Been Thinkin’ About…Mountain magic

I clench the Arkansas diamond in my small palm, imagining in my five-year-old mind that the clear quartz crystal is a real diamond and, more than that, that the cheap quartz has real magic. I had picked the crystal out of rock box in a dimly lit mom-and-pop curio shop just off the highway somewhere in north Arkansas. The woman at the counter had smiled in a sweet, southern way and her hair was strikingly white. We didn't have rocks like this in the muddy flatlands from which we had come. And now, the smell of pine was sweet in that cool April way so many years ago as the sun began to set beyond the trees, turning the world a hollow kind of yellow. The Arkansas diamond was magic. I was sure of it.

The mountains here seem to hold something inexpressible, something delicate, almost unseen, yet something strong, unyielding. The Ozarks are a special kind of contradiction. 

The sky is in tatters tonight after the Friday storms that raged. I drive north on the big road as the clouds clear. Jupiter winks into view, held in celestial embrace by the constellation Taurus. The king and the bull — they are implacable yet weirdly gentle in the night. So many stars but so few can be seen. Our vision is stronger in the periphery. Stare directly, the stars seem to wink out. Turn your head and let your vision wander and from the corner of your eye, the stars brighten. The magic of mountain culture is like that. Stare too hard and all that makes the mountains special becomes unseen.

It might be good to plant the radishes, or the carrots. The great flower moon is waning, journeying again through her underworld. Planting by the moon sign has become a lost art. Modernism says the moon isn't magic. The old-timers say different. But the old timers are mostly gone now and modernism is here to stay. Besides, a journey into the underworld doesn't sell cars, or cosmetics, or much of anything else. And if a thing doesn't sell, what good is it?

I hold my Arkansas diamond in my palm but I'm not five years old anymore. Lost, and then found again, my Arkansas diamond — the same one from that mom-and-pop rock shop that I'm fairly confident closed down many years ago, probably when they widened the big road south — is never very far away. But the magic of childhood seems so very far away in a world of responsibility, of bills, of diplomacy, of business. Just rocks. Just silly rocks. Stare too close, too hard, at the culture, our culture, and you're only left with the bare, mundane parts. Separate the pieces, break them apart, and the magic begins to die. Perhaps the magic was never real anyway and all we have is that which can be measured, portioned out, put on a shelf, and sold. 

But the moon is still waning. Great circle in the southwestern morning's sky, faint and blue and looking increasingly chewed upon as it darkens. The moon's journey has begun. Do we allow the same for ourselves? A journey into the dark, fighting through thorns, through the mud and the muck and the ugly depths of our own soul? Materialism has no place for that which is beyond-physical, for the honest lamentation, for the dark night that births, quiet-like, the soul that can weather a future. Laments in the dark, however healing, are better left medicated, quieted for the benefit of the loud, the callous, the commercial, the bright. Florescent industrialism? Or the striking of a single match, flame dancing to touch a single candle? The darkness is foreboding. We might find our soul there. We might not like the honesty we find. Far better to pretend to be someone else, even at our own expense.

I hold my Arkansas diamond and close my eyes. My mind wanders, much like it should. I no longer try to hold my mind's gaze upon something specific. There will be roots to be gathered, leaves to be picked and dried. But pick carefully. Some plants heal. Some plants harm. Some plants do both. The cunning folk knew the difference, easy as they knew breathing. But that was all superstition. Healing doesn't come from the heart, or the soul or the mind of a mountain woman high on a ridge. Healing comes from a man with a degree and a white coat. Trust the experts. Superstition is dead.

Did the mountains breed such people as these, those generations now long-gone? Or did the people find these mountains, drawn to a strange soul made of rock and dark and air and sky? There was freedom in the dark hollows, freedom in running those old ragged ridges. Mountain people aren't like flat landers. They are different. We are different. I am different. There is a deep-down-in-your-gut difference, echoed in the lament of bow pulled across haunted fiddle strings, of a long rifle shouldered against tyranny, of a people dark and broken and proud and bold and headstrong. Survival doesn't come easy in the mountains. Magic isn't superstition. Magic is necessity.

Times and seasons come and go. Sometimes we celebrate simple anachronism (that which is conspicuously old-fashioned) and call it "Ozarks." But separating out the folks of the mountains and separating out that which is simply old fashioned, those are two different things entirely. Stare too hard and, just like the starlight, the truth becomes invisible in plain sight.

Amidst all the changes brought by modernity, mountain magic has been beaten up and beaten down, often now hidden in plain sight. Globalism has not been kind to my people. Neither has mass media, which calls us backwards and makes us a punchline. Neither has mass education, which has told each new generation of children that there is better knowing in the future and in the peer and in bland authority than in the past. But perhaps some still remain who remember the old ways.

I open my palm and my Arkansas diamond is still there, reflecting the flickering candle light, strangely cool to the touch. The storm has moved one, ragged clouds pulled apart like celestial cotton to reveal much more starlight. The ridges are still high and ragged. The hollers are still deep, a primordial darkness creeping. There is magic yet in the hills. That much I know. And against the odds, there are still those who know how to wield it for good and for dark, bulwarking against a bland and soulless future.