comprehend it, not die in awe of it, while snow packed itself
down on top or rain pelted or punched or sun burnt itself out
or wind flashed through the sky, torturing it. These were
mountains meant to last forever in a community of human
sight and sound: not mountains meant to swallow cities and
towns forever: and so one was surrounded by a beauty not
suffused with fear, splendid but not inducing awe of the divine
or terror of the wild, intemperate menace of weather and wind
gone amuck. These were mountains that made humans part of
their beauty: solid, like earth, like soil. One felt immeasurably
human, solid, safe: part of the ground, not some shade on it
through which the wind passes. The mountains could be one’s
personal legacy, what the earth itself gave one to be part of:
one simply had to love them: nothing had to be done to deserve
them or survive them: one could be innocent of nature and not
offend them.
The wooden house, so white and old, underlined the
tameness of these mountains, the incongruity fitting right in, a
harmony, a simple delight. The mountains and the house went
hand in hand: what would the mountain be without the simple
old house? The cold came from the sky and rested on the
ground: touched the edges of the mountains high up and
reached down into the valley and edged along the road and
paced restlessly on the earnest ground. The cold could
overwhelm a human with its intensity, its bitterness, like some
awful taste rubbing on the skin. But in the fragile wooden
house it was warm: so the cold was not the terrifying cold that
could penetrate even stone or brick: this must be a gentle cold,
killed by small fires in charming fireplaces and rattling
radiators in tiny rooms.
Emmy and I never touched, outsiders at this rich girls’
school, on this campus nestled in these welcoming mountains:
she from Kenya, me from Camden; her an orphan separated
from her family to be sent to a girls’ school in New England as
a little girl; me with the woman upstairs dying and the father
gone to work and the brother farmed out and me farmed out,
32
poor little poor girl; her angry and wild, dark black, separated
from everyone she loved and everyone she knew and arriving
here at this college after three or four finishing schools, unfinished, to be educated; me having gotten here so I could read and write; her wanting to go home; me never having a home
anymore again; her not a rich white girl here at this right
school; me poor; her upper-class where she comes from; me
low down; both smart, too smart, for our own good. Also: in
the world of the rich the poor are outcasts. Being black made
her poor, money aside. The others were like some distant
figures who spoke with cotton stuffed in their mouths: nothing
ever came out clean and clear; they had anguish but it was
