Notes on a Holler in Tennessee

June 2021

It’s my first time leaving Las Vegas since March 2020. I land in Knoxville near midnight and, an hour later, ease my rental out of the airport. Windows down, a breeze whipping me awake, I am eager to be someplace new but unsure of how to navigate this transformed world. I cruise through the city’s dark, winding bowels—slowing when crossing the bridges to gaze upon the ripples scaling the back of the river below me—until I reach the farm in the holler.

I park next to the red barn and exit, my mind buzzing against the tall brush eating my ankles. I am not prepared to defend myself against chiggers or ticks. All light is shut off from me outside of the rental car. I shiver. It is too wide, too open, unlike the confines of my house, which seems to grow smaller every day. I feel every inch of myself standing in the chilly darkness. As my eyes adjust to the pitch-black night, I look up, my mouth agape. It’s as if someone has hung twinkling Christmas lights in the trees. Fireflies light up the canopies. Their yellow bodies flicker along every branch and leaf in a spectacular show that leaves me awestruck. I shuffle to the front door, uncaring about what is crawling in the underbrush or what is watching me from the shadows. I just want to go to sleep with the image of a thousand nightlights blinking at me.

In the daylight, I can see more of the farmhouse. It’s cream with green trim. A muddy patch swallows the ground between it and the barn, which houses a small herd of sheep and two dogs on the rolling landscape behind it. On a slope next to the road overlooking the farmhouse is a coop with multiple chickens and ducks. Each morning, I feed the sheep and the dogs and fill their trough from an old water pump. Then I head to the coop. Crouching down, I waddle alongside the birds to keep the black netting overhead from snagging on my braids. I hop over fecal matter and eggs shells to feed the birds and collect their eggs. If you need to tell the difference between chicken and duck eggs, put them side by side. Duck eggs are larger, off-white, and slightly transparent.

The farmhouse is on forty-five acres of land. So, I go hiking and blackberry picking when I’m not writing. When a large black and yellow centipede falls from the canopy and nearly misses my head, I consider not hiking again. I pass most of my time in a rocking chair on the front porch because I don’t get to do that when I’m back home. It’s usually thirty degrees hotter in Vegas in June, and I occupy my time tending to my kids’ needs. Here, I can watch swallowtails and bumblebees flit around the summer lilac. Around eleven or so, a skink crawls out from behind an old backpack crammed underneath the antique desk on the porch and, for an hour, it follows the sun down the steps.

Cars speed up and down the one-lane road, and I wave to the slower drivers—they wave back. I realize that I’ve missed the pleasantry of waving to a stranger and finding a hint of camaraderie on their passing face. This trip has been good for reclaiming myself. Every day I shake off part of the husk that I’ve enclosed around me over the past year and find more of a bright new person underneath. I’ve forgotten how to care for myself. But I am remembering now.

The evenings are best here. Time stretches into an unnatural stillness thick with want—for noise, for night, for easier living. The sun sets behind the mountains, leaving the valley awash in a bleached blue light. Fireflies appear like sparks from an invisible brushfire. As the blue deepens in the sky, they rise faster to herald the ensuing blaze. When the sky becomes indigo, the trees are silhouetted like looming giants watching the light show gathered at their rooted feet.

When darkness engulfs the holler, the fireflies dazzle the air. The black backdrop provides a sharp canvas for them to illuminate themselves. Sometimes, if I look hard enough, I can see myself glowing, too.

DW McKinney is a Black American writer living in Nevada. She serves as an editor for Shenandoah and writes a graphic novels review column for CNMN Magazine. Her writing has appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, The McNeese Review, Hippocampus Magazine, Narratively, PANK, and the anthology I’m Speaking Now (Chicken Soup for the Soul, 2021). Say hello at dwmckinney.com.

Published April 11 2022