Before the men came through and struck her bald, my mother said, the mountain had been verdant. Green snakes had capered in shadows beneath great green oaks, beetles had squirmed in the wet cavities of overturned rocks. My mother said that there had been whitetail deer that had drunk from streams, that there had been bears in summer and coyotes in spring and turkeys in autumn. My mother told me that this had once been a land alive.

I do not know how true her stories were.

All I know is what I see when I crest the hill, through the arch of two great tree branches that have long been stripped of their leaves and their bark.

And what I see is thus:

Sitting alone atop a hill, behind a house that has raised generations, is the bald and sandy face of a carved-out mountain top. In its dusty flesh lay lines that have been dug by machinery long gone, bone-dry and cracking at their sides with the burgeoning heat of a new summer. There are no green snakes, and there is no shade. There are no beetles save for the antlions that dig their pits in the sand and wait under the merciless sun for their prey. There are no deer, as there are no streams from which they can drink.

The bears have long since begun their final hibernation, down the hill and in the empty mines. The coyotes have starved, leaving bones bleached beneath the sky. The turkeys have fled downhill, run forth from dogs that cannot be trained from habit.

The land has died.

I often would go up the hill with my family, during reunions. I had to keep my arms tucked in, else the whipping brambles would scratch long red lines through my flesh. I’d shout back to the four-wheeler behind me, whooping and coughing and watching for bugs. My hair would whip in the wind, and if you were the driver, you’d have to narrow your eyes against the slipstream. But I was always the passenger, so it was with ease that I could stare wide-eyed at the passing forest.

The leaf-mulch around the trail would be in a constant state of wet decay. If I had stepped into that mulch, I always imagined there was a chance I’d have sunk a foot deep; I could have carbon-dated the earth through layers of years-old autumnal leaves. And even in the depths of summer, the trees would shine in shades of amber and red.

As we’d slow to a stop so the driver could maneuver us over a stream, I’d see flashes of grey rocks in a creekbed.

And then we’d move on. As is life.

I’d watch as the four-wheeler climbed through the muddy trail, sometimes catching flashes of barbed wire in the brush. There would never be flashes of animals in the undergrowth, on either side.

As we shot through the wood, flying over the dirt trail, the trees would blur together. Brown gnarled shadows would whir through my periphery as the tires of the four-wheeler chewed the dirt and spat it out in wicked furrows behind us. The rest of the riders—four, usually, but sometimes three or five—would skid through our tracks.

And when we got to the end, I could always tell that the crest was coming.

Sunlight would begin to filter through the trees in slanting pale bars, reaching into the deepest emerald shadows of the wood and carving out paths of light in the leaf mulch. The trees would gather less densely, and the earth would lose its rocky and pockmarked appearance; the forest transformed from a strange and solemn place into an autumnal fairy’s playground.

And then we’d rock back, the four-wheeler churning the earth, and we would burst into burning daylight. The sun would slant across my face, and I’d shield my eyes from the fiery rays, but even sunglasses would not have helped my condition.

The driver would pull us a few yards off the path, turning the butch mechanism inward to watch as our companions crawled up the final burst of woodland before the open plains. And they’d pour through the arch of the trees and over the ridge, the passengers covering their faces to avoid the strike of the branches and the drivers with heads lowered so as to not lose sight of the trail ahead.

Each driver pulled to us, stalling their engines but not cutting them.

And always we would wait together, our eyes flicking around the flat and dusty mountain, her bald face glaring her light into our gazes. The kids would cover their faces against the glare, their little eyes weak against the blinding white of the dust.

The adults would talk. About what, that often escaped us kids; we would stare around us, wide-eyed as if we hadn’t seen this place tens of times before.

To our left was a stretching path, leading across a bridge of dirt packed together. At the end of this trail was a stand of trees like an island in the sky, and within this copse was a family cemetery with unrecognizable names marked on the tombstones. To our right, there was a broken stand of wooden poles, a rotten gate standing stalwart and missing its sign. To our front stretched an endless open plane of sand and soot, gusts of dirt blowing gently in the wind.

