Big Stone Gap of a Heart

The Internet is shrinking the world at an unfathomable rate of speed. It is difficult for my children to understand that we are living in a technological revolution. The word consumer has an insatiable appetitie and never before has it applied to so much in our ever expanding society.

Recent uprsings in my mind have drifted me back to my childhood when we lived in rural Virginia in 1974-1975. While blog surfing a couple of weeks ago, I came across the wonderful homespun blog of Contrary Goddess. She had a picture of a garden amidst the backdrop of the Tennessee landscape cued up front and center. It was the very first thing I saw on her blog as if it were posted for me. Everything about the picture reminded me of Virginia. Pinny for your thoughts, as Virginians say.

I stared at the picture and part of my childhood unfolded. Its sereness got me a little homesick for the childhood experiences I long to remember in my middle age. The town I lived in was a small holler called Big Stone Gap. I can still visualize the neighboring towns carved out of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the smell of the land, the magnificent foliage of the trees, the 1550 feet of billy goat elevation. There is something about Big Stone Gap that I hang onto but I still can't put my finger on it. Perhaps, the absence of a metropolis and a stronghold on Mother Nature seems enchanting. I can smell rhubarb growing in the fields, the sound of children playing tag in the schoolyard, my green and white Piggly Wiggly uniform scampering around the baseball diamond. All this mental downloading from one 3x5 picture on a stranger's blog? I'm afraid so. The picture haunted me until I emailed the host of Contrary Goddess. We have been friends ever since. Don't you know she lives fifty miles from where I lived.

Memories of Virginia continued. Big Stone Gap is where I bullseyed my first crush on a girl. Her name was Jenny Williamson. The area is only 1% American Indian but Jenny bore physical features to Pocahontas that were only outdone by her contagious smile. What more could a fifth grader ask for other than a teacher's lunch and a sneak peek at a quiz answer key? Too bad I was a northern Yankee. Pocahontas sent me up a creek without a paddle. If Virginia is for lovers, it considered me a youngin and not ready for prime time player. Enough about unreciprocated grade school crushes on Southern Bells who blamed me for the Civil War.

In one of the many emails to Contrary Goddess, she asked me if I have read the national best selling book about my little spittle of a mining town. Read it? I didn't know it existed. How many people have charming novels written about their hometown? Big Stone Gap is only less than five square miles of God's country! Contrary Goddess told me the book was aptly called Big Stone Gap and written by a former resident named Adriana Trigiani. I found it instantaneously on Ebay and had a copy at my doorstep later that week. I am not recommended the book per say as much as I am calling upon the coincidence, the irony of the moment. Sometimes when you are a little homesick, chicken soup for the soul is a welcome treat.

I have my attraction to irony and the Contrary Goddess to thank for curing me of homesickness. So if you want to learn how to build your own log cabin, live off of the earth, or need the best darn chicken soup recipe for the soul, visit the Contrary Goddess blog at http://www.contrarygoddess.blogspot.com/