This Side of the Mountain George Brosi IN MAY OF 2004, my wife, Connie, and I vacationed for about two weeks in the United Kingdom. This was the first vacation—except for perhaps a day here and there—we had ever taken by ourselves together in our now thirty-three years of marriage. We spent more time in Wales than Scotland, but more time there than in England, yet we still got a pretty good idea of the whole island. Since I am a literature teacher, we made a point of hiking a few miles above Tintern Abbey and all the way around Glasmere Lake. We also peered into Dylan Thomas' writing shack and stood in the room where D. H. Lawrence was born in a coal-camp named Eastwood. As a political being, I was proud to visit Izaak Walton's grave; New Lanark, Scotland, Robert Owen's idealistic industrial community; "Little Moscow," Maerdy, Wales, the mining camp which boasted Britain's most left-wing politics, and Aberfan, also in Wales, where in 1966, 144 people including 116 school children perished when a slag heap slipped and buried a school. As proud Appalachians, we visited two demonstration coalmines in Wales and also discovered that the Scottish Lowlands are actually quite mountainous, and very reminiscent of Appalachia. The Scottish Highlands reminded us of the American West with the heather of the Moors taking the place of the Western sagebrush. As residents of the edge of the Cumberlands we visited the scene of the "Battle of Culloden Moor" where the Duke of Cumberland, known by the Lowland Scots as "Billy the Butcher," defeated them. Mostly, however, I drove our little rental car, shifting with my left hand, on single-track roads which took us to the most remote and scenic parts of the Island and even onto the Isle of Skye. When we got back home we missed the sheep we had enjoyed watching as they gamboled in their lush pasture havens and on the country roadways. What impressed us the most about the U.K. was that we never saw any trashy homes or commercial buildings. Perhaps they exist in the urban areas that we scrupulously avoided, but the rural areas appeared to be all well kept up. Even the pastures seemed to all be recently renovated, and there were practically no trailers. A genuine egalitarian spirit appeared to prevail among the vast majority of people. Most all of the cars and even homes and farms seemed to be about the same—comfortable but not at all ostentatious. Of course a fabulously wealthy upper class did exist, and evidence of this was apparent, but we did not see a lower class. Everywhere we saw people walking. In fact, if no walkway was provided near any road, special road signs basically apologized for the fact that it didn't exist and warned motorists to beware of pedestrians on the roads themselves. Public transportation was pervasive as well. People there seemed to have a strong sense of their heritage, and the many heritage parks appeared to be well funded and flourishing. Local people actually lived in the national parks, giving them a pastoral beauty which would have cost millions for park personnel to replicate and presumably avoiding the kind of antagonism that has been engendered by parks taking over property here in the States. The whole scene was much less artificial than on this side of the Atlantic. Billboards were practically non-existent as was Styrofoam, and fast food places and other chains were much less ubiquitous. We strongly appreciated the respect given to mothers and children. Restaurants often featured free food for kids, and almost every parking lot seemed to have special spaces for expectant moms and those accompanying children. Right after we got back, we drove down to Harlan County to see our friend, Darlene Wilson. Compared to the U.K., what we noticed on that trip from Berea to Cumberland and back was no coaches (busses), many more lorries (semis), bigger houses and yards, more junky places, almost no animals, wider roads, virtually no celebration of heritage, nothing old except for one caboose, very few native roadside flowers or...