Not little cat's feet

. . . the fog is rising.

(Last words of Emily Dickinson)

We woke to fog this morning so severe that one school locality started classes two hours late.

By 10 a.m., when I headed to Fincastle to take pictures and give a little talk to some Notre Dame students who are receiving a credit for making repairs in an Appalachian community, the sun was brilliant. The day was warm, too.

To my left as I drove I could see the fog bank over Catawba Creek. It looked heavy and cumbersome to me as the air tried to rise. I slowed and eventually turned the car around to go back for a picture.

The college students were young and fresh-faced and a little surprised to see so many McMansions in the Appalachian area they had come to serve. Botetourt is not without its poverty but it is very well hidden. It mostly exists in the back roads and the older homes, shoved away in places with nearly forgotten names. Wildcat Holler. Pattonsburg. Webster. Oriskany. We have a new kind of poverty now, that of people who sell their souls to purchase $500,000 homes that they then can't furnish. I hear the tells of houses with echoes, rooms empty save for the kitchen and a bedroom.

I am not a public speaker and had no notes because this was a relatively sudden invitation. My tongue twisted and I did not tell all I had envisioned saying as my shyness overcame me. But I did convey the depth the history, I think. Or hope. And I spoke about the loss of my husband's family home, which my in-laws had to sell in recent years. I would have loved to have kept the place, but we could not afford the asking price.

The students were also going to Craig County, and my years of writing the newspaper in that county stood me in good stead as I was able to answer questions about that area. They were particularly interested in the vast amounts of public lands in both Botetourt and Craig. Craig in particular, with over 50 percent of its land mass held by the federal government.

What seems unknown to most people is that the forested lands are not virgin timber, left in pristine condition from times long forgotten, but instead are the results of growth allowed since the 1920s and 1930s. Prior to that, timber barons had moved in and taken the trees, iron ore and other natural resources in great swaths. They left behind paths of destruction and small communities such as Lignite that no longer exist.

Change. It is as inevitable as the rising fog and just as veiled. Blink and things are no more as they once were, for time moves on, creeping forward slowly, like a lazy cloud bending down to touch the ground.