XXIX

It bears worth observing a question asked often - what is the Nickajack? For a dweller of this region must be prepared to properly relate his or her origins to the newcomer from distant lands. Waves of Americans are yet to settle into its economic ferment looking for that Square Deal. And they will themselves become the dweller, adapting the mysteries of this region into their concentric identity. And such has it been since the region was first settled by the Clovis chasing the Mastodon into its glades.

The name itself is derived from Cherokee, a derivative of 'Koasati.' There is no demonym for the dweller of the Nickajack. There is no "Nickajacker" or "Nickjackee." The dweller simply says they are from the Nickajack, and leaves it thus.

Yet when the dweller themselves are asked what constitutes its boundaries, the observer will find variations to its geographic periphery. It is, however, generally accepted that the region known as the Nickajack is bounded to the east by the Great Tennessee River Gorge, and to the west by the white waters known as the Mussel Shoals, once as mighty as any cataract of the Nile, but now submerged by the TVA. Both are ancient hazards to navigation penetrating into the interior of the Nickajack. Here is where the Tennessee River, older than the mountains themselves, makes its great curve south into North Alabama before turning north past the Mussel Shoals.

The northern and southern boundaries of the Nickajack are more nebulous. No dweller might deny that the confines of the Elk River Valley, which cuts across and into the Highland Rim, lies definitively within the Nickajack. Some, however, have liberalized their definition of the northern periphery to embrace such places as the Sequatchie Valley, or even the upper Duck River Valley. To the south it is generally accepted that the barrier of the Warrior Mountains lie within the Nickajack. Again, the dweller may also broaden their scope to include the upper Wills Valley on the other side of Sand Mountain, or the Mississippi Foothills south of the Mussel Shoals.

For the modern dweller, the importance of cultural, social and political heuristics can ease their sense of regional identity. For example, a politician may define the Nickajack as simply the 5th Congressional District of Alabama. Or the languorous dweller reclining on his couch might consider the viewing area of their local television station as the Nickajack. The dweller may observe it under other terms of convenience, such as the Tennessee Valley (rather nebulous), or North Alabama (rather narrow). Or they put men on the Moon in the Nickajack. Even the automobile has deeply influenced the dweller's sense of this region's identity. Nonetheless, it remains the prerogative of the dweller of the Nickajack to observe these boundaries according to their own concentric identity.

And so the Nickajack today has become a new congruent center of economic prosperity, wrested from the grist of post-modernity by entrepreneurial spirits not unlike The Major. It serves no better time than now to understand your definition of this place. It is your home. And before the coming days when places like Hurricane Valley, and Jones Valley and Paint Rock Valley are paved over and settled by the new dweller looking for that Square Deal, you will remember what the Nickajack used to look like. Or when they have slashed a highway across the brakes and fields of Limestone County, and will have built the Las Vegas of gas stations, you might tremble about what it will become. But it will always be the same identity - your identity as the dweller. It is yours to shape the Nickajack to your own.

I am from the Nickajack.