 Home is an invention on which no one has yet improved.
A man defending his home is worth 10 invaders.
There is no place like home.
Home is home, be it ever so humble.
These phrases may have graced our ears 3,592 times, but ponderings on the meaning of home mean a little bit more to those of us in Appalachia these days.
Mountain Mondays will be a weekly celebration of our mountain home in Appalachia.
You see, in many ways, Appalachia isn't what it used to be. We have lost more than 1 million acres of land, along with 1000+ of miles of our once pristine streams, and 90% of our traditional coal jobs to mountaintop removal mining. This barbaric practice has reduced much of our home to rubble, and further damaged our perennially struggling local economies. The jobs are gone. The people are leaving. The water is toxic. And they are blowing up the mountains themselves.
But the face of Appalachian resistance to "Big Coal" is changing...
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In West Virginia - and indeed in the entire nation - there are few rivers better known for their wild and scenic stretches than the Gauley and New Rivers. I've heard locals boast that the New River is in fact the oldest river in the entire world.
