Up Moses Creek: ‘The sun is not so central as a man.’ — Henry Thoreau
From left to right, Burt Kornegay, Ryan Holquist, Henry Kornegay and Chris Dickerson raise a 16-foot tall steel watchtower on the ridge. Becky Kornegay photo.
Just as the morning sun shoots out beams that light up the mountains, so our eyes shoot out beams, too, rays of comprehension that light up what they fall on with human significance and warmth.
Jan. 14: As I hiked up the slope of the ridge behind our house at dawn, my boots crunching in a crust of snow, I saw the moon setting toward the long dark ridgeline of Black Mountain, directly to my west. The moon’s face was round and silvery, set in a glowing pink sky. When I reached the top of our ridge, Black Mountain itself began to brighten, touched by the sun’s rays, though the sun itself was still hidden from view behind the Blue Ridge, to my east. I was standing between the sunrise and Black Mountain. I watched as the light moved down the mountain, revealing its features as gradually as if, while reading this page, you hold your hand in front of your eyes then ever so slowly lower it — and the words rise into sight. But that morning there was a momentous change in the way Black Mountain lit up.
For almost a month Hooper Knob had been the first part of the mountain to catch the light. Hooper is one of three named knobs that form Black Mountain’s ridgeline. Middle and Parker Knobs are the other two. First a clump of trees which stick up like a tuft of hair on Hooper’s highest point would blush with life. Then, growing bolder, richer, the light descended until the whole knob appeared to swell like a bud. Once Hooper was fully kindled, the sunlight fell on Parker Knob. Middle Knob would be the last to light.
The ridge I stood on that morning was only a mile away from Black Mountain in straight-line sight. Moses Creek’s narrow, unlit valley lay between. And through the dead of winter I’d watched each of the knobs light up in that order, unhurried by the others. By “dead of winter” I mean since the winter solstice on Dec. 21. The solstice marks the turn from fall into full-on winter, and the word literally means the “sun stands still.” Morning after morning since the solstice Black Mountain’s order of lighting up had also “stood still”: Hooper first, then Parker, Middle last.
That is until a few days earlier, when I began to notice that Parker Knob was starting to close the gap on Hooper, overtaking it. Jan. 14 marked the day that Parker’s top blushed first — the momentous change — though Hooper was so close behind that the two almost caught the light simultaneously. You had to look close to see that Parker was ahead by a nose. I knew from winters past that Parker would keep pulling on ahead.
I also knew that in February Middle Knob would take its turn in first place, only to be overtaken by Parker again. It’s as if — the mornings now lengthening, the sunrise coming earlier and earlier — Black Mountain senses spring’s approach, and its three highest points are in a race to reach it first. By the time you’re reading this column, spring will be on the march. Leaf and flower buds will be cracking open. April is the greening month, and my view out will begin to close. Until — and no “may” about it — I’ll not see Black Mountain light up again until next fall.
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About to hike back down to our house that January morning, now forced to watch where I stepped in the snow to keep from taking a fall, I suddenly realized the full moon had slipped behind Black Mountain and was gone. Not a hint of its light lingered in the blue sky. Which is another way of saying that as Black Mountain rose ever higher and brighter into the light, it eclipsed the moon. And all this happened before the first piercing ray of the sun shot out over the Blue Ridge and into my eyes.
Telling me there is no “sunrise” unless the sun has something to rise above and fall on, to illuminate. Sunrise is also Sunfall. That gigantic, blinding ball of thermonuclear reaction would be to no end but its own slow solitary burning to extinction without something for it to bring forth out of the blackness, even something as small as dust particles twining in the air.
And if one of those particles is Earth itself, turning on its axis, then some part of its surface is always rising out of blackness to meet the sun. Earthrise meets Sunfall. And the wonder of it all lies in the human eye.
(Burt and Becky Kornegay live in Jackson County. Up Moses Creek comes out the second Wednesday of each month.)
