend and Lore

Again, literature opens up new worlds and leaves me starving to write. I have been reading Story Line: Exploring the Literature of the Appalachian Trail and marveling at how perfect of a fit it is for me. I am looking to find my voice, especially by story-telling. I need inspiration to travel and I largely benefit from descriptions of places that kindle my combustive land lust. I need a trail/bush name, like Greenbean perhaps. This book may provide all of those answers. Many people go out into nature not knowing what they are looking for. I only knew that I needed it. I am after this land. I once was not sure what I was here for, but the tales of the mountainside, the stories of the Cherokee, the unuttered (yet somehow voiced) prayers of these "ten-thousand cathedrals rolled into one," these have awaked an understanding. I know now. I'm here for the story. The collection and manifestation of lore. I know I have been hunting for the lore in the subjected people of the Charleston land: The man staking out an existence along the forest near the high-tension wires of my neighborhood, or the wild-haired man along the airport road wheeling a giant wooden cross, having the top supported on his shoulder. I am here to hunt out lore in the holes of rocks and the hiding places of the earth, to bring to life the land by bestowing upon it legend, at least in my own right, claiming a piece of its spiritual essence for myself, and for any of those that hap upon my words.

Not only do I seek out the story, I feel an important role in creating it in the eyes of other people. Imagine the images that I created in people's minds on Clemson campus as they saw me with my wet, dogged backpack on, walking with shoes so worn every twig and rock is felt with the toes. The memory of seeing me will stay with them forever. An old friend of mine from high school lives in Boone, North Carolina now. He with a bunch of his friends traveled by bicycle down to Charleston, South Carolina (a good three-hundred miles). Just imagine all the eyes they got as these rugged, dusty wheeling tramps passed through one of countless yellow afternoons, and took a seat in a field by a country store and napped under a tree, some using each others' laps as pillows. How long would that tale be woven into the storybook of that town. What about the group of hitchhikers playing Wagon Wheel down in Panama City, sharing their interesting life with one of the few WASP-y kids down there for spring break. What wonder, what legend. It is one thing to write about it. It is an entirely different matter to do it. After a friend and I get done with our two-year missions serving the Lord, I'm pairing with a fellow star-guided voyager and hitchhiking across America, "whatever that is," for who knows how long.