SCAN MAGAZINE SPRING 2023
In the Valley Photo series and personal essay about growing up in Appalachia Written by Megan Elizabeth Smith Photography by Ellie Briggs I never knew how lucky I was until three summers ago. While everyone was locked away from the world, I found myself on top of a mountain, looking out across the valley below. My home away from home. I’m not sure why my great-grandfather decided to come out to Maggie Valley in the first place. As the story goes, he repurposed wood from an abandoned cabin he discovered out in Cherokee, brought the pieces back to Maggie, and built his cabin on a 20-acre plot of land. Thank God he did. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be standing here today. My dad always spoke of him in such high regard. He spent every summer out here working alongside my great-grandad, building porches and reaping the fruits of his labor. That time spent in the Great Smokey Mountains must’ve impacted him quite a bit, so much that in September 2019, he and my mom decided to pick up their lives and move out there. What perfect timing. See, out in Maggie, COVID-19 didn’t hit much, nor did the rest of the world’s problems. It felt like a whole different universe inside this snow globe scenery where the chaos of the living seemed to cease. It was simple. People ‘round there do about the same damn thing every damn day, and when they ask you how you’re doing, they mean it. Everyone walks at a slower pace, not just because they’re old, but because the world doesn’t need to move a million miles
a minute here. If you’re moving that fast, how will you ever take the time to smell the pine trees? It’s those little moments of quiet that mean the most, yet in the outside world, we seem to be completely devoid of them. I know I was.