West Virginia?
You from here? I didn’t think so. You don’t sound like you are from here.
I’ve heard that one a few times over the years, and invariably, the next question is, “how’d you end up in West Virginia?” Good question.
My wife and I met while in college at Ball State U., in Muncie Indiana in 1971. These were rather turbulent times and we both had an interest in moving back to the land. We may not have been the best of influences on each other as within a couple of months we had both dropped out of school with the intent of getting jobs, saving money, and buying a farm somewhere. As luck would have it, we met a guy who needed someone to caretake his farmhouse while he came to West Virginia for the summer to study with a rather eccentric herbalist known as, Catfish, Man of the Woods. While he was here, he met a lot of like minded young people who were moving here as part of the back to the land movement. He came back to Indiana, full of enthusiasm for West Virginia, and the next thing we knew we were here to look at property. We found 120 acres at the head of a holler that we just fell in love with, and made arrangements to buy it that first trip. It was, and is, a beautiful place, but it turned out to be totally impractical. Access was one mile up a creek [literally], the land was worn out and though it took over a dozen years to get the best of us, it finally did, and a few years ago we built a new house a whole lot closer to the hard road. Been here in West Virginia 32 years now.