Mountain top removal in Appalachia

ZAHRA DANESHVAR | GRADUATE STUDENT, DESIGN

you know how exciting it is to realize that soon you will be at the top of a mountain or hill. As I was taking my last steps toward the crest of the hill, I noticed that something was different about this place. I reached the top, but it looked almost the same as the weedy field down the hill. Could it be possible that I reached the top of the hill without noticing and then climbed down again? Or maybe I was in a time loop; started with the vast weedy field, climbed the hill, and again another vast weedy hill.

I was puzzled, looked down on the lower hill to make sure that I was not in the same space as before. As I looked from the flat top of the hill, I could see the previous vast weedy field, and beyond that was the beautiful mountains covered with trees.

I was surrounded by an alien-like yellow field that was ringed with waves of trees. I was standing in the middle of a yellow dot in a green page. It was indeed a space in the middle of a place. A sudden strong wind made me close my eyes and shield my face. I heard a surprising sound from behind. It was the sound of a cloth fluttering in the wind. I turned around and right in the middle of this field, was a tiny two-story structure with walls of curtains. I walked toward it with a lot of questions in my head: what is it? Why is it there? Is there someone or something behind the curtains? Can I go inside? Should I go inside?

As I walked closer, the details of the structure became more visible. There were tiny lights embedded in the curtains and whenever a breeze fluttered them, it looked like little fireflies that were dancing to the music of the wind. A stronger breeze moved the curtains, and I could see that there was red neon lighting the interior of the structure. I reached out and touched the fabric. The fabric had little glowing strings woven into it. I pulled the curtain aside and stepped inside. The exposed metal structure was highlighted with red neon stripes. The feeling was similar to an alleyway you might happen upon in Tokyo, dead ending into a tiny, neon basement bar. I could feel the excitement that was building up inside me. I was in a hybrid box. A solid structure with soft envelope.

Something that I did not notice before stepping in, was that there was a glass box inside the hybrid box.

So, there I was, standing inside one box but outside another. I was surrounded by dancing curtains and in front of me was a sliding glass door. I looked up and saw a cork ceiling twenty feet above the ground. I took a step further and hold the rectangular steel handle of the glass door and slide it open. I stepped in and saw a set of stairs leading down below the barren landscape.

It was a nesting doll, a place embedded in a dark box, inside of a glass box, within a hybrid structural box further embedded into a weedy space surrounded by a woody place. The nested layers radiated outward from my body, all connected, all tied to one another.