While writing 'Cold Mountain,' I held maps of two geographies, two worlds, in my mind as I wrote. One was an early map of North Carolina. Overlaying it, though, was an imagined map of the landscape Jack travels in the southern Appalachian folktales. He's much the same Jack who climbs the beanstalk, vulnerable and clever and opportunistic.
In Ruby's mind, everything [β¦] fell under the rule of the heavens. [β¦] They were, as Ada saw them an expression of stewardship, a means of taking care, a discipline. They provide a ritual of concern for the patterns and tendencies of the material world where it might be seen to intersect with some other world.