When I moved, five years ago, from teaching classics at the University of Cambridge to an associate professorship at the University of California at Santa Barbara, many things changed. I swapped impressive daily alcohol consumption for drinking green smoothies. I enjoyed teaching a more diverse student population. I no longer measured out my life in research “outputs,” necessary to fulfill the requirements of Britain’s pernicious research-appraisal system.
However, despite the fact that my family was no longer divided (my partner, Tony, works at USC, and we have a young daughter), I found the relocation tougher than I had expected. Southern California is initially dazzling: dazzling sea, dazzling sun, dazzling smiles. But beneath the beauty and the flash, I found a lack of connection, as if all the energy here is used up in maintaining the surfaces of things, and there is not enough left for meaning and intimacy.
I had also arrived at the beginning of the economic crisis, furloughs, and university “restructuring.” I felt anxious and agitated, and rather lonely. In retrospect, I think it was this sense of restlessness and unease that sent me on a pilgrimage to Dollywood.
I had wanted to go to Dollywood, the amusement park on the edge of the Smoky Mountains in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, ever since I learned of its existence. I am a big fan of Parton, whose music and wit have seen me through many a tough time. (I recommend “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” to anyone struggling to finish a dissertation and “Salt in My Tears” for recovering from a disastrous love affair.) I love her infectious, upbeat persona and unapologetic sparkle. I was also intrigued by the idea of Dollywood: an amusement park based on her life and songs.
There are plenty of theme parks around the world that have men as their focus. We have Bobbejaanland in Belgium, established and run in the 1960s by the late Flemish singer and guitarist Bobbejaan Schoepen; Bruce Lee Paradise in southern China; and Dickens World in England (where children can romp happily in Fagin’s Den). For those who prefer their men fictional, there’s Parc Asterix near Paris, based on a series of French comics about two Gaulish warriors, and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando, Fla. But as yet there is no Detecting World of Nancy Drew, Oprahville, or Austenland, despite Shannon Hale’s novel of that title. There is, however, Dollywood.
“Pilgrimage” may be a bit of a pretentious term, but it highlights the fact that this was no ordinary trip for me. I wanted to gain a deeper understanding of Parton’s songs by exploring the places featured in them. I also desired, in some inchoate sense, to thank her—for her music and her inspiration—and to pay some kind of homage.
To do that, I needed to invest the travel with a certain intensity and atmosphere—call it “sacrality” if you will—with which I would not invest a camping trip to Yosemite or a visit to Alcatraz. Moreover, even though I was aware that the metaphor of pilgrimage as a life-changing journey is banal, I wanted to experience something special, to be open to change, perhaps even to stumble on the extraordinary.
I am not the only one: Every year more than 50,000 people flock to Pigeon Forge for the annual “Dolly Parade,” starring Parton herself as grand marshal.
I took my family with me, but they were reluctant companions. Tony prefers Mozart, and Athena was much more interested in Hannah Montana, the television character played by the pre-twerking Miley Cyrus, who, as it happens, is Dolly Parton’s goddaughter. But I needed Tony because (this is an embarrassing confession) I don’t drive. I am very much an Englishwoman abroad—not in a floaty Merchant Ivory sort of way, but in a never-learned-to-drive, terrified-of-freeways sort of way.
We started out in Memphis and Elvis Presley’s Graceland, and drove to Dollywood via Loretta Lynn’s ranch and museums in Hurricane Mills, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, the Grand Ole Opry (then under floodwater), and Parton’s shop, “Trinkets and Treasures,” in Nashville. This route took us through some important moments in her life, from the extreme poverty of her early years (both Parton and Lynn have built replicas of their childhood homes) to Parton’s refusal to sign over half the publishing rights to her song “I Will Always Love You” when Elvis wanted to cover it.
One of the striking things about Parton is her business acumen. We saw how she has channeled that into her Imagination Library, which encourages children to read by mailing books to preschool children once a month. And we were thrilled by Dollywood’s Dixie Stampede Dinner Attraction: a re-enactment of the Civil War with stampeding buffalo, fire-eating acrobats, and racing pigs. (Yes, it is as strange as it sounds.)
Dollywood taught me a lot about Parton’s life, songs, and values. But I did not have an epiphany there, what Proust calls “the privileged moment.” So was my pilgrimage worth it? Why suffer the sweltering Tennessee heat? Why not just stay home and listen to “Jolene” on my iPod? It turned out that the physical journey was crucial.
Through traveling I had been confronted with different versions of America, real and imagined: as it is represented in Graceland; the National Civil Rights Museum, in Memphis; and slogans on T-shirts. Dollywood intensified that experience. The park has taken elements of American history—ideals and symbols—and, in turning them into attractions and exhibits, distilled them into their essences: God, family, nature, memory, optimism.
Spending time in Dollywood’s Smoky Mountain River Rampage, American Eagle Foundation, and Chasing Rainbows Museum enabled me to reflect on the snapshots of America I had seen. The park’s focus on values prompted me to reconsider my own, and helped me to begin gradually realigning with my new home country, a process that continued with the writing of a book. (“Eat, Pray, Love, and Write” is a more accurate account of what goes into any pilgrimage that is recorded and shared with others.)
I had expected my fellow classicists to react disapprovingly to my venture. “Where is her work on the dramatization of deixis in Demosthenes, and on the importance of the choliamb to Greek cultural imperialism?” I imagined them thinking.
I was wrong; those who have read the book have been very supportive. In part this must be because what I have written about resonates with them. Not just my reflections on the Nashville Parthenon, but also on such issues as celebrity worship, spectacle, social status, and the dynamics of pilgrimage: All of these are concerns in antiquity, too. But I suspect it is also because most classicists, like everyone else, have a journey that they would secretly like to make, and a person to whom they would like to pay homage. My advice would be to put “9 to 5" on the car stereo and go.
Helen Morales is a professor of Hellenic studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara and author of Pilgrimage to Dollywood (University of Chicago Press, 2014), from which this essay is adapted.
