NRCC History Book

85

Our Guiding Hawthorn by Ben Campbell

Affixed on sidhé-leased hill, she bears forth her throng of branch, resolved to nature’s call that she may heed the charge of season, sanguine seed of Hawthorn sprouting through a darkened forest heart. She stands sure as she did then, when traced to summers past, lush garb of leafy dress divinely patched in Blue Ridge fold, hopeful sight to hungry mother, to eyes mucked tearful like streams from faulted dams. Though vein of southwest salt fed rich and thriving phloem, she turned not from sacred truth: one cannot grow in green contentment. So up she plucked young roots, beating paths of hallowed hollers for the hills of Morgantown, Mason-Dixon so close she could hear its whispered warning—“Cross not lest you call home home no longer but in dreams”. Intent, that rising Hawthorn, to meet a future time’s horizon, she long labored in her measure for the harvest of wise fruit, absorbing know-how for the day when it would feed a family’s soul. Come winter’s bitter snare she gave way to calling wind, tracking trails to Earth-dawn valley that old river christened new. And in that barren season of brown and brandished thorn she heaved limbs near heavy stone, the pressure of her burden kept buried as in snow. Still, she posed the inward question: thy trust me to the sparrow? “Because,” she heard within in. “You were raised for a time such as this. To adorn a home such as this.”

Abiding, she then settled full in spring, sprouting petals pure-white blossom that might touch the valley ‘round, from water falls cascaded to the mines of Hokie stone, from bison-trodden footpaths to a Polish hero’s throne,

half-century halls of golden knowledge her final, reaching arch. In lucent light she here towers, rooted, unmoved by drought or storm. A guidepost on yon hill. An anchor for our hour.

Chapter 2