Pigs are Not Domesticated and May Bite

There is a certain place on the highway toward the mountains where the forest opens up and there are the beloved mountains! It always makes me smile in my heart. Today was no different.

I haven’t visited the Smoky Mountains in a while due to the move last year and the process of getting settled. But a few weeks ago they were calling me and so I decided to visit after summer crowds were gone and before the masses of tourists in October–the busiest month of the year there.

It’s really a visit home for me. As a kid I loved these mountains with a deep, heart-felt joy. That hasn’t changed. I always feel ‘right’ here…in balance, at peace. Anchored in my skin. I feel that way on the Alabama Coast as well….but they are distinctly different ecosystems. And the mountains are not nearly as developed as the coast…which is almost totally developed, almost totally choked with houses, condos, restaurants….and on and on.

Like all wild areas, the Smoky Mountains speak to a part of me that is still wild and undomesticated. The wild woman within who likes to feel the squishy mud between her toes, warm sand underfoot, gaze out over a vast horizon at the edge of the sea and stand on mountaintops and feel the immenseness of space.

Today, while visiting the mountain farm near Cherokee, NC in the Smoky Mountain National Park, I saw a sign attached to the pig pen: “Pigs are not domesticated and may bite.” I thought of my wild woman self and realized she has that same potential. Don’t try to pen me up as I will bite…no ‘may’ about it.

I began to ponder the idea of domestication and immediately thought of computers and email and social media. While all can be useful tools, they can also be thieves that steal our wildness and keep us chained to a plastic box that squawks at us when someone is trying to contact us.

Sometimes we need to unplug and attune ourselves once again to the rhythms of nature…that magical, mystical web of life from which our physical bodies arise. It is home to us…it helps us reconnect with that from which we came.

I didn’t know what the day would bring as I motored closer to the most amazing biosphere of the Smokies. As I crested a ridge near Franklin, NC the fog–that living, breathing beast of  white mist–rolled over the mountain to kiss my cheeks with moisture. Welcome home, daughter. Come play in the wildness. Come feel your Mother nurture you. Rest…explore…absorb the limitless beauty.

For the next few days, I am not domesticated and I will bite….but only if someone tries to put me in a pen.

It’s time to fly!