LETTER FROM SALUDA 39LETTER FROM SALUDAWA I T I N G F O R
THE END OF THE WORLD
Apocalypse camp at the dawn of the Great Extinction
By Lauren Groff
1.A man is to carry himself in the presence
of all opposition, as if every thing were
titular and ephemeral but he.*I
rose long before dawn, too thrilled
to sleep, and set off to find my
tribe. North from Greenville in
* All italicized quotations are from Ralph
Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance.”the dark, past towns with names like
Sans Souci and Travelers Rest, over the
border into North Carolina, through
land so choked by kudzu that the over-
grown trees in the dark looked like
great creatures petrified in mid-flight.
The weirdness of this scene would, by
the end of the weekend, show itself to
be appropriate: my trip would be all
about romanticism, and romanticism
is a human collision with place that
results, as Baudelaire put it, “neither inchoice of subject nor exact truth, but
in a way of feeling.” My rental car’s
engine whined as it climbed the moun-
tains. Day was just breaking when I
nosed down a hill to Orchard Lake
Campground, where tents were still
being erected in the dimness.
I had come to this place just outside
the town of Saluda, forty miles south of
Asheville, for Prepper Camp, a three-
day weekend gathering that would draw
twelve hundred people to learn how toLauren Groff ’s most recent book is the story
collection Florida.Illustrations by Olivier Kugler