For most people, the place they were born is special, it is their home. For me, my birthplace is magical, special, and displays, to me, a perfect example of the civic sacred. I would go further and say that for most people from McDowell County the area is sacred. I was born in 1977 in Welch, WV.
Before West Virginia even became a state my family was here. Before Virginia became a state, my family was here. I am said to be a descendant of Cornstalk, a Shawnee leader killed in Point Pleasant, WV in 1777. The wife whom bore his son, Elinipsico, was Cherokee. I am said to be descended from them all. This means that my ancestors have always been in the area because this was part of their cyclical hunting grounds and a way to travel to the area that would come to be known as North Carolina. I would think that the area was also sacred to them, as well. Other ancestors include Germans that settled the area early in America's history. This means that both my Native American and white ancestors have been in the area for centuries.
In this beautiful county, bordering on destruction from the coal, timber and gas industries, one will find a jewel that is called Big Creek. Off County Road 9 in Berwind, WV you will see a dirt road that looks like it leads to nowhere. State maps show paved, numbered roads but this is only an example of fraud from the past. The money was taken but the roads were never constructed. Once you have driven onto this road you entered another land. One that time has forgotten, where the modern world ends.
The road we are traveling has been blasted out of hills generations ago. Overhanging trees plunge you into a semi-darkness, with the occasional gleam of a sunbeam breaking through. We are on our way to the axis mundi, on our way to the center of the world, journeying along the imago mundi. We are going on a journey, one that has elements of the profane, elements of magic to a place that is numinous and sublime.
The first evidence of the profane appear about a mile into our journey. Here we find deforestation, perpetrated to make way for a natural gas line. We cringe, feel a twinge in our heart but carry on our journey. Another mile or so up the road we come upon one of the first secrets of the area. It is a mixture of the profane with the sacred. On the right, we find a coal load-out surrounded by a slag dump. What secret sacred can we find here in the mud, dust and rust of unused machinery, you may ask? On the left side of the road, protected by a hill, is a grave yard. This grave yard holds many of my family members, long dead and some forgotten. The graveyard is overgrown, many families have moved away and cannot take care of the area anymore. Some headstones have fallen, others have worn with the elements until the words that were there can no longer be deciphered.
Turning away, with a lingering look to say goodbye, we continue on our journey to find more secrets. As we go I'll tell you more about the place. Since, at least, the 1850's this area has been inhabited by settlers. Census records from the time show hundreds of families dotting the area that now looks like no homes ever existed there. My family was one of those families. Most people were farmers, eking out a living, but happy with the life they had. When the coal industry started to discover more and more high grade coal in the area they started cheating families out of their farms and people had to start moving away. Later, when the coal industry started losing ground, more families moved away, a lot moved out-of-state. Big Creek is forgotten by some but for most people that have moved away it is a dream, a sacred place that holds the memories of our pasts and calls to us when we sleep.
My words are interrupted because we have come to a fork in the road. We have wound around a mountain, passing what used to be a homestead. We have even seen a few deer and turkey! If you look in that mud there, you'll see bear tracks as well. You should keep an eye out for them!
We decide to take the right side of the fork, but we have to walk because the road is so rough. If you're willing to make a strenuous journey we have quite a few more secret treasures to find. Deciding to make our pilgrimage we head up a very steep hill. On our journey to the top of what we can now tell is a mountain, we find the remnants of a Boy Scout Camp. Yes, once upon a time there was a Boy Scout Troop here, there was even a school. Traveling on, we see what remains of that school in an area we call The Pines. Stone steps from the old school house rest in this area. The Pines was created in the 1970's by high school children, including my father. Part of the river here was artificially dammed and a grove of pine trees were planted. Four decades of pine needles are under your feet, can you feel them? It's like a plush carpet. And the smell of pine resin in the air, doesn't that just make you want to smile? The birds are singing in the trees and the wind is blowing through the pine bough. It's dark here as well, a relief from the heat. Can you feel it? This place is a hierophany, an irruption of the sacred here, like you have entered a sacred place and should be quiet, reflective and appreciative? This is the first place I experience a feeling of the supernatural, a feeling of the sublime. I feel it, I always do. Do you want to swim in the reservoir? It's very cold but very refreshing! No? Then, we'll travel on. The rest of the way is steeper so be sure you're ready!
