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Well, hello there, family.
Over the Christmas holiday (and it's a testament to how busy my life is that I'm only getting around to writing about it now), I went back to my home town, in the foothills of East Tennessee, and to the village my parents retired to on the Cumberland Plateau. We live on the east coast, so our normal route across the Appalachians would be Interstate 40, through western North Carolina from Asheville straight on through to Knoxville. But this year, I-40 was completely closed for some bridge construction, and we drove an older highway through the mountains. We passed through quite a few small towns, a couple of which were prosperous to the point of gentrification, but most of which were not exactly going concerns — a few houses occupied, more in ruins, and any standing commercial buildings empty, maybe showing the signage of their last unsuccessful tenant.
It put me in mind of one of my favorite podcasts, Old Gods of Appalachia. As the show notes say, it's set in an alternate Weird Appalachia:
Long before anyone lived in these hills, beings of immeasurable darkness and incomprehensible madness were entombed here. It was during this bygone age, when the Appalachians towered much higher and more menacing than the gentle slopes and ridges we know today, that they were conscripted after a great battle to serve as the final prison for those dark forces. But of course, time marches inexorably on. Eons passed and the walls of the prison begin to wear thin. And Things that slumbered soundlessly below for millennia began to stir and become restless.
It's a vision of cosmic horror that paints my home region as not just unfortunate, but cursed. If you like horror fiction, I strongly recommend this old time radio show of the Internet. You can download it wherever you get podcasts though I recommend AntennaPod for Android users.
To leave you in the right mood, take a moment with this photo I took while on a hike on that trip:
Laurel Branch Cemetery at dawn
Thanks to the efforts of ModdedBear, you can now listen to Old Gods of Appalachia completely on Gemini! Most clients will require you to download a whole episode before listening, but I believe there are a few that will handle streams.
