PEOPLE DO THINGS FOR EACH OTHER HERE

Katie Estridge is an eighteen-year-old senior at Madison High School who lives in Mars Hill. Her father is a native of Buncombe County and the family moved to Madison County when Katie was three years old. She has a younger brother at Mars Hill Elementary. I know Katie from watching her anchor the defense for the last couple of years on the Madison High Soccer Team, where her leadership and enthusiasm are clearly evident. She plans on attending college in the fall, but hasn’t decided where just yet.

I really miss the house that I lived in. I think it was built in the early nineteen hundreds and my parents rented it from a couple that owned it. It was located in the middle of a cow pasture. When I say cow pasture, I mean a big, hilly cow pasture, not a flat plain. I remember going sledding and hiking up those hills. They were steep hills too. I don’t even know how the cows got around. There was a stream that ran through the pasture and then a forest right across from my house. My dad taught me a lot about biological-type things when I was young. My dad was a boy scout. He would take me out into a forest and tell me about trees. We went camping a lot and he taught me how to tie knots. One of the main things he stressed was snakes; like what snakes to touch, and what snakes not to touch. I think I remember a lot of the things he taught me because I learned at such an early age.

I feel like the way I grew up is unique; not in a weird way, but a good way. I didn’t have TV and I didn’t have next-door neighbors. My friends would come over, and I would play with my dogs and cats, but a lot of time I would be by myself. I didn’t have a problem doing that. I would go out with my little Audubon book and try to identify amphibians in the creek. I did the same thing at night. I had a book about astronomy and I would go outside with a flashlight, read my book, look at the stars, and see if I could find constellations. Doing that helped me gain independence because I was able to learn things on my own. It wasn’t a sad story. I don’t think that a lot of kids in today’s society do that because of things like Gameboys and television.

My mom tells this story to people. When we first moved in to the first house I lived in, in Mars Hill on Gabriel’s Creek, I was about three, maybe four, years old. It was probably in spring, and I was outside with my dad, and I remember my dad looking for snakes. He lifted up this rock and we found this little ring-neck snake. They’re not very aggressive at all. They are really calm and really little. I was convinced this would be really fun, so I stuck it in my pocket and went inside. I told my mom I had something for her and whipped the snake out of my pocket. She absolutely freaked out and I’m this little three year old chasing my mom around the house. She almost lost it. That really does describe a lot about my childhood because I did things like that all the time.

Community to me is people working together. Here, people work together because they have to. We’re isolated, but in a good way because we’re in the mountains; it creates smaller communities. People farm a lot. People still trade with one another. I have friends that come to school with home-made toboggans and scarves that their grandmother made for them. Some of my friends have brought me things to school that their mom had made for me. That’s the sense of community that I’m talking: people do things for each other here. It’s not like that in a lot of places.

I think as more people start to come here, the word is going to get out. They’re going to tell their friends and family and more people are going to start moving. That’s going to bring a lot of diversity, which is not something this county has had a very large taste of, ever. I think that everyone here is predominantly white and we have a few Hispanic students. That’s it. Buncombe County, right across the border, has Asheville High with students from all over the world. I really do think that as students start to move here and they see what a nice, friendly place it is, it’s going to attract others. Others are going to bring their own ideas and opinions.

I think diversity is a good thing, politically, socially, and economically. People can always learn things from one another. I think it would be good for people to share their opinions with one another and to become a little more open-minded. Sometimes change is bad, but a lot of times change can be very good. A lot of money could come out of this county if some of the politics were changed around a little bit. If more money came into this county, the school system would get better, things like that, so I definitely think diversity would be a great thing.

In my opinion, diversity will bring one of three things: its either going to make this community stronger, its going to make this community weaker, or its not going to do anything to it at all. And I definitely don’t think its not going to do anything at all. If people here decide to be a little more open-minded to change, then I think that new people coming in will be a great thing because they’re going to want to learn from these people. But if these new people, with all their different backgrounds and ideas and perspectives, aren’t accepted, then it could ultimately destroy the sense of community. I think it really depends on the way people here decide to take it. So far, I feel like the small amount of diversity coming in to the county has been a good thing; that people have been really accepting. Hopefully that truth will continue and this community will not only become stronger, but more diverse and vast in all different kinds of aspects.

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