STATUS

Inman Was Here: Another Walk to Cold Mountain is the working and hopeful title of another nonfiction book. Timothy actually lived this book in 2007, but his haunting, nightmarish experience accounts for this long delay in writing what has already been thoroughly researched and outlined. The day will come when he will man-up and hammer it out.

PREVIEW

In 1997, coincident to the release of Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain, Timothy came into possession of a letter written by his Great-great-grandfather John Fletcher Pegram, a private in the Confederate Army, written at their winter camp in Orange Courthouse, Virginia in February 1864. This novel and this letter propelled Timothy to deeply dive into a study of the American Civil War and his family’s involvement in it.

Somewhat possessed by this interest, Timothy decided to vicariously put himself in the boots of both Inman (the main character in the novel) and his ancestor for a modern-day dose of their own experience.

So, during February-March 2007, Timothy walked cross-country from the old North Carolina State Capitol building in Raleigh, NC to the real Cold Mountain located in Haywood County, NC. He navigated westward using only the sun as his guide and a compass on cloudy days. He encountered friend and foe, water barriers and barbed wire, with only a sheet of plastic and a wool blanket for shelter.

In hindsight, it was a foolish, dangerous undertaking that he now confesses he should not have attempted. Yet, he did, and how his story progressed and ended eerily parallels some of what Inman experienced as a hunted deserter.