* * Looking for Appalachia

My wife and I took a long walk on a cold, sunny Saturday afternoon on the Huckleberry Trail in Blacksburg.  We stopped to soak in the view where an expanse of snowy fields stretched for miles towards the west, book-ended by long ridged mountains.  I asked her flippantly, “Do you think we can see far enough to see Appalachia?”  This question, as she knew, was a bit of a joke. Blacksburg is deep within Appalachia.

I’ve been in an Appalachia state of mind for several years now.  I’ve just put a wrap on my first book, a non-fiction look at the people, places, history, and culture along the border between Virginia and West Virginia.  When I mentioned what I was doing to a friend some time ago, he suggested, “I didn’t know you were interested in Appalachia.”  The entirety of the region under my study was in Appalachia.  Yet it hadn’t occurred to me that I was actually studying Appalachia per se.

Just where is Appalachia?  The great Appalachian Mountain chain extends from Alabama to Maine.  But is everything in the Appalachian Mountains Appalachia?  Are the highlands of New Hampshire in Appalachia?  Somehow, I think not. Appalachia as a cultural region is limited to the hardscrabble ridges and hollows of the central and southern Appalachians.  But it’s a hard thing to draw a line around.  

I met and interviewed historian John Alexander Williams in doing research for my book.  A first-rate scholar, he wrote the definitive history of West Virginia during the nation’s bicentennial in 1976.  He concluded, “Appalachia, once a specialized term used by geologists, became a code word that summed up all things that made West Virginia different from the rest of the nation, the good things as well as the bad.” Most seem to be bad.  Appalachia is a land of misunderstanding and stereotyping.  Fairly or not, Appalachia in many minds is a land populated by indolent, uneducated rapscallions, pugnacious Stars-and-Bars waving, NASCAR-loving pickup truck drivers, and pregnant teenagers, all living off a scavenger economy or government checks. 

As observers grapple with where and what it is, both from inside and out, the question arises as to what qualifications one must have to be an observer.  I was talking with a friend about a book we’d both read.  She said the writing of the author, a relative newcomer to the area, wasn’t infused with the “true Appalachia.”

What is a true Appalachian?  How does a person know if he or she is Appalachian? (This sounds like the lead-in to a Jeff Foxworthy joke.) 

Being a true Appalachian implies some measure of residence longevity.  One woman I interviewed for my book says you qualify if you grew up here and your daddy or mommy went to high school here.  But surely there must be some gray area.  I grew up in Appalachia but my parents didn’t.  Am I Appalachian?  My daughter’s dad (me) went to high school in Appalachia as did she, but she was born in Seattle.  Is she Appalachian?

To be of Appalachia may imply many negative stereotypes, but as they relate to individuals, they are largely worthless.  I met or learned of exceptionally gifted people throughout, including athletes (e.g. basketballers Buzzy Wilkinson from Bluefield and Bimbo Coles from Lewisburg), Nobel Prize winners (John Nash from Bluefield), authors (Homer Hickam from Coalwood) and countless musicians, politicians, film-makers, and artists.  All stereotypes have some basis in fact, I suppose, but ascribing traits of the stereotype blindly to any individual is neither righteous nor fruitful.

The coal camp of War, West Virginia is one of the most startling places I visited.  After interviewing the mayor, Dr. Tom Hatcher, he admonished me in a follow-up email, “Don’t go home and write about us as if you know us.”  Yikes!  Tom was right; I don’t know War.  But I know what I saw and experienced.  In the way it is said that no two people see the same rainbow, I submit that no two people see the same Appalachia.  There are data, facts and statistics, but Appalachia is what we see it to be.  How does one qualify to know and then describe the pixie-dust of lightning bugs on a summer evening, the delicate dew on a gossamer spider web, the austere desolation of a mountaintop removal mine, the murderous power of floodwaters in a valley town, the twang of a banjo, or the hell-fire in a glass of moonshine?

Appalachia is what and where each of us thinks it is.  Appalachians are people who think they are Appalachians, regardless of where they live now, where they grew up or where their parents grew up.  Appalachians are people who embrace what Appalachia means to them and feel honor and a sense of dignity relative to the way the mountains have shaped them, their fortitude, spirit and world-view.  I’m proud to be one of them.