Claude Ramsey

     The ponies were gone. Escaped in search of a better deal. No longer held captive by the wrong minded city hippies reading Mother Earth News. Their magazine money would have been better spent on some hay. They weren't my ponies, but I decided to go find them. I followed their tracks around the big bend in the road maybe a mile from our little camp. From there it was my decision to go farther away from Nobody's Mountain. Why not? I was still living in a Disney movie. Every expedition was half acid trip, half history book. It was early enough on a warm day to take a walk and explore new territory. The little dirt road I traveled was barely more than a wide path. It took me in a wide arc around the mountain. At one point I passed old stone fences in the middle of the forest. Long abandoned little farms with only the fallen structures to hint at what once was a settlement of hill-folk's. I was getting the feeling that maybe in some awkward way these early Scottish settlers came here for the same reason I had. We were all running from something we couldn't control. The idea that we could move to a very poor area with a tiny population and somehow achieve a higher level of freedom must have been common to us both. Freedom is most relevant when you decide to do without. The less you need, the more freedom you can achieve. The ponies needed freedom, they didn't need us, after a while their tracks either disappeared or I forgot to look for them. Two or three miles later I noticed a small path that seemed to go back up over the mountain. Since I wasn't finding any ponies, not even their obvious pony tracks, I decided to walk the path back up. It was magic and scary to be in Tennessee traveling this plateau ridge with zero understanding of who or where I was. I had committed myself to a community of people living in a different time and place. I was living and walking in the most remote portion of this time travel.                                                            Continue Story