Back in May we left our beloved San Diego home—tropical fruit trees, incredible light, vintage ‘20s vibe and all—and packed up our belongings in our faithful pickup truck, “Hank”, to head across an entire continent towing our 2004 Toyota Corolla filled to the brim with house plants along with our two dogs and 11 chickens in special transport crates in the bed of the truck.

We left on May 1 at about 3:30pm, making it to somewhere-in-Arizona by midnight. From there we would head east until we reached the oldest, most haunted mountains of North America and the closest home to a real cultural region that has been steadfastly maintained in America for generations: Appalachia.

*The time-weathered hills of Appalachia*

I grew up in Appalachia in central Pennsylvania where my German and Irish ancestors had settled not more than 200 years ago. I did not experience Appalachian culture growing up whenever I could help it. My formative years were the ‘80s and ‘90s, and “the future” was calling. There was no space to be had for Pennsylvania Dutch recipes passed down from Germany, intergenerational folklore, and certainly not superstitious barn hexes. Rather, unfortunately, I eschewed it until well into college when I met a professor who turned me on to the soul-stirring beauty of reconnecting with the culture of my birthplace.

The exact reason my eldest son and I were headed east to Appalachia where we would rendezvous with the three airborne members of our family wasn’t exactly clear at the time. To be honest, we just wanted to leave urban California, and where better to hide out for a bit than the ancient mountains that had sheltered indigenous tribes, escaped slaves, and rogue moonshiners?

On May 2, the second day of our trip, we awoke in our hotel room in the desert somewhere-in-Arizona and tended to the dogs and chickens before enjoying a continental pancake breakfast and hitting the road. We headed north to catch up with the bastard son of the Route 66 Mother Road: the continent-spanning Route 40. We’d be heading up into the mountains and putting ol’ Hank to work hauling a load of about 4,000 pounds over an 8,000 foot pass to connect with Route 40 a bit west of Flagstaff.

As our American-built V8 roared up to 5,000 then 6,000 feet and beyond, it had no problems at all. I, however, began to feel an increasing pain in my upper left rear molar. By the time we hit the 8,000 foot peak and were able to pull over to a lookout, I knew something was very wrong. I was in so much pain I felt like I would pass out.

What do you do when you are in extreme, unremitting pain while driving your 12-year-old, your pets, and your houseplants across the high desert and you know you need to keep moving during daylight hours so that your animals and plants don’t overheat?

Really, I’m asking you because I had little idea what to do in this situation.

I had a friend whom I trusted deeply that had experienced tooth pain before so I called him to ask for advice. “Get to a dentist,” he said. I agreed to find a dentist in this now mountainous somewhere-in-Arizona that we were in.

There were no dentists within at least two hours. There were no dentists period that would take me for an emergency appointment. I had to settle in to just pain, and driving, and pain, and driving.

“You can describe the predicament that we’re in as an emergency … and your trial is to learn to be patient in an emergency.”

— Wendell Berry

Eventually we stopped for gas in a town called Williams, Arizona. Yes, this town did have a name and I’ll stop seemingly disparagingly referring to all places in Arizona as somewhere-in-Arizona for the rest of this blog post. It’s not that I dislike or want to disrespect Arizona. I just can’t remember anything about towns we were in due to the fact that I was in extreme pain and couldn’t focus on anything else. Williams, Arizona was actually the town that the kids’ movie Cars was based after. Fun fact.

Miraculously and seemingly randomly, a few hundred feet away from the gas station I could see a dentist office with a nice shady spot for the animals to park the truck across the street. I walked in and they offered to see me right away.

The dentist was attentive and kind. She diagnosed me as having a tooth abscess in my left rear molar and offered to pull it for me. She said these types of things are commonly triggered with changes in elevation such as driving up over an 8,000 foot mountain. I told her I wasn’t sure I wanted to lose my tooth and she gave me a prescription for antibiotics for the road. She said that the antibiotics would at least calm down the abscess and, likely, stop the pain. I was hesitant to take the antibiotics, but what if there was an infection that could spread? I kept them in the center console of the truck just in case. I still have them and will save them for some other catastrophe that I hope never comes. In my experience, pharmaceuticals do have their purpose, and that purpose is emergency medicine. (Your use of pharmaceuticals is between you and your trusted doctor.)

