It is the eve of my departure from Freeburn. I feel weird, and don't really feel as if I am leaving. I'm sleeping at Kate's house in this incredibly comfortable bed. I never even wanna wake up and I sure don't want to leave. Don't wanna leave this town, or the company of Kate or Junior or the rowdy dogs that roam my street and the riverside; and I don't wanna leave the comfort of this VISTA job and the check every two weeks or the health insurance--just basically I'm afraid of what is to come--out there. Elsewhere from here, I know things are different, because that is where I am from.

Last night, I dreamt about Freeburn. In my dream, I looked down upon it--from high on the cliffs across the Tug Fork. My father lived in this huge modular home two stories high. He lived there by himself; he was, like, "on assignment" for two years or something and Caron (his wife) would come to visit him ever so often. He lived at the end of Poplar Street--just four houses down from me. It was by accident that I discovered he was living there.

Then, it was right before my time to leave and I was driving down Highway 94 thinking, "I gotta go see my Dad." I looked down at the end of Poplar Street and I saw a huge round mirror at the end of the road I lived on. In that mirror I saw everyone that lived here, I saw the inner workings of their houses and lives and how much more complicated everyone was than I'd previously thought. I was amazed at this huge mirror and how I'd taken it for granted and how I should always remember that it was here. It seemed to have been placed there for no special reason except to remind each other of who we were--and how we all related to each other.

Sometimes I think about the secrets Kate must hide, not really secrets, but rather all the hidden thoughts that must go on in her head--things she never speaks aloud to others. Maybe when her husband was still alive--they moved around this house and spoke these private thoughts, but now they've been buried inside her head and heart and will stay with her. We're all like that, got all these things we say to ourselves--hearing the voices so clear inside of our heads--it's hard to imagine that others don't hear what's going on inside of there.

Being assigned to Freeburn as a VISTA volunteer was all about coming home--but they didn't know about that when they assigned me here. If they had, maybe they wouldn't have sent me to a place where I seemed to benefit so greatly, maybe more so even then the community I was supposed to serve. But they got me here, and I came without any hesitations--I would have come even if I hadn't got to visit it beforehand.

And even then, it wasn't the most inviting place: rainy cold and muddy as hell. Gray and drizzly, with coal fires going that couldn't even begin to warm you or dry your clothes and feet. But I knew I was coming, and tried not to notice all that too closely. I even made jokes about it and so I drove here to live on a day similar to the day I had visited. And the black, muddy, wet days continued until say, April.

A long time ago, I read this quote, maybe some famous writer wrote it, but it said, something like: "To begin one's journey in life, a person has to go back to where they began, and start from there." With that etched in my mind, I planned on returning to Kentucky to orientate myself and go from these. VISTA sent me back there and I found HOME.

Home became a place where I could look out at the Tug River in the morning while I peed. It was a place where I was hugged by the mountains and friends and the way I felt like my invisible umbilical cord was connected to the rocky hills and my blood was the muddy Tug. My family's roots began in the hills, Harlan County, and I was lucky enough to know the life my ancestors and Mom lived. Some people never know home, never think about it--but I became a part of this community, something I'd spent my whole life searching for.

Here, I learned to build houses, keep a coal fire burning, spit well and accurately, something I had been denied since I was a kid, "Spitting is not lady like!" But when I saw Latisha Norman spit skillfully to her side as she awaited an answer from me, I knew I had to resume my spitting practice.

In Freeburn, I put my own personal rhetoric in action. Personal beliefs such as trying to understand an individual, instead of just passing judgment on them without thought. Trying to shut my own self up and listen to the sounds of others. To swallow my pride at times to work together with others for goal. I learned that religion is what we've created, faith is what God instills in our hearts.

I became snowbound, watched the river and creeks rise, heard the rush of the flooded waters and felt the way it made my heart beat fast. I heard the stories of my neighbors and friends and learned these tales and a kind of wisdom that I could have never learned except by living it. Now as I write this from outside of Freeburn, I've found it difficult to explain the people I knew and the things I saw and learned. When I talk about them, people listen with a puzzled look on their face and I abandon the effort, thinking it's better to show them, I reckon they gotta live it first and foremost. I am no longer in Freeburn, but still feel like it's not really top far away. I am connected by ways that go beyond my bi-weekly VISTA check and job assignment.

In Freeburn, we all live together and in private surrounded by the tight embrace of the hills and under the watchful eye of the goats on the mountainside. I miss the sound of a train announcing its arrival to all of us who live in a mirrored town. "We're all alive," says the train, says the mirror. We awake to listen and reach out to touch each other or ourselves in the looking glass in wonder. The screech of the train's brake reminds us that we're here. I wake up, it's a new day with the promise of spring. I search out my dog Hazel to rub her ears and kiss her head and think about Freeburn and my morning view of the Tug River.