Early January is a great time to consider one’s place in the universe and one’s plans for the future. For some, reflecting on the endless ways in which different cultures view the passing of the year is particularly instructive. For example, the Roman calendar contained twelve months and inspired our own. Martius, the first month and precursor to the modern “March”, was keyed to the spring equinox, when the natural world woke each year from a wintery slumber. December was originally the tenth month (”dec-” being a Latin root meaning “ten”) and was devoid of contemporary New Year’s bacchanalia.

The Chinese New Year is based on a Lunisolar calendar, which calculates dates based on comparative observations of the sun and moon. The New Year begins sometime in either January or February, and is pegged to the fifteenth day following the beginning of the first lunar month. The typical celebrations hearken from an ancient myth in which terrified villagers drive away a man-eating dragon using fireworks—themselves a mainstay of western celebrations.

And then there are opossums, popularly called “possums” and known to science as Didelphis virginiana. This humble creature has become an unwitting New Year’s participant in the small settlement of Brasstown, North Carolina (population, 832). Following the example of their Northern cousins in New York City, where a shimmering, lighted ball is lowered on Times Square each New Year’s Eve, citizens of Brasstown gather in a gas station parking lot to view a caged possum be lowered via construction crane. Not the pinnacle of high culture, perhaps, but a cherished provincial tradition. Brasstown is approximately 9,787 times smaller than New York City.

The small Appalachian town, like much of eastern North America, is a natural habitat for the possum (properly, “opossum”). A remarkably well-adapted mammal, the possum is an “opportunistic omnivore” with many sharp teeth and a prehensile, or grasping, tail. Typically nocturnal, they are quiet and solitary animals with a predisposition to play “dead”. Like all marsupials, it carries its young within a protective pouch until the brood reach adolescence. Amazingly enough, the immune system of an adult possum is capable of resisting quite powerful toxins, such as rattlesnake venom. However, the smarter, and occasionally predatory species Homo sapiens has found other unusual uses for the possum.

According to the New York Times, the Brasstown ceremony features a possum caged and suspended being slowly lowered to ground level, where triumphant villagers then set the hapless creature free again. Animal rights activists have derided the practice as obscene and barbaric, having protested and attempted to have the possum drop discontinued. North Carolina law is ambiguous concerning possible cruelty to animals during the festivities. Brasstown nevertheless delivers several sideshows which devilishly cruel to the senses, though absurdly amusing—blasting of aluminum cans with vintage muskets, and the “Miss Possum” contest, where badly-shaven truck drivers don party dresses, high heels, and gaudy makeup for the evening.

The Possum Drop bestows a certain perverse notoriety on Brasstown, the “Possum Capital of the World,” which is otherwise famous for harboring abortion-clinic bomber Eric Rudolph. What’s next… a Fourth-of-July Kangaroo?

1967, the Summer of Love: Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell recorded their first duet, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” on Motown’s Tamla label. The single quickly reached #3 in the R&B charts. Diana Ross, recently separated from the Supremes, repeated the feat in 1970—her version climbed to #1 on both the Pop and R&B chants, and later received a Grammy nomination.

But all this about mountains and climbing reminds me of a persistent geological dispute that I noticed recently while searching the web—a disagreement over which peak is, in fact, the highest in the Appalachian Mountains. Interested persons might simply consult the United States Geological Survey (USGS), which cites North Carolina’s Mount Mitchell as the highest, rising 6,684 feet above sea level. This is the definitive, authoritative source, and I’m personally abashed that so many people—raging hoards of them—have managed to ignore, distort, or misquote the facts. I have several theories why, but first, a few illustrative examples:

• Mount Washington, New Hampshire (elevation: 6,288 feet): Popular references and websites once identified Mount Washington as the highest peak in the Appalachian Mountains. This inaccuracy has been generally remedied, although advocates still resort to absurdly subjective terms such as “the premier peak of the East.”
• Mount Mitchill, New Jersey (elevation: 226 feet): According to USGS guidelines, a mountain must rise a minimum of 1,000 feet above sea level—meaning that this hillock doesn’t even qualify. Nevertheless, the poorly-informed writer of one article mistakes his favorite Jersey shore landmark for North Carolina’s Mount Mitchell, missing the mark (and the spelling) by over a mile!
• Clingman’s Dome, Tennessee (elevation: 6.643 feet): Runner up to North Caroina’s Mount Mitchell, this peak was once the subject of great dispute between Tennessee explorer/lawyer/senator/general Thomas Lanier Clingman and his rival, Professor Elisha Mitchell of the University of North Carolina. Both men claimed their peak as the highest in the East. Mitchell proved victorious, although at a heavy cost: Mitchell plummeted to his death in 1857, while exploring the mountain that bears his name.
• Grandfather Mountain, North Carolina (elevation: 5,964): Perhaps the worst offender, Grandfather Mountain claims the lofty title of highest peak for purely commercial reasons—the property is operated as a nature park open to paying visitors. In fact, the Grandfather Mountain official website claims this distinction through subterfuge—calling the mountain “the highest peak in the Blue Ridge mountain range.” Apparently, the capitalists on Grandfather Mountain have conveniently forgotten that Mount Mitchell also belongs to the Blue Ridge and is 720 feet higher.

