In Wilderness (35 page)

She gets up, crosses the room, and puts her hand flat on one of the glass doors just over where she can see Panther Mountain, now nearly black beneath the sunset’s afterglow. She wishes she could touch the real mountain this way, cover it with her whole hand. This mountain that has been here since eons before even the Cherokee Indians. The trees on Panther Mountain will die one by one and be replaced by other trees that may still be growing after Bartram’s Mountains—its clubhouse, golf course, tennis courts, roads, all its houses—have turned to mold and dust. When even the lake has filled with silt and disappeared. But Panther Mountain will not die. Nor will the other mountains. They will be here for her grandchildren and her grandchildren’s
grandchildren, and their grandchildren’s grandchildren in turn. It makes her dizzy just to think about it.

For an instant, her hand covering the mountain, warming the cold glass, Virginia knows what Katherine Reid knew, in the way one might experience a brief electric shock: That a mountain, or a wilderness, is very like a child, your child, whom you must cherish throughout all your life. Not because it’s right and good to do so, but because you are compelled to, in some unspoken partnership with life on earth.

But that’s silly. It’s just her hand pressing a pane of glass.

Or is it?

In Wilderness
, set in 1966, 1967, and 1968, presents two illnesses unrecognized at the time—post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and environmental illness (EI), also known as multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS)—and, in story, posits possible effects of this lack of recognition in two instances.

The late 1960s were the years when developers throughout the mountain and coastal South began assembling huge tracts of land for “resort/​retirement communities.” Before that time, vast marsh and mountain acreage throughout the southern states remained wild and virtually untouched.

I placed Katherine and Danny in such a mountain wilderness. Both are unique fictional characters who seek extreme solutions to their disabilities. They are not meant to stand for any specific individuals or for any group or category of persons.

—D
IANE
T
HOMAS
,

   Santa Fe, New Mexico, April 2013

I worked on this book, off and on, for thirty years and owe much to many:

To my agent, Deborah Schneider, who found my manuscript in her slush pile and took it on with the fervor of a cause; and to the inimitable Kate Miciak, who championed the book at Random House and is that rare editor every writer dreams of, who seems to understand your manuscript even more deeply than you do yourself;

To Susan Turner for her beautiful and sensitive visual interpretation of the story; to Priyanka Krishnan and Julia Maguire for seeing to it that the book’s course ran smoothly; and to Kara Cesare, Denise Cronin, Rachel Kind, Jennifer Hershey, Allyson Pearl, and Susanna Porter, all early Random House supporters of
In Wilderness;

To the many friends and fellow writers who offered critique and encouragement along the way, including Destiny Allison, Christena Bledsoe, Hannah Burling, Linda Clopton, Jessica Connor, Thomas
H. Cook, Alexandra Diaz, Hillary Fields, James and Carole Garland, Nancy Lehrhaupt, Marilyn Staats, Jim Taylor, Donna Warner, Fred Willard, Patricia Williams, Justin Witt, Lisa Witter, and Joyce and Gene Wright;

To early manuscript readers who offered encouragement and praise, including Susan Gardner, Devon Ross, Nina Harrison, Bill Fajman, and Melody Sumner-Carnahan;

To my sister, Betsy Jones; my writer stepson, Chris Osher; and finally, bearing in mind that the point of greatest emphasis is always last, to my dear husband, Bill Osher, himself a writer, for his insightful comments, encouragement, praise, and steadfast devotion throughout all these years.

I thank you all.

D
IANE
T
HOMAS
holds an MFA from Columbia University and is the author of the novel
The Year the Music Changed
. She worked as a reporter, film and theater critic, magazine writer, and editor in Atlanta, north Georgia, and the Florida panhandle. She and her husband now live in New Mexico.