The green rolling hills of West Virginia
Are the nearest place to heaven that I know.
Though the times are sad and drear,
And I cannot linger here,
They will keep me and never let me go.
—Bruce “Utah” Phillips
As Jesse and I approached the Boone County town of Racine, we veered away from the Big Coal River onto Route 94. The mountains crowded the road, and it felt as if we were driving along the fold of a giant bedsheet. Just before the town of Hernshaw, we turned onto smaller County Route 42. The pavement gave way to dirt, and a brown sign indicated that we were four miles from the Kanawha State Forest, one of West Virginia’s densest cerulean warbler breeding areas. Well-kept houses and trailers lined the road, several with trampolines in their backyards. We rounded a curve and suddenly were face to face with the dusty grill of an oncoming truck. I screamed and Jesse skidded onto the road’s shoulder as the heavy truck roared past us, shaking our little fiberglass car. I spun in my seat to see if I could get the license plate number, but it was obscured by a cloud of dust. As the truck rounded the bend, I saw that its bed was heaped with coal.
After shouting obscenities that only we could hear, Jesse righted the car and drove on, and I grew even more anxious to get to our destination. Soon, another small dirt road veered off to the left, and as our County Route 42 steepened and began to climb up the mountain, we looked down at the other dirt road below us in the hollow; we saw drive-over truck scales and a few scattered piles of spilled coal on the ground. We guessed that the other road must lead to a mine, and that the truck that almost hit us was hauling coal a few miles north to Charleston and the Kanawha River. From there, the coal would probably be loaded onto barges or trains to be shipped elsewhere—perhaps to one of the thirty-three US states or twenty-five foreign countries that purchase West Virginia’s coal.
Route 42 continued to climb, and as we left the houses and speeding coal trucks behind us, the foliage on both sides thickened. Jesse drove more slowly and stopped the car frequently to listen to birds singing; this didn’t bother me as much as it had earlier, since I knew this road ended at the state forest and it seemed unlikely that we’d encounter any more traffic. The dense woods alongside the road were filled with towering, mature hardwoods; I recognized chestnut oak, red oak, and sugar maple. A pileated woodpecker swooped in front of our car, and an ovenbird chirped from the undergrowth.
We crept along, windows down, and almost on cue we heard the buzzy zhrzhrzhrZEEEE of a male cerulean warbler. Jesse stopped the car and we held our breaths, listening for the bird. I tensed my entire body, as if that somehow would encourage the bird to sing again. Mr. Bones panted loudly behind me, and stood on the edge of the back door to stick his face out the open window. After a few moments of silence, the cerulean buzzed loudly again, and I whispered to Jesse, “It sounds like he’s right above us.”
“He probably is,” Jesse whispered back. He put the car in gear, and we proceeded to crawl. The dusty road became steeper as we rounded a hairpin switchback. I looked beyond Jesse—out his driver’s side window—and there, through a break in the trees, I could see the ridge opposite the one we were climbing. And I could see the brown, rocky edge of a strip mine.
“Stop!” I squealed, grabbing Jesse’s arm. He hit the brakes, causing Mr. Bones to fall into the back of my seat. I pointed.
“Wow,” said Jesse, putting the car in neutral and setting the emergency brake. “There it is, finally.”
We stared at the opposite ridge’s brown, flattened edge, devoid of greenery. I scrambled out of the car with my camera and hurriedly took pictures, as if the mine would disappear before I documented its existence. While I stood there in the shade of a towering red oak, clicking picture after picture of the barren ridge on the horizon, I heard the quick, buzzy cerulean song again, and my arms goose-bumped in spite of the afternoon sun. It was tragically poetic—as I stood staring at a mountaintop removal mine, the fastest-declining warbler in the United States sang above me. How many ceruleans had once claimed territories on that opposite ridge? Where were they now? Had they returned from South America only to find their instinctual breeding grounds completely gone, destroyed by the very mine I was photographing?
