Our playwright Percy Bell dropped a line in response to my 8/6 blog post:

A great book to check out in the investigation of symbols and folk culture is from a hefty book called The Icon and The Axe, particularly the first essay "The Forest."  While The Icon and the Axe concerns specifically Russian History and peasant culture, it gives a great deal of clarity to exactly what you are talking about. 

Because I was reading Russian history and listening to The Mighty Handful, much of the play is infused with Russian folk themes: house of carved wood, the axe, the ghost, the woods, and the eastern idea of
exchanging one's life for something returned.

I did this partly for the fact that I only have fragments of Appalachian culture left in my memory, so I relied on bringing that spiritual space to life, giving it fullness with the Russian one. 

Nature is also a theme. It is nature that tends to save Fiona. Lastly, the seasons are part of the play, at least hopefully they will be brought out. 

The play takes place in late Autumn, but depending on the memories they talk about or a certain scene, it changes each season during the course of the play's action.

-Percy Bell