I’m not entirely sure which theory, if any, explains the wealth of misconceptions about our highest Eastern peak:

1. Stateism: This was clearly operative in the dispute between Clingman and Mitchell—the early 19th Century was a period of intense (almost nationalist) pride in one’s home state, leading thousands of public servants to secede with their states in 1861. Certainly any state would enjoy the distinction of hosting the highest Appalachian peak, but modern citizens generally recognize the chance nature of geographical facts: The borders of North Carolina were drawn from the coastlands westward, without knowledge of what features defined the interior, and well before any Europeans gazed upon Mount Mitchell or Clingman’s Dome.
2. Sectionalism: Similar to Stateism, this derives from a belief each part of the nation should have its “best”, “longest” or “largest”… and “highest” is no exception. New Hampshire’s Mount Washington claimed its erroneous title for decades because, perhaps, Northeasterners would have preferred to ignore the South altogether.
3. Economics: Whoever heard of fact-checking when money is involved?!?! Grandfather Mountain has been running a lucrative business for years, and will certainly continue to, highest peak or no.
4. Poor Scholarship: Probably most errors have less to do with pride or greed than with bad research. Mount Mitchill, New Jersey is hopelessly misrepresented, and only the wary reader might notice.

Now for a bit of Stateism on my part: Visit Mount Mitchell, North Carolina—where you can learn much about the ecology of the Southern Appalachians, hike magnificent mile-high trails, and sip sweet tea among the alpine breeze.

Here I am again on Saturday afternoon.  We just received a call from a nice lady looking for a New Year’s cottage.  Something with a hot tub, and maybe a fireplace.  We searched and searched, but everything was booked.  “I guess I just think that the hot tub and fireplace go together,” she lamented.

The human mind is apparently drawn to manichaean constructions of this nature—the species has a distinct tendency to juxtapose seemingly incompatible ideas with ease.  Classical Greek philosophers believed that all materials were created through the proper ratios of four elements—Earth, Fire, Air, and Water (some thinkers later included a fifth, known as Aether, Idea, or Quintessence).  Each element was believed to exist in rough opposition to another (i.e. Water versus Air, Air versus Earth).  Bringing these into proper alignment was critical to everything from personal health to the balance of the universe, and was equated with harmony throughout the cosmos.   The Greeks even attempted to relate this system to celestial phenomena, resulting in the association of Zodiacal constellations with the four elements.

Needless to say, Socrates and his intellectual heirs lived in a simpler time well before the dawn of modern chemical elements.  For their purposes, this system was a perfectly elegant system of describing the observable world.  One person, the “laughing philosopher” Democritus, correctly presaged modern atomic theory.  Many of his contemporaries instead judged his ideas ludicrous and thought him to be insane.  This reaction characterized the ongoing human obsession with simple, all-encompassing “theories of everything.”

China produced a similar, although subtler, approach to the problem of elements.  Here, traditional thought proclaimed five “phases”—Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water.  Rather than following the oppositional structure of Greek elements, Chinese Phases are considered interrelated–each generates one partner and overcoming another (i.e. Water creates Wood and extinguishes Fire).  This system neatly paraphrases organic processes and accommodates the iron-age mind.  The inclusion of Wood and Metal also shows increasing sophistication which marks biological and man-made materials among changeless natural substances.

The Chinese phases, like their Western counterparts, were nevertheless strung like cobwebs between the disciplines in an attempt to knit together all knowledge.  Chinese music associates phases with the five-note pentatonic scale, a remarkably widespread and functional scale common throughout folkmusics of the world.  In medicine, the phases conveniently ruled the five senses, various internal organs, and successive stages of life.  The I Ching Book of Changes, a Confucian philosophical text, held that relationships between the phases influenced heavenly affairs and could be harnessed for purposes of fortune telling.  The martial art Xingyiquan instead connected the phases with aggressive bursts of controlled violence known by names such as Beng (“crushing”) or Pao (“pounding”).  Today, many of these principles are still found within the peaceful Qigong philosophy, although some groups who attach religious convictions the practices—the Falun Gong—have often been the targets of Communist crackdowns against “backward” or “dangerous” ideologies.

Perhaps the American Poet Robert Frost best described our preoccupation with primal substances.  In “Fire and Ice” (1920), frost characterizes the elemental forces of nature:

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

This is my first posting from the Carolina Mornings Blog. Around the office, we spend our days around here setting up reservations for visitors to Asheville and other spots around Western North Carolina–but the best times are the “field trips” we occasionally take to investigate the outside world. I would call this (in the words of my Mississippi grandmother) Galavanting. You might define galavanting as wandering, ranging, or roaming, but I would propose a more subtle understanding–a sort of contented exploration, or the joy of discovery. Or even Entdeckungsvernugen, in the style of a Volkswagen commercial.

And so galavanting is our general theme–we’re interested in comings and goings around the lovely Blue Ridge region, from every peak through every hollow. We’ll be exploring local culture, news, cuisine, trends… and everything in between. Like a river, our interests flow ever onward. Check back for regular musings on Asheville and other local communities. Read on!