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The dorm where I lived my freshman year at Appalachian State University rose up from one of the highest spots on campus, and from my seventh-floor room, I had a perfect view of the football stadium, where, on game days, we’d race to our seats in the upper tier that towered above the field, the height up there almost dizzying. Sitting was never an option; instead, we stood the entire game, our feet thundering against the bleachers in rhythm with the marching band, our voices rising with the crowd, feeling on top of the world as we watched a sea of motion and sound churning below us, a roaring basin of energy that carried us higher with every cheer.
On crisp fall evenings, before winter’s heavy hand blanketed the town in snow, my friends and I would cram into someone’s car, chasing the sky. We’d wind our way to the summit of Howard’s Knob, a thousand feet above the river of headlights on U.S. Highway 421 and the pulse of campus life on King Street. I’d never been so high up on a mountain before; at home in Randolph County, I’d roamed and hiked in the Uwharries and the Birkheads, ancient and worn down over millennia, gentle rolling ridges compared to this. On Howard’s Knob, I could feel the elevation in my bones — the air thinner, filtered through layers of forest; the wind pushing clouds across the sky; the horizon endless.
What we did up there as college students I don’t recall — or won’t confess in print — but what I do remember is that, as the sky turned violet and the sun dipped below a mountain, our laughter and conversations gave way to profound stillness, to a state of serenity that came with our distance from the landscape below. On that mountaintop, we found peace above the valley, and it was in those moments that I felt something far greater than myself — a deep-seated wonder that has stayed with me ever since.
I’ve experienced that same sense of awe all across western North Carolina: driving the Linn Cove Viaduct, where the road seems to hang in midair, a bridge between earth and sky; at Pilot Mountain, where I’ve steadied myself against the sheer rock face and stood, transfixed and exhilarated, as broad-winged hawks traced arcs above; at Wiseman’s View, where the silhouettes of Hawksbill and Table Rock rise from the depths of Linville Gorge.
I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. Not long ago, when I was hiking the aptly named Exclamation Point Trail at Chimney Rock State Park, I heard the same reverence echoing in the voices of others. Standing in the rock overhang called the Opera Box, a natural amphitheater overlooking the vast Hickory Nut Gorge, a group was so moved by the beauty surrounding us that they began to sing, a spontaneous chorus, as if the very landscape had drawn the song from their hearts.
The moment was so unexpected that I paused to listen, quietly breathless, grateful for these grand and glorious places, where the soul is free to soar.
Elizabeth Hudson
Editor in Chief
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