Our theme for the month of March is “cities.

Since moving away from Boone, North Carolina, in 2014, I’ve only been to my hometown six times. Each time, going up US-421 into the mountains has revealed a town that is a little less recognizable than the previous time I was there. 

Whether it’s the new car dealerships before entering town or the apartment buildings that have shot up to keep up with Appalachian State University’s rising population, I find myself pointing out things that weren’t around when I lived there. 

It must be exhausting for the people with me. 

Boone isn’t where I was born, isn’t where my first memories are, isn’t where I began school or got my license, and isn’t where I graduated high school, but it is undeniably my hometown. It’s hard to live nine years of childhood and adolescence without a place becoming that.

In the three cities I have lived in and moved out of since leaving Boone, there have been four stages of adjustment. There’s the adjustment of making it feel like home, even when the place is unfamiliar. There’s the adjustment to when it truly does feel like home. There’s the transition away when I move and I begin to detach the place from being home. And finally, there’s the point where that place no longer feels like home at all. 

But Boone is different to me. I never felt incredibly connected when I lived there and I was willing to go anywhere to move away from it. On the other hand, it’s hard for a hometown to not feel like home.  

After all, in some ways, it’s very similar to what it was like when I moved there in 2005. The streets are still the same, the Boone Mall is just as small, and the Regal Theater has still not updated anything in the building. 

But, in 2021, I tried to get to Valley Crucis, a town right outside of Boone where I’ve been numerous times, without directions. I got lost, and still to this day don’t know where I went wrong. The Old Navy in the mall, which opened soon after I moved there, has been replaced with a Sephora, and the JC Penny side has been walled off and replaced with a Hobby Lobby. There’s also a Starbucks that opened, but there’s still no Target. 

It’s not just retailers and restaurants that have changed, either. The Watuaga County Swim Complex and its out-of-date blue warehouse exterior, along with an interior that hadn’t been updated since the 1970s, has made way for the Watuaga Community Recreation Center—something that, when I saw it for the first time, made my jaw drop. 

I no longer know anyone. When I visit now, it’s just to see family. I can’t remember the last time I went there to meet up with someone who isn’t related to me, but it might have been as far back as 2015. 

Nothing makes me realize just how much different the place is, however, as when I think about my nieces growing up there. Unlike me, they were born there, have or will have started school there, and will likely hit all the other milestones I hit (and the ones that I didn’t). 

The town they are growing up in is not the town that I did. They were not alive when I lived there and I will likely not spend more than a week or two a year there in their lifetimes. There are places they will go that did not exist when I was around, and there are memories I have of locations that no longer exist since they’ve been around. There is no longer a house at the address where I last lived in Boone. 

And simply, the world is a very different place now than when I was my oldest niece’s age. Ever since I discovered Nelson Sullivan and his vlogs (though it’s anachronistic to call them that), I’ve been fascinated by the rawness of a city I can’t visit. I could go to New York City, but it wouldn’t be the one Nelson Sullivan knew and captured. 

Of course, New York City has certainly undergone a lot more change from 1989 to 2023 than Boone has undergone from 2014 to 2023. Boone is still a recognizable place to me. I can, for the most part, find myself around.

But it has slowly become less my home as time has gone on. It has almost been as long since I last lived in Boone than the actual years I lived there and at some point, my hometown will not not feel like home at all. 

Mitchell Barbee

Mitchell Barbee graduated from Calvin University with a B.A. in writing in 2021. Originally from Boone, North Carolina, he is currently residing in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He enjoys hanging out with the few friends who stayed, wearing grey hoodies, and hoping that he doesn’t get sucked into the nightly wormhole of watching a baseball game.