Night Three... Slipping the Grid

Riding out of West Virginia, the political thoughts I’d tamped down in the Buffalo Creek Valley resurface and in between the breaths taken away by Mountain Mama and Big Daddy Coal, I feel myself getting angry at Hillary Clinton. I grew up knowing that coal companies kill people, but they also hire people, pay people, feed people, clothe people. I grew up knowing that corporations had to be held in check, that they need a third party to regulate them, to make sure they’re operating safely or else they’ll just follow the path of least resistance towards the most money. I do believe that’s the responsibility of government. But no matter what I believe, no matter what I think I know, the people of West Virginia know coal better. This is Coal Country. Hillary said out loud that she thought they should end their entire way of life. That they’d re-train them it some mythical future industry. She essentially said out loud that she intended to put her hands around their necks and choke them to death. As if that wasn’t bad enough, then she tried to take it back. Part of my unplugging was separating from the cesspool of Twitter and the professional wrestling matches on cable news (I’m still cool with Maddow) and I’m not especially welcoming these thoughts, but it feels like I’m gaining new perspective. In the event of politics these three subjects will keep taking the medal podium in my brain: Health Care, Education and Technology Infrastructure. Dumbo chugs up a hill in 3rd gear, I resist the urge to let her fly until we crest the ridge and coast on down pushing 70mph, trees as far as we can see. From somewhere in the back of my head comes a voice in a new accent, joking, “West Virginia’s ‘almost heaven’ cuz it’s got a view of Kentucky.” 

There’s a big beautiful wall in Matewan to keep the Big Sandy River from flooding. Again. The only place that’s open on Main Street is a Mexican restaurant. I get a couple burritos and queso and walk Sadie around the ghost town. Hatfield Street. Hatfield country. McCoy on the other side. Hatfield-McCoy highway, Hatfield-McCoy park, amphitheater, re-enactments, festivals, faded newspaper clippings taped to window glass. The only living people outside are a big ol’ feller sitting on the steps of the firehouse with his brother who’s got Down’s Syndrome and an ice cream cone. I ask if they know a good campground around. They consult each other a beat and return the verdict that there’s nothing really until close to Pikeville. I type it into my phone, but I’m not catching much signal since descending the mountains so I’ll just have to follow the signs.

We cross the Tug Fork into Kentucky, another passage out of my Dad’s book, and catch a bit of internet long enough to spot a campground on 194 and we set to chase it as best we can. We ride two lane blacktops through works of art: above ground pools decorated with anchors and wooden wraparounds, big riding mower lawns and riding toys for kids of all ages. Eventually the blink and you miss ‘em towns disappear leaving just a creek and a canopy of Poplars, Oaks and Maples arcing over the road. Fields of horses and cows and fields of just fields frame the creek. I was just reading that geneticists believe humans love the smell of rain because we were programmed to react to the scents to find water. Apparently, we can pick up certain chemicals in the air to some absurd microscopic parts per million and that kept us alive. My top two locations in my lifetime for chasing water are The Great Ocean Road in Australia and The Pacific Coast Highway to Big Sur. Route 194 to German Bridge campground in Eastern Kentucky gives them a run for their money. It takes me less than two hours to fall breathlessly in love with Kentucky.

With the sun setting, I feel the heat of the political thoughts in my head cooling off as the signal disappears completely from my phone. I come to a bend in John’s Creek, off Dewey Lake, and turn into the gates to a wide open space of cut grass, stables, and plugged-in trailers nestled into a corner of lush hillsides just abutting the concrete bridge that gives the campground its name. Despite knowing that I made a request to the heavens, that I called in what’s about to happen, that I went so far as to put it in writing, I fail to realize that I’m about to fall off the grid for two days. 

German Bridge is in the care of a blonde-haired, limp-walking horsewoman named Dreama who greets me as I hop down outside the office house. I sigh and exhale loudly and my eyes go wide breathing the air and I tell her, “This is a piece of heaven you got here. Can you swim in the water?” “Some do. But I don’t,” Dreama tells me, “Not since I saw Jaws.” She’s not serious, but she’s serious. “You think there’s sharks in that water?” “I don’t know, if I can’t see under there could be anything. Since it went muddy I don’t go in.” I’m laughing, “There’s no sharks in the river.” With finality she tells me, “If it’s not true then they shouldn’t a put it in the movie.” Again. She’s not serious, but she’s serious. There’s something in this exchange that hangs with me for a few days and seems to pop up again and again. Despite how many times I hear Dreama or her mother or her sister Donna or her boyfriend Donnie say something along the lines of, “Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see,” nobody seems to check if anything’s true. Yeah, I’m about to get to know this family pretty well. Other than a couple of guys fishing down by the creek and the occasional landline call I have to borrow, they’re the only people I’m going to talk to for two days. 

The moon is waxing gibbous, just a sliver from full, it’ll be blood tomorrow, an eclipse visible in a different part of the world. Here it’s just bright and I stare at it as Sadie and I devour the bag of burritos we’ve carried from Matewan. Dinner tastes incredible, the way a meal is when you’re really hungry, when you’ve had to work for it, the way you never feel more found than after you’ve been lost. I look around the picnic tables for anyone else to emerge from all the camper trailers ringing the creek when it dawns on me…

I’m the only guest. 

And I’m about to make a lot of people cry.