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By Josh Lanier

I was raised in the shadow of the mountains in northern Greenville County. As a small child, I remember looking up at the ridgelines and weathered peaks of Glassy and Hogback from the field where my father often gathered hay and wondering if there was anything beyond those purple hills besides more mountains. The looming giants in the distance appeared to me as an impenetrable barrier, full of mystique and foreboding. 

Of course, I did eventually discover that there was an entire world on the other side of the mountains, not all that different from mine. 

One of my first memories of Tryon was riding with my dad one Saturday to look at a horse he was thinking about buying up in Mill Spring. I can still remember crossing over the railroad tracks and catching my first glimpse of town through the milky windshield of his old Chevy Suburban. 

There was something familiar to me about the streetscape, the building facades, and it was almost as if I recognized the faces of people I waved to on the sidewalks. Dad would always drive at a snail’s pace wherever we went because he didn’t want to miss a thing. As he always did when driving through an area he knew, he pointed out businesses he’d “traded” with in years past and showed me where a couple of his relatives had lived. 

That was the first of many forays into Tryon, and almost forty years later, my family and I continue to make memories here. Nearly a decade after my father’s passing, the memories of picnics at Pearson’s Falls, swimming and fishing in the Pacolet, and attending events at Harmon Field are still fresh in my mind. 

As someone with a strong sense of place, I’m always trying to make connections between geography, history, and culture, and how these are all interwoven into the fabric of who we are as people. I am a firm believer that our surroundings and the environment in which we live tend to shape one’s understanding of the world. Short story writer and novelist Eudora Welty once said, “One place understood helps us understand all places better.” This has been my goal for much of my writing and in everyday life. 

This place in which we live is not unlike other parts of Southern Appalachia. The landscape here is similar to that in other parts of the region, just as it is throughout the Blue Ridge and extending into the Piedmont. But what makes Tryon and the surrounding area so unique in and of itself is the history, culture and the people who call this place home. 

When it comes to trying to make my own connections and gain some sort of understanding of how I have developed a strong relationship with the places that have shaped who I have become, the town of Tryon is an important intersection to explore. 

Although my physical address is fifteen miles away, I feel at home whenever I visit Tryon. Over the years, I have gotten acquainted with people from here, and finally put some names with those faces that seemed so familiar to me all those years ago.