By Mary Hahn
January 17, 2021
I woke up one morning and saw the frost on the roof and on the grass and I looked out at the mountains that stood strong like an unbreakable sentry that has stood guard over the valley for millions of years. The mountains are the soul of the region. To understand the mountains is to know ourselves. During our brief lifetime we see little change; they appear much the same. My mind drifted back to the times in which we live. The acrimony and the pain that we face as a nation seems overwhelming. My mind started racing and then I look back at those mountains that have witnessed things of history and folklore. I thought about the Indians who used to roam these lands and the change that was forced upon them by Europeans. The Indians used the Valley in the shadows of the Blue Ridge for farming. The fertile Valley of the Shenandoah was home to the Monacan Indian nation for 10,000 years where they harvested crops and hunted deer and bear. They eventually were pushed west by the European settlers.
The mountains witnessed Black people working in servitude and a war between the states that should’ve torn us apart. By 1820 there were over 2423 Slaves in the Shenandoah Valley. One in seven was enslaved. The Shenandoah Valley strongly supported the confederacy to preserve the slavery. Whites reacted slowly to new laws where people were considered people Instead of property. The south past laws for segregation called the Jim Crowe laws. All this while the mountains remained vigilant.
They saw us preparing for a world war and a pandemic at the turn of the last century. During the 1918 pandemic in Virginia, schools, churches and a variety of public places closed their doors during the pandemic peak. (Sound familiar?) Newspaper obituaries were filled with names of young men and women whose lives had been cut short by the influenza.
They were around during the economic fall of 1929 but most of these people that lived in their shadows were too poor to tell. Unemployment began to rise rapidly in 1931, farm prices plummeted and the state government cut spending to maintain a balanced budget and relief rolls rose sharply. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt initiated the civilian conservation Corps which built the Skyline Drive.
They saw the greatest generation prepare for war against the Nazis. Troops in the same towns in the Shenandoah Valley fought together. There is a memorial in the shadow of the mountains where the greatest number of boys died in the D-day invasion. They were Company A, the 29th infantry division from Bedford, Virginia.
Mountains watched us go through a Cold War after WW11. Many of us remember duck and cover in school and fallout shelters. There was a place established underground at the Greenbrier to keep members of the government in Washington safe. The wives however would have stayed up in the Greenbrier with no safety measures, ironic.
They saw young men go off to a foreign jungle to fight a meaningless war that was started by the men of the greatest generation.
They have witnessed great technological advances that saw people travel by foot to jet planes flying overhead. We have the internet which has changed lives dramatically. Work, school, communication and much much more can now be done from home.
They saw us reeling after the trade center towers were brought to the ground on 9/11. Homeland Security Act was enacted after the Trade Towers went down. There are now metal detectors going into public buildings along with bag searches. Flying has become scrutinized. Lives changed.
The mountains have witnessed a current worldwide COVID pandemic in which 2 million people have died. In our country there have been nearly 400,000 thousand deaths with numbers rising daily. We do now have a vaccine thanks to diligent work of many great scientists.
On January 6th we watched as terrorists from our own country storm into our capital in Washington trying to seize our own government endangering the lives of many working in the Capital. There will be a new government on January 20.
I am not going to make a difference on a national scale like Justice Ginsburg but I know I raised my children well and in the end they are good people. That is a promise I made to the world when they were young. We all have a sphere of influence. Mine is very small but I hold onto it tightly. Most of us are but bit players in a docudrama being played out in the foothills. Those mountains have assured me that this too shall pass. There is no guarantee as to what happens next but I do know things will change. I will continue to contemplate those mountains for guidance. Stand tall and weather each and every storm because in the spring things will bloom again and we will have a season of renewal and hope. In return I promise to be part of that change I want to see in the world my bargains with the universe are working out. So stand tall and proud and resolute with a heavy dose of humility and now that spring is coming. The mountains have told me so.
Mary shared this video of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir performing Shenandoah.