Looking out on a busy day in Bryson City
F
or some, graveyards are morbid places. When I was a boy, I never liked to pass by or walk through one … especially in the dark. These days I rather enjoy visiting them ... for awhile. They are generally quiet. And unlike most modern cemeteries, which don’t have any trees at all, graveyards usually have a variety of old sometimes ancient trees. Trees attract the birds every graveyard requires. If there are oaks — as is usually the instance — there will be squirrels. If there are squirrels, there will be blue jays. And if there are squirrels and blue jays, there will always be something going on. Graveyards can be pretty lively places. I like best to visit the graveyard overlooking Bryson City. The official name as proclaimed on a sign at the entrance is “Bryson City Cemetery” — but, in reality, it’s an oldtime graveyard. There are huge oaks, white
cedars, yucca, and various shrubs. There are squirrels, blue jays, white-breasted nuthatches, and (in season) chipping sparrows. A red bird … the daughter of the sun in Cherokee lore … resides in the tangles on the lower slope of the knoll. Every graveyard needs a red bird. I have a favorite place to sit where I can lean back against a white oak and observe the goingson in downtown Bryson City. The jays scream, and the squirrels scold. But soon enough they Columnist tire of watching me do nothing and go about their business. What do I think about? Nothing much. I go there to sit and eat lunch and watch. Wednesday a week ago was an exceptionally busy day for Bryson City. Lots was going on down below. By way of prelude, the whistle of the excursion train on the far side of the river shrieked three times. I could see tourists waving from their windows the way real travelers never do when departing on a train that’s going somewhere. From my vantage point, I watched a dog
hike his leg and piss on the Federal Building Ellison + Thomas Wolfe + Angel.”) Usually I wall. A hiker came out of Bojangles and just sit and glance over at her from a disgave him a biscuit. He smiled the way dogs tance. do as he Poised on one foot on a high watched her foundation, she is almost life size. Horace walk away. Then Her wings are just about to open Kephart’s grave he yawned … but never do. Clasping a single overlooking wheeled counstone lily in her right hand, she Bryson City. terclockwise as if points upward towards the heavchasing his tail ens with the other. Her eyes are … and lay down turned slightly downward toward all curled up in the earth. If you walk over to say the sun by his hello, as I sometimes do, you look wall. up into her eternal gaze. There is Twenty-six no “celestial fire” but she is the pigeons arose benevolent spirit of this gravefrom under the yard and the surrounding mounlower bridge tains. where they roost As I said … it was an excepand circled the tionally busy day in Bryson City. graveyard on George Ellison wrote the biographiflexed wings … cal introductions for the reissues of the way pigeons two Appalachian classics: Horace do … before settling one by one on the gold Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and copula atop the old courthouse where the James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred clock was more or less accurate for a Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a change. selection of his Back Then columns was pubI should mention that this graveyard has lished by The History Press in Charleston as a resident angel ... as every graveyard Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural should. It was brought here long ago by History of Western North Carolina and the Thomas Wolfe’s father. (I have written Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact about the angel before and you can find her him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., on the internet if you google “George 28713, or at info@georgeellison.com.
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BACK THEN
George Ellison
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day … Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds … Where heaves the turf in many a mould’ring heap, Each in his narrow cell forever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep … Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire. By Thomas Gray (1716-1771)
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