It was all very awe-inspiring.

The adults would finish their conversation in the privacy of being ignored, and giving a nod to one another, would whip their four-wheelers back onto the trail and tear away into the dust.

The trees were no longer around to protect the riders from the brunt of the weather. The sun tore into our skin, beating heat into every furrow and freckle. The wind would rip our hair back, throwing cold bursts into our faces. Those in front had the obligation to ride more than six four-wheeler lengths ahead, to keep the dust from flying back into everyone else’s faces.

I, riding at the helm usually, would look out to either side of me and watch as gullies full of massive rocks passed below us. Above us passed the remains of the mountains, lone stands of trees and piebald grass. Scrubbrush bent in reverence to the passing riders, and johnson grass stroked the feet of the cavalry as we went. Dust flew out behind us in long twin streams, and our tires spat rocks with reckless abandon.

Every so often, a hoot or howl would break the sunny silence, and one of us would raise our arms.

We were launching through twists and turns, the serpentine tracks of four-wheelers and coal mining machines carved deep into the mountain face. The top layer of soil wasn’t soil anymore, but sand; it was loose, gritty, and got in all the places that you didn’t want it. We’d peel down a turn, the four-wheeler whipping across a dune and destroying it. A cloud of dust would poof up around us, obscuring the other riders from sight. Then, we’d be down a hill, and the others would come tearing down the hill trailing sand like smoke.

We’d all group back together, sometimes in single-file and sometimes in a barricade, and we’d rip down the widest parts of the trail while going slow on the thinner places.

And then we’d be climbing another hill, the wheels beneath us eating dirt and sand and rocks and we’d be slow-going. The driver would be looking up, sweat beading on their dusky brow, and the passenger would be holding on for dear life. Us kids always remembered the times people had flipped, and we’d be pouring the sweat too… climbing slow as a turtle, we’d watch as rocks passed us by like in a stream, the johnson grass reaching out onto the path to grab our ankles and pull us into the brush, the scrub bowing low and poised…

Then the four-wheeler would crest this next hill, and we’d be on the plateau. Another ridge of even taller hill would stand lone in the distant, and before us would be the few living animals that weren’t insects.

A herd of wild horses, anxious and watchful, would graze at this plateau. They could be ridden, but only by a few people, and never in the presence of four-wheelers; the evidence of their domesticity sat solely at the front of the trail, where a half-broken sign stood tall above the dust.

When the adults saw the horses, they would turn us around. And then we’d be rolling back down the trail, placidly talking as our four-wheelers’ noise fell from a roar to a purr. We’d go back through the hill, the remnants of our cloud of dust still hanging in the air. We’d go down the crest, chewing mud and mulch, and then we’d crawl down the mountain face, our clothes rumpled by wind and wear and our skin kissed by sunlight. We, each of us kids, would only get a ride or two each. Sometimes two of us would be stuck on one four-wheeler, and sometimes we’d be charged with snack duty. But we all knew where we would be at at the end of the day. Back down the mountain, weary.

I still dream about being up there, some nights. That clandestine mountain face, bald and bare, it is a sight you don’t easily forget. And the smells, the smells were always the best part—the earthy musk of heath and dust, the crisp tang of hilltop air, the gentle wash of distant trees undercutting everything. It was like a painting. It was like home.

I haven’t been in years—I never learned to drive a four-wheeler, and all the ones who knew don’t come around anymore. A few of the kids learned how to drive, too, but… we’re all in college. And I don’t know if I want to ruin my dreams.

– Apollo Johnson

Author’s Note: “From the Mountains My Dreams Were Made” was written as a both an admonishment of exploitation and a love letter to the stories that I grew up hearing. It’s a testament to the conflicting feelings I have about the place where I grew up, since it is a place that I love but also a place that has a storied and often harrowing past.