As we walk I tell you about the times my family has come camping to the area. About the stories my grandfather tells, one of which concerns an area we passed earlier. It's called Mule Holler. One of my ancestors was a counterfeiter; he and his son would take an old mule out of the holler to get rid of the “goods”. On the way back they decided to camp and the father went off to another section of woods looking for wood to build a cook fire for the night. When he returned, he found his son dead in the creek with a hoof mark on his forehead. To make a long story short, the father killed the mule, cut off its head and threw it in the creek. To this day you can hear the mule, sometimes, splashing and trumpeting its way through the creek, looking for its head. There are hundreds of ghost stories and tales of blowing up a bridge with dynamite by accident when two cheeky young men tried the dynamite out as a way to catch fish.
Ah, those tales took longer than I thought and we've made it to another road on the left side of the road. The fact that it is a road is almost unbelievable, but yes, that rutted path is a road. It leads us to another secret. Another graveyard lies up this hill. This holds the Charles/Christian/Rasnake side of my family's dead. This one is even more heartbreaking, for tourists on ATV's have desecrated the place. They have broken down the gate of the fence that kept the boundaries tidy and run over the graves while showing off for each other, seeing who could make the biggest splash. Here we will find the grave of my great-grandfather, John Mastin Charles, named for a fellow and his family that saved orphaned members of my ancestry. We find my great-grandmother and many other relatives. Here, as well, we can feel a hierophany, a feeling of peace and love. We can almost hear my ancestors talking to us, telling us their own tales.
We must leave, though, and carry on with our journey. Walking up a road that disappears in parts and becomes part of a ravine, we stop in a curve in the road. What surprises you is that there are roses growing in this area. I have grown quiet, as I reflect on where we are. We have reached something of another fork in the road. The left fork goes back down the mountain, to the side my Stanley family inhabited. It is a flatter land, less hills and no views that would draw tourists. The right fork holds an even greater surprise. For now, we stop here. I haven't said anything but I know you are thinking of the incongruity of the roses in such a wild place.
For me, it is hard to decide exactly which area is the axis mundi. I think there are several, actually. The Pines is one, where we have stopped is another. This, you see, was where my great-grandparents, John Mastin and his wife Sarah, lived. The house was situated on the left and over there, across the road was John's blacksmith shop. He did work for all the people of Big Creek and his nails can still be found in many places in the area. The roses were planted by my great-grandmother many decades ago and have now spread all over the mountain, for they are climbing roses. We still come here to camp as well. We'll bring our tents and clear out the fire pit that has been there for generations now. At night, our ancestors still speak to us on the wind, telling us stories and tales of the past.
As much as I hate to, we must travel on, for we have one more, very special place to come to. As we walk I ask if you consider mountains sacred? I do, you see. As I have learned in my history of sacred places class, mountains draw our eyes to the heavens and we climb them to be closer to that place. It must surely be inhabited by fairies and deities, filled with magic and wonder. This part of our journey is the most difficult, for it is quite steep. We area heading for the final axis mundi on our journey.
When we reach the area I stand in wonder, as I always do. We are on the top of the mountain and for miles all we can see are more mountains, shades of blue and green, occasionally dotted with the brown of strip mine. We feel the force of a constant-blowing wind, and marvel that the pine trees can grow in such forces. We can also feel the essence of the divine. Here at last, we can see the full scale of the axis mundi. The mountain itself, is the axis mundi, perhaps that is why it is dotted with so many smaller versions of the axis mundi? We have traveled through the imago mundi, a representation of the cosmos, to find the sacred, the hierophany, the sublime that is the peak of one of the mountains in the area called Big Creek in McDowell County, WV. I hope you have enjoyed your journey and will return to us again soon.