unheimlich in kentucky

this afternoon i had a moment of spiritual dread. i can’t explain it. driving up black mountain (border ky/va) through the dripping trees, mist rising out of the hollers, i started to tremble. i had to pull over but then that freaked me out more, so i kept driving. i have never had so clearly the feeling of haunting: coal miners and indians and perhaps the mountain itself, all of them wronged and angry and latent in the forest. very dark, very very dark. someone told me when i was here before that ‘kentucky’ is from the cherokee for ‘dark and bloody ground’: they came into the labyrinth of the appalachian hollers only for their elaborate wargames. (the official etymology is ‘land of tomorrow’ in iroquois, a disneylike other side of the coin). in any case, it is an ominous beauty which then – on the virginia side – opens out into the naked violence of a strip-mined hillside. spooky as hell.