This Side of the Mountain

This Side of the Mountain by Sidney Saylor Farr Every person who reads the following words is probably a talented person. 1 believe that everybody has something 4 original, unique, or personal to express in some way. There is creative power and imagination in everyone and also the need to express it, to share it with others. In the Appalachian mountains there has been a proliferation of books and other kinds of creative efforts in recent years. People ask why the increase, especially in books of poems by women? My theory is that our grandmothers and great-grandmothers used to have to spend their time in grueling labor, cooking , cleaning, weaving, spinning, caring for home and family from daylight to dark. Back then just about everything was made by hand. But even so the women found a way to satisfy their creative needs. They wove intricate patterns and dyed pretty colors for their cloth, and they made gorgeous quilts. Today there's no dire necessity to dye, spin, weave, quilt, make baskets and pots and pans for the family's use. And the women need other outlets. They write poems and throw pots and do other handicrafts for pleasure. I grew up in an isolated community in southeastern Kentucky. We had no radio, no newspapers, no books when I was a young child. Later, missionary workers from across the ridge came to our community-my first experience with people outside the region. I thought they were perfect. I struggled to talk and walk nke they did, to adapt mannerisms like they had. No one tola me to do this; I thought it up all by myself. Later I got it into my head that I could never be a writer until I got a college degree. No matter that I had written plays and stories and poems for my brothers and sisters ever since I learned to hold a pencil. No matter that, later on, I had things published in regional papers and magazines , I did not quite measure up, I thought. In striving to do so, I lost the joy in uncritical creativity I'd known before the missionaries came to our community. Later, when I had renewed my ties with my heritage, when I had successfully bridged the psychological gap between the young girl swinging on grapevines at Stoney Fork and the assistant librarian, freelance writer, and editor at Berea, then I began to feel a freedom of expression-but never to the extent I knew it as a child. All children have this creative power I'm talking about. We see them in joyful play, busy and creative, and unselfconscious . But what happens to this joyful, imaginative, impassioned energy ? Unfortunately it gets buried while most of us are still young, perhaps because we do not understand how great and important it is. Sometimes this creative imagination and expression is nipped in the bud by teachers, parents, and critics. When they see we have written something, or drawn a picture, they look it over for flaws. As though spelling, grammar, and what you learn in a book has anything to do with freedom and imagination! I really believe the best teachers for us are those friends who love us, who think we are interesting, or very important, or funny; whose attitude says: "Tell me more. I want to hear all about how and what you think and feel and what changes have taken place." If someone listens to you in this way, it encourages the spirit of power within you. We start out our lives as little children , full of light and the clearest vision. Then it gets buried deep and we may spend the rest of our lives trying to find it again. A question that haunted me for years was what happened to the young girl who swung on grapevines, played in the creeks and up the hollows from daylight to dark-when not working in the cornfield-and never was bored because she dreamed up plays and enticed younger brothers and sisters to act them out; she told stories which made them laugh and cry and be frightened at times. Where did that girl go...