In addition to destroying the ridge and forest, mountaintop removal mines fragment the remaining forest and create large-scale “edges.” Petra Wood has conducted several studies documenting the ways “hard edges”—like the ones caused by mountaintop mining and the subsequent reclamation—affect cerulean warblers. Her research article, “Cerulean Warbler Abundance and Occurrence Relative to Large-Scale Edge and Habitat Characteristics,” reports that “cerulean warbler abundance increased significantly with distance from the edge of reclaimed mines, with the edge effect extending 340 m [more than 1,000 feet] into the forest.” Mountaintop removal mining not only displaces ceruleans, but degrades the surrounding habitat. Wood’s article continues: “Remaining forest tracts are rendered less suitable due to edge effects, further reducing populations over and above forest loss to the mines themselves.” How many cerulean warblers did this particular mine affect? Jesse and I had almost arrived at our destination; how many acres of cerulean warbler habitat within the Kanawha State Forest had this mine also rendered less desirable for use by breeding ceruleans?
Nearby, the male cerulean sang again. “This is absurd,” I stammered to Jesse. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing and seeing at the very same time.”
I had been too horrified and intrigued to notice that a stocky man walking a large, fluffy black and brown dog was approaching. As he drew nearer, I smiled and gave him a customary nod. I figured he’d nod back and keep walking, but instead he stopped. He caught his breath, and then asked, winking, “You like them strip mines?”
I looked at him hard for a moment before answering. Beads of perspiration ran down his red face, and sweat stained his white T-shirt and navy blue jogging pants. He stood about five-foot six-inches and probably weighed close to 250 pounds. A gray mustache covered his upper lip and drooped down to the corners of his mouth. His tan baseball cap was turned backward and short white hair stuck out from beneath it. I wasn’t sure what to make of him—this was Boone County, after all, the biggest coal county in West Virginia. I figured the chances were good that we’d disagree about strip mines, but I was angry. I shook my head and said, “Nope, I don’t like them.”
The man laughed. “I guess if you liked them you wouldn’t be taking pictures.”
Mr. Bones had squirmed out of our car’s back window by this point, and he and the larger dog were happily wagging their tails and sniffing each other’s butts. Jesse got out, too, and the man began talking. It took me a moment to process what he was saying, because what came out of his mouth was not what I had expected, given our current location.
“If you want a better view of that mine,” he said, wiping his forehead on his sleeve, “keep going up this road, and just before the state forest, park your car on the right and walk up the four-wheeler trail. You’ll get better pictures from up there.” The fluffy dog began nosing me, and I bent down to pet him as the man continued. “If anybody ever tells you those strip mines provide jobs, they’re lying. They’re not supplying anybody with jobs, but that’s how they justify it,” he grunted, gesturing toward the opposite ridge. “Each crew is only eight red hats, and probably not more than thirty men work during a twenty-four-hour day.”
I shook my head and sighed as the cerulean warbler buzzed again from somewhere nearby.
The man wiped more sweat from his cheek and pointed at the Virginia license tag on our car. “What happened to old Jerry?” he asked, winking at me again and smiling. I didn’t know who he meant at first, but when he began talking about the religious right, I realized that he meant Jerry Falwell, founder of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, who had recently died. “He got that atheist Reagan elected by firing up all the religious people,” he growled, his smile fading. “The Republican Party’s wrecked a lot of good people. They’re hypocrites. Look at what they did to Colin Powell…”
As the man continued a curse-filled rant, I couldn’t stop a smirk, and then an all-out grin, from creeping onto my face. He threw up his hands, and his face got even redder. “Those Republicans,” he said, “they’re in bed with Massey, that scab outfit.”
Massey Energy, while notorious for many things throughout Appalachia, was also known for hiring almost exclusively non-union coal miners. According to data presented in Bringing Down the Mountains, in 2003, only 193 of Massey’s 4,428 employees were members of the United Mine Workers of America. With the rise of mountaintop removal mining and the decline in the number of employees needed, union miners often found themselves out of work. According to the West Virginia Coal Association, 106,590 people labored in the state’s coal mines in 1934; by 1984, that number had dropped to 39,950; and by 2007, only 19,213 people worked as coal miners in West Virginia.
