A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to go to the Appalachian (pronounced App-a-latch-in) region of West Virginia. Well first of all, hello to the excitement for me being back east and the plane landing in one of my favorite states: PA. I was super excited to be close to home for a week (sorta) well at least on the same time zone (which tripped me out cause I was so used to the three hour difference). Secondly, I am totally a country girl at heart, so the idea of being in the hollers (a small, rural community in the valley between two mountains, also resulting in me having the song “holler back” stuck in my head for the second part of the week) of West Virginia was definitely romanticized in my brain, just a tad.
So on Saturday night, after being sick all day, (Graduation was NOT a pleasant experience for me) sleeping, and feeling semi-better at night, I decided that my body could not handle copious amounts of cheap beer and a 5am wake-up call, so I went to bed early, missing out on Eddie Cullen’s pretty epic (from what I hear) going away party. A few hours later, I was up and out on Phoenix’s finest mode of transportation: The Metro Light Rail. I had just started the first leg of the 15 hour journey from our little JV House to Lantz Farm in Jacksonburg, WV.
For the first 12 hours of the trip I had exactly one song stuck in my head, The Ballad of Billy the Kid by Billy Joel. It starts: In a town known as Wheeling, West Virginia. Why, did I not have this song on my Ipod? Common, you knew this was gonna happen…… Well, we finally arrived at Wheeling Jesuit University, which reminded me so much of MU. We had mass and picked up Gil, A Jesuit Novice would be our tour guide/fountain of awesomeness for the beginning the week.
Going to Appalachia I had prepared myself and all the boys for the immense poverty, devastation and injustices that we would see, but no one could have prepared me for the beauty, hospitality and simple nature we would find as well.
Each morning we would wake up and travel between 30-60 minutes to get to our worksites. The first morning I went with 4 of the boys to a Methodist church literally in the middle of nowhere. I took over an hour to get there. Driving through the countryside, no cell phone service, music playing, the sky threating to rain down on us, I felt completely at peace. A peace that didn’t last for long; for the next five hours I was crouched under a deck attaching plastic wrap to wood beams. Hammering nails up while crouching is not the easiest task. While I felt a sense of accomplishment being able to see the finished deck, I left the work site with a strange sense of emptiness. I hadn’t really developed any relationships with the West Virginians as I spent most of the day under a deck.
We did that afternoon however learn how West Virginians give directions. We were trying to get from our work site to Wal-Mart, A place that became a second home to our boys. I believe we visited one once if not twice per day. And what do teenage boys find so interesting at Wal-Mart? Candy.
Our Directions (please read in a southern accent): Go out the road and make a left, then when you hit the bridge go right. Drive a little ways an make a left at the school buses. Drive a ways, then you gonna pass a field and there’s gonna be a house with a pink door, make a left. Etc….you get the picture.
The next day I went to a place called Open Door Ministry. It is a food service organization that serves 700-900 people from your average size house kitchen. My experience there was almost the opposite; we mostly just sat around and talked. Sitting there, waiting to make boxes of food for the home visits, watching the women drink sweet tea and show pictures of grandchildren and tell stories to each other, and us as well, it helped me to feel connected to the community. The I drove around with the Mayor of New Martinsville, The MAYOR!, delivering food and visiting homes. It was the first case of real poverty that I witnessed in Appalachia as well. We went to one house that was plywood covered in construction wrap and had about 13 people living in it. It just about broke my heart when I saw the three little kids (where talking 3 or 4) playing outside. After delivering food we got a tour of the city, the city council building, and dinner at an awesome southern style buffet restaurant. The night ended with an attempted bonfire, a couple of games of mafia and a trip to the graveyard at midnight.
Over the next couple of days I made a nature trail in the woods, went on a tour of a haunted prison, went through a bunch boxes, painted a white picket fence, and admired everything that West Virginia had to offer. Friday afternoon we headed out of New Martinsville to Charleston, WV.
There we began the part of our trip based on mountain top removal. To prepare we watched a documentary about mountain top removal which is basically when coal companies come in and cut off the top of a mountain to get the coal that is underneath. The one of the biggest problems with this is that all the coal dust falls onto the hollers destroying their communities. In these areas the water is virtually unusable for anything, many people are getting sick and dying from cancer or black lung, the natural ecosystem of the area is being destroyed and no one will help them. The government is of course on the side of big coal so they are not putting any efforts into helping these communities or making amends. The government says there is nothing wrong and they can’t prove it’s actually from coal, which to the people who live there, is of course complete bull.
But, if I thought hearing about the situation on a documentary was bad, nothing could prepare me for the next day.
We got up early in the morning and headed again through the backwoods of West Virginia, up a mountain, to a little pavilion. Once we got there, we met a man named Larry. Larry was a big advocate against mountain top removal. He is one of the only people in West Virginia who own the mineral rights to his property. (In WV they have a big problem where people own theirs houses and technically the land, but not the minerals underneath the land, which is why the coal and gas companies can just come in without asking) He first explained the process, and then told us a little bit about him and his story. Because Larry owns the mineral rights to his property, he was able to save this particular mountain from mountain top removal. The coal companies offered him over a million dollars for the rights, but he still wouldn’t budge, knowing that he did not want to contribute to destroying his home. Well apparently the big coal companies and the government do not take too kindly to people who speak out against mountain top removal and try their best to intimidate him. He told us he has over 100 death threats, there is a price on his life, and he has been shot at numerous times. Over the course of the trip we found out that it is not just him, people who speak out against Mountain top removal in West Virginia are being killed or silenced in some other way. I’m just gonna come out and say, that’s kinda not right.
Standing their up on that mountain top looking down at all the other mountains that had been cut down, seeing the communities that we being affected, crying, hearing Larry’s story, was one of the most spiritual and life changing moments of my life. This man is standing up for something he believes in more than anything else is this world and withstanding so many obstacles and opposition. He believes in what he is doing so much that he is willing to die for it, here, in the United States. We hear so much about people in South America, the Middle East, Africa, all over the world, people are being silenced for standing up for what they believe in, for what they think is right. Is happening right here as well, not in the major cities, but in the little hollers in the backwoods. It’s not in the news, chances are you may not have even ever heard of mountain top removal before, it’s covered up, you can’t see evidence of mountain removal from the major highways and interstates, you have to drive back in the woods and see the devastation and meet the people who have to live with poor health and the knowledge that people don’t seem to care about what is happening to them.
That night during our group’s final reflection in West Virginia, we talked a lot about Larry and the problems with mountain top removal. At times, I could understand why I was taking it so hard, so personally, and then I realized it. I was one state and 6 hours away from my house. I have seen firsthand what mining can do. In two months I was going to go back there. I know the boys were struck too, but I think the prospect over living a 5 hour plane ride instead of a 5 hours car ride made the situation seem a little bit distant to them. This was my backyard; this was a situation that would undoubtedly affect me and my family. It was semi-overwhelming. At the end of our reflection, I posed one final thought.
I said: “I hope each and every one of us finds a passion, something to fight for, something that drives us not matter what the cost, something that makes us exhibit courage like Larry does every day and when we find it, to never let it go.”
