The Appalachias aren’t like mountains in the western United States. They are old, very old, worn down into what look like gigantic, solid ocean swells and they are lush. Their skeletons sometimes burst through the brush as dark, vine-covered rocks glimpsed through trees, often with small waterfalls trickling over them. In autumn the changing leaves are so spectacular people make weekend road trips through western Carolina just to look at the colors. In winter, those mountains occasionally turn white with snow — but not often enough to make the southerners who live there adept at negotiating icy roads not built with ice in mind. It’s best to wait out freezes inside by the fire.

In summer there is no place in this world that is greener or more beautiful.

So last June, Michael and I rented a car after visiting his relatives in Illinois, and drove to see my family in North Carolina by way of the mountains.

This meant taking narrow, winding roads crowded with trees on one side, heart-dropping distant valleys behind flimsy guardrails on the other, through and past little towns that seemed sprinkled rather than built on the green shoulders of giants. Most of those towns were glimpsed solely as solitary, white, wooden Baptist churches alongside the highway.

Always Baptist. I believe we saw one Lutheran church, which prompted speculation about whether we were passing a community of heretics. Once we passed two white wooden Baptist churches built across the road from each other. No doubt there’s a story there, but we didn’t stop to hear it.

My Asheville uncle had recommended we stop in a little town called Spruce Pine. “Go to the Fox and the Fig,” he’d told us. “Trust me, it’s worth it.” So we followed the signs to Spruce Pine, the entrance of which was announced by a large sign promoting a Rhododendron festival the following week.

To describe a North Carolina mountain town as “tiny” seems redundant. Barring summer resorts like Blowing Rock or college towns /literary meccas like Asheville, almost all of them are tiny. 

Spruce Pine is typical in its single, old fashioned main street lined with two story, flat-faced brick buildings from the early 20th century. It looked less typical in that it was jammed with a line of slowly moving cars, occasionally pausing to allow clots of pedestrians through, many of them pearshaped, bearded men wearing headbands with bobbing antennae. We were plainly too early for the Rhododendron Festival. The Alien Festival, however, was in full swing, and popular. Crowds of costumed attendees walked past welcoming store-signs depicting bald, green, big-eyed extra-terrestrials. 

It took us a while to find a parking space near the Fox and Fig, another square, brick, flatfaced 1900s-era building at the end of the street, but we managed well enough. Michael may have been a bit unnerved. He chose to stay in the car. As an ex-Locus employee I felt in my element, so I went into the Fox and Fig to pick up two muffins and a cookie, and enjoyed the banter of the cheery, twenty-something employees. Judging from the conversation, Spruce Pine has a festival every week or so in summer. “More than the Trout thing last week,” one of them commented to a customer. “And next week with the Rhododendron people is just going to be cray-cray.”

As I said, it’s a given that towns built on the sides of mountains are tiny.

“Tiny,” however, does not mean either poor or stupid.