Stacey Lynn Brown, author of Cradle Song, appears at 11 A.M. on Sunday, October 11, on the Mountain Writer’s Stage.
I was born and raised in the South, and I stayed there through college, attending Emory University in Atlanta as an undergrad. But when it came time for me to look at graduate schools, I knew that I needed to leave in order to gain some perspective. After all, the inside of a place only affords you one view, and I knew I wanted to see what other parts of the country were like—and what the South looked like from the outside.
I was fortunate enough to have a few options when it came to getting my MFA. My choice? The University of Oregon. Oh, there was New York, with its unlimited cultural opportunities. And there was the Midwest, with its “granddaddy of them all” writing program. But once I flew across the Rockies and landed in Oregon to check it out, I knew: this was the place where I could write. This was the place where I could find out what it was that I had to say.
My father often says that he didn’t know at the time what a sad day it
was when he helped me pack that U-Haul and watched me drive away, bound for what we all thought was just a two-year stint in the West. But once I found my place in Oregon, I didn’t want to leave. And so I stayed. For twelve years.
I have to admit that I fell in love with the landscape first. I’d simply never seen so many variations on the color green. Or the way the light moved almost horizontally through cloud breaks on an autumn day. The hot springs and waterfalls, giant ferns and nursery logs in the old-growth forests I hiked through. The lushness of the evergreens beneath the misting winter rain. Over time, the upward pointing arrows of Douglas firs replaced my long-loved Georgia pines. And though I missed lightning bugs and the sudden violence of thunderstorms, there wasn’t much else I missed in my new home.