From Cabin to Cabin

Excerpt from From Cabin to Cabin: The Life of A. Rufus Morgan

These writers have never gained the point of view that has inspired multitudes of men and women to look up to the mountain peaks and gain the inspiration to live heroically in the midst of the grandeur and the beauty all around them. However, this beauty and grandeur have held multitudes of men and women to the moun tain region in spite of hard labor, simple living, and fellowship with the few who lived nearby.

Born in 1885, my own experience reaches back for ninety years to the beginning of life in a log cabin under the shadows of ridges of the Nantahala Mountains where grow the shooting star, arbutus, hepatica, bloodroot, and various ferns such as the harelip fern, the wooly-lip fern, the Christmas fern, the rattlesnake fern, the leatherwood fern, and many others. These and other beauties of the mountains intrigued me as far back as I can remember. Sowith the trees: the maples which add red to the spring woods, the silver bell which rings in spring along the beautiful streams, the tulip poplar, wild magnolias, the locust, the yellowwood (cladrastis lutea), and then the whole of the heath family including the rhododendron, mountain laurel, flame azalea, and the fragrant white azalea.

In addition to all of the beauties, there were the activities which might seem a burden to those unaccustomed to them but which to us added meaning to life. Th'ere was the open fire, with my mother sitting nearby knitting the stockings for her children and fill ing in the time with reading from Shakespeare, from Dickens, from Sir Walter Scott, as well as from the Bible. There were the trips to the spring for the supply of water. There was the making of candles in the traditional molds. There was the quilting frame hanging from the ceiling of the living room, let down within reach when quilting was to be done and drawn up out of the way when other activities demanded attention.

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