Editor’s note: As part of Xpress‘ annual Kids Issue series we invited readers to submit past stories from their childhood in WNC. This is one of several entries.
by Robert McGee
In 1974, my family moved from Dallas, Texas, to a farm in Marshall when I was 9. Our new home was an old cabin populated by wild critters, including a blacksnake that once shed its skin on my chest while I slept.
My sisters and I spent that first summer helping our father reclaim kudzu-choked land and digging a pond. The pond was fed by a spring from which I often drank handfuls of crisp water, thinking, “This is life!”
I came to know another vital body of water while attending school on Blannahassett Island. As I gazed out at the French Broad River day after day, my love for our region grew. This feeling strengthened even as I went away for college and for work overseas.
No matter where in the world I went, I always considered WNC to be my true home. I remember thinking, “One day I’ll live here in a patch of woods where I can see the river each day.”
Which is what I did.
A few years after our farm was sold, I bought land near the French Broad, largely because it included a stream fed by a spring. This is where I’ve often found myself during troubled times such as 9/11, COVID or the wake of Tropical Storm Helene. I love knowing that water from this stream enters the river that flows north to meet up with water that comes from the spring of my youth.
The water of who I was commingles with the water of who I am.
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