It was a profound, spiritual experience ten years ago as I floated the New River Gorge, now the United States’ newest National Park, to the abandoned site of my family’s early 1900s coal town for the first time. Nature had reclaimed the area to the point where I could barely make out the old structures of the mine used during its operations. I walked up from the riverbank to peer through the dense forest. In the distance, I heard a loud horn whistle: A train making its way through the gorge, pulling carts of coal from the dwindling mines of the region. Paddlers, climbers, hikers, and fishermen adventure in the park nearby, and the trains sound their horns to warn of their passing. The tracks run along the river and pass through the old coal towns and river access points, traversing trails and climbing crags. I picked up a piece of the black, carbon-dense stone, imagining the individual who bore the task of venturing into the depths of the mine shaft, just a few feet tall and miles deep, to unearth its unassuming value. Standing amongst the rubble of the Lilly-Brooke mine, I felt connected to an ancestral story that runs through the veins of many West Virginians.
The site made me think of my family, most notably my Grandpa Chew, a big bear-like hillbilly, an illiterate miner with no teeth who lived in a home most would consider a shed whose name came from always having a big chaw in his mouth. He was the toughest son of a bitch
