I feel you about the development and the mountains. I shudder every time Sewanee gets a new endowment and a new building goes up...the University is growing and that is Good, supposedly, but it feels less and less familiar as time passes. I believe it's Homecoming weekend right now, actually, and it's not bothering me a bit to not make that journey. And there's so much real poverty in Appalachia while colleges and churches and other institutions build bigger and bigger buildings.
And don't even get me started on the Smoky Mountains...I don't know why I've never been to Asheville, but coming at those mountains from the other direction, I used to cringe the whole way through Gatlinburg until I passed the gates into the National Park. Even then you have to go at odd times - there are just too many people and too many cars. And I guess it wins the award for most endangered National Park again (or maybe it's Glacier this year?). Whichever, it's a GDBOUS.
No, don't sell your cabin, Friend.
Home is on my mind a lot now. For me Home (besides BetterMost) is where my mother is. I've always had a bad case of wanderlust - I love that Australian idea of a walkabout. Goodness knows what I'd do if I had unlimited money. Boston is the only place I've ever lived that felt like coming home. I know when I crossed the MA state line last year on the way to the Boston gathering there was immense relief in my heart. I would chalk it up to the drive, but I recognize the feeling from the many times my plane has landed in Boston coming back from trips to TN. You know you're in trouble if the site of Logan makes you happy.
I was beating myself up about not seeing TN and the mountains as home last winter. Truman let me read his copy of Jeff Mann's Loving Mountains, Loving Men in West Virginia. (I highly recommend this if you've not read it!) Anyhow, the love Jeff has for the region - the small communities and the geography - rings loud and true. Somehow I felt like I must be missing something inside me to intellectually recognize what he sees but not really feel it myself. But you can't make yourself feel what you do not; for me, home is more equated with people.