The fall is hold­ing out against the win­ter, trees clutch­ing bright leaves before the chill breaks their grips. It’s won­der­ful­ly warm among such colours, and we walk in the val­leys of Appalachia to take in the smell of moun­tain air as rus­tic hands around us work live­stock and soil. In old Aramaic, Damascus means “a well-watered place”, a fit­ting name as the rain soon grows too heavy to be explor­ing the tiny town, pop­u­la­tion 981.

 

I won­der if Dairy Queen was named as such because the restau­rant here already took Dairy King.

How to tell you’re in farm coun­try: a cow­bell on the front door, used to noti­fy the wait­ress of cus­tomers.

 

A baby-faced farm hand with a grey Polo t‑shirt stretched across his pot-bel­lied frame asks us what we’re tak­ing pic­tures of as he dips a thin sand­wich (con­sist­ing sole­ly of two slices of meat and two slices of toast) into a shal­low bowl of beans. He recounts to us the two weeks he was in Western Canada work­ing for a large cat­tle cor­po­ra­tion, and the thick­ness of his south­ern drawl betrays the rural­i­ty of his upbring­ing, typ­i­cal of many around here.

 

 

 

Every day the sun ris­es, I grow a lit­tle stronger. The blood in my bruise has spread along the sur­face, and the sharp­ness of this par­tic­u­lar pain reminds me that I’m still alive. As the yel­low-blue stain fades away, it’s a small com­fort to know I’m always heal­ing, whether I’m aware of it or not.