And I am asking now, whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever box of wind you have been laughed out of opening: what cave have you been standing outside of? What worthless inheritance have you been told to walk away from? What strange, dismissed, ungainly thing have you been afraid to claim because everyone around you said it was nothing?
I was 16 when I walked into Mercy Gap with a carpetbag and $1.32. I had no skills, no family, no future anyone could see. I had been placed and replaced and returned like damaged goods. The only thing I had was a dead man’s journals and the stubbornness to read them. And the thing everyone told me was worthless, the box of wind, the house against the grave, the rock and the cave and the hollow that could not be plowed, that worthless thing saved my life. It saved dozens of lives. It changed how people in 3 counties thought about winter and stone and survival.
The conditions do not have to be perfect. They almost never are. The surface is the least interesting part of any piece of land and of any human being. What matters is what lies underneath. What matters is whether you are willing to dig. Your mountain may look like rock to everyone else. Learn how to ask it.