Reinvigorated with this new information from the dentist that what I was experiencing was merely intense nerve pain from swelling due to a mildly infectious abscess and that I wasn’t going to die from it, I—literally—trucked on.

We headed east to Albuquerque, pulling over every now and again when I was in so much pain that I needed to—again, literally—pass out. My son would keep watch on me for a few minutes and then I’d wake up and hit the gas. Even though it was only early May, we still had to keep the dogs, chickens, and bonsai trees in the back getting fresh airflow.

In Albuquerque, we managed to find clove oil and a liquid fractionated coconut oil that I could mix together and swish for some pain relief and herbal antibiotic effect.

That night we slept somewhere-east-of-Albuquerque (again, still a blur) in a motel that was mostly booked by a traveling group of rodeo cowboys. I was in so much pain that I mostly just rolled around the bed in agony until the sun came up.

We continued on for three more days and nights. Nothing improved except my attitude toward the pain. Eventually, you settle into a situation in which there is nothing you can do. All you can do is be. Be patient, be aware, be grateful for the fact that you are still alive.

The ancient divinatory oracle known as the I Ching counsels us as to what to do in situations like this. The I Ching is a set of hexagrams that represent the creation, unfolding, and destruction patterns of the entire universe. There are 64 hexagrams in all and they can apply to an understanding of any situation.

The 23rd hexagram is called “Po”, which means to split or cut apart and its “image” is that of a mountain over the earth. Po is there to counsel you to not “split apart” from the creative energy that supports you in the background your entire life (God, Nature, The Universe, whatever works for you). Po reminds you to have faith in adversity and to not try to intervene when energies much bigger than yourself are working to resolve your situation.

This is the same as how Christians have faith in Jesus, Muslims in Allah, et cetera. The major wisdom traditions of the world say the same thing that the I Ching counsels us: relax, have faith, trust. Calm your mind and stop interfering with the support that has invisibly carried you throughout your life.

*The image of Po is that of a Mountain Over Earth.*

I know what you are thinking. That this does not look like a mountain over the earth. The broken and unbroken lines correspond to ancient, archetypal understandings of polarity in our world that give rise to every experience that is possible to have. Modern scholars spend a lifetime retraining their modern minds to even begin to understand the simple yet all encompassing wisdom of the I Ching.

It doesn’t take a scholar, however, to understand the wisdom in following the image of a Mountain Over Earth. Mountains—under immense geologic and atmospheric pressure for millions of years—endure and support their own marvelous ecosystems year after year after year. So it is with situations in our own lives when it feels like the rug is coming out from underneath us… when it feels like the very Earth is splitting apart and about to swallow us up. We can endure these challenges by taking some deep breaths, stilling our minds, and only taking action when the time is right.

Eventually, my son and I made it to the cabin we had rented in the southernmost region of the Blue Ridge Mountains where we were lovingly greeted as heroes by the rest of the family. Incidentally, the tooth that the dentist wanted to pull was not the tooth that had the abscess. Good thing I didn’t let her pull it. Once the infection and therefore the swelling calmed down through a rigorous course of herbal medicine, it was apparent that the abscess was four teeth forward toward the front but was referring nerve pain toward the rear molar. I was fortunate to be able to use herbal medicine to eventually heal my tooth and enjoy a summer full of adventuring with my family in a temperate rainforest.

We now live on top of a mountain in North Georgia looking southeast over the Toccoa River and the southernmost part of the Blue Ridge Mountains—the same mountains and forests in which they filmed one of my favorite movies of all time, The Last of the Mohicans. I can now identify a growing number of local medicinal plants and feel at home amongst the trees.

While we are a few states away from my birth state of Pennsylvania, we are in the same ancient Appalachian Mountains and this is still a homecoming for me.

The cultural connection to my Pennsylvania heritage is living strong in North Georgia where traditions of Appalachia can be felt coursing through daily life. Sometimes it’s merely in the form of just appreciating the simplicity of life, baking your own bread, growing your own garden. Sometimes it’s in the music you hear coming from some old folks jamming bluegrass in the park. Music that reminds you that when life gets you down, just wait a while.

It’s a new beginning, a new life, and a new practice. Welcome to Mountain Over Earth. Thanks for being here.

—Dr. Jaime

Mountain Over Earth

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