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National Geographic : 1977 Apr
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People took one look at me and said I had to meet him. "Careful, though," I was told. "He don't like most folks. He might even take a shot in your direction if you go wanderin' up there." But I went. Rural Route 2 goes half those 12 miles, then ends. The last six miles were torture. Homer's front sidewalk is a rocky mountain stream with a trail fading in and out and mud, mud, mud! After several miles of head down trudging, we came to a sharp bend in the stream. In those pure woods I felt another presence. Cooper barked once-a rarity-and then stood still as stone-also a rarity. I looked up. And there he was-looking for all the world like a prophet on his way down from the holy mountain. Fifty feet away stood an ageless old man with white shoulder-length hair. Something electric passed from his eyes to mine and back again. He had an empty sack over his shoulder. He nodded back down the mountain. "Goin' down to fetch some meal, flour, and salt," he said. "Join me if you like." I would have followed him anywhere. So it was back down the mountain again, then back up-me with my 45-pound pack and Homer with his 30 pounds of supplies. It was all I could do to keep up with him. Just below the peak of this 4,400-foot mountain is Homer's "mansion"-a cabin of logs and scrap, about 30 by 15 feet, with its back end built right into the mountainside. His fireplace is a pit dug into the living earth. While we warmed our hands by the fire, he began "boilin' up some coon." Being a vegetarian, I swallowed hard at the thought of that boiling raccoon in the fireplace pot. I didn't realize Homer intended it only for his dogs. Homer whipped up some hot corn bread, canned applesauce, and homegrown yellow beets the size of cantaloupes. He laughed hoarse and loud when he realized I thought the coon was for me. With a swift slice of his bowie knife he cut a chop from a quarter of lamb hanging from a beam, then handed me a straightened coat hanger and pointed to the fire. "Cook up a chop, son," he said. "Freshest meat you'll ever have." My vegetarian days were over. I never ate a more satisfying meal. We talked until 3 a.m., exchanging details of our lives like two collectors trading rare old coins. Then I slept on ash wood shavings from the ax handles Homer carves as a sideline. Homer had paid for his mountaintop-about a thousand mostly vertical acres-by selling black walnuts and trading sheep and goats, buying in the days before land prices shot up. Like the grizzly and mountain lion, Homer Davenport had taken refuge from the world of men in the mountaintops no one else wanted. "Maybe when you finish walkin'," he said, "maybe then you'll come back. This mountaintop'll always be here, even if I ain't." I'll never forget his blue mountain eyes looking clear 484 through me as he spoke, or the warm sandpapery feel of his hand as he gripped mine for a good-bye shake. FROM Homer's mountaintop, it took us seven days-mostly in heavy snow-to reach Penland, North Carolina. There I enjoyed some indoor warmth, conversation, hot tea, and bell-shaped Christmas cookies with my old college friend Jack Neff and his family. Jack was teaching pottery at the Penland School of Handicrafts. I decided to spend New Year's Day atop the highest peak east of the Mississippi: 6,684-foot Mount Mitchell, in North Carolina's Black Mountains. I was joined for a couple of weeks by my vacationing brother Scott, and we bushwhacked 15 miles uphill through dense, dripping fog, got lost for a time, then finally reached the top of Mount Mitchell in near darkness. We were crooned to sleep by a high, moaning wind that seemed to orchestrate all the human voices I had ever known-my mother's, father's, brothers' and sisters'. I awoke with a warm, wet feeling on my face. It was Cooper, licking me to wake me up. Dawn had broken bright and pink and dazzling. Below us a billowing gray blanket of cloud sealed off the world. We stood above it. It was New Year's morning. From Mount Mitchell we descended back into the clouds and the world below, rolling with all the freedom of a clear mountain stream across the brown and white countryside. We passed briefly National Geographic,April 1977
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