For many coalfield residents—including our new friend—the practice of hiring non-union miners was unacceptable. Several mine wars, pitting striking workers against the hired guns of the coal companies, were fought in Appalachia’s mountains. Blood was spilled for labor’s right to organize in order to demand safety and competitive wages. My great-great-grandfather William lived near the site of West Virginia’s first mine war, known as the Paint Creek/Cabin Creek War, which lasted from April of 1912 until July of 1913. Striking miners, seeking the right to organize, accurate scales, fair pay, and several other reasonable demands, clashed with coal company owners and their well-heeled thugs. Several striking miners and coal company guards lost their lives. William, who lived on the Lick Fork of Paint Creek during that time, would have been involved in the struggle. Eight years later, as a union miner in southern West Virginia, William probably participated in the Battle of Blair Mountain, the violent clash between ten thousand striking coal miners and deputized agents of the coal companies. The five-day gun battle ended when the US Army arrived and quelled the strike.
I stared out at the brown edge of the opposite ridge. What must it be like to live near a mine that size? Imagine: you live in southern West Virginia, amid clear mountain streams, thick forests, and towering green mountains, in a town with a low crime rate and friendly neighbors. Coal mining never really bothered you too much until they started blowing up the mountains around your house. That’s when I’d move, some people would say. Well, let’s put aside the fact that this is your home and you don’t want to move. What does relocating require, first and foremost? Somewhere else to move to, right? How do you get that somewhere else? With money, of course. So, you’ll need to sell your old home in southern West Virginia. But there’s a problem; no one wants to buy a home next to a giant strip mine. Your property value has plummeted. The coal company offers to buy your house at “fair market value,” but it’s not enough. So what can you do, while each day more and more of the area around your home is destroyed, as your house shakes from the blasting, as your well water turns orange, and each rainstorm brings the threat of a flood?
Thinking about this hypothetical situation in southern West Virginia made me feel selfish and lucky. At one time my family also depended on coal for survival. William’s son, my great-grandfather Ignatius, also worked in an underground coal mine. Ignatius was elected president of his local UMWA chapter at age nineteen, but after losing an eye in a mining accident he retired and worked as a police officer in Plymouth, Pennsylvania. According to my mother, he hated going down into the mines, and he vowed that none of his children would ever work underground. And none of them did. When World War II struck, all four of his sons, including my grandfather, joined the military. My father’s father, Touffy Sallitt, who immigrated to the United States in 1923 from Syria, worked in eastern Pennsylvania’s coal industry almost from the moment he set foot in the country. At the age of twelve, he took a job as a “breaker,” separating useable anthracite coal from waste material as it came up from the mines; now, this work is done primarily by machines at processing plants like the one in Sylvester. I can’t deny that the coal industry played a significant role in the financial beginnings of both sides of my family, and on some level, I wouldn’t be here without coal. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it, and our story shows that it’s possible to leave the coal industry and do something else, even if it’s your family’s “heritage.”
The fluffy dog sniffed my boot as his owner, seeming glad to have this enthusiastic audience, told us about a recent mining accident that killed two underground miners at a Massey operation. “I worked underground for many years,” he said, shaking his head, “and we never had the kind of accidents they do now.”
We talked for a few more minutes, and our new friend told us how to find the campground once we were in the state forest. As we climbed back in our car, the man turned to continue his walk up the steep road. As we rumbled slowly past him, he called to us, “Remember, there’s only one thing Republicans hate more than Democrats—the truth!” Chuckling, he gave us a wave as we continued on our way up the mountain.
Mr. Bones guards the tent in the Kanawha State Forest.
West Virginia is hands down the most beautiful place on earth. Once Jesse and I crossed into Kanawha County and entered the state forest, the road became paved and wound gently through the trees. The forest canopy closed above the road, allowing just a little sunlight through to dapple the blacktop. The 9,300-acre Kanawha State Forest harbored more than a thousand flora species and scores of birds, including nineteen warbler species. A black-throated green warbler sang zee zee zoo zoo zee from the trees overhead as we cruised towards the campground.
To our delight, when we arrived at the “rustic” tent camping area, it was deserted. Vacant tent sites lined one side of Store Hollow Road, and beyond the sites ran a thin, trickling creek. A wooded mountain rose behind the creek, and another loomed on the other side of the road, forming the hollow. The road dead-ended at campsite 16, which we gleefully claimed; it was surrounded on three sides by the forested walls of the hollow, and the creek ran just next to it. The site included a picnic table, a trash can, and a fire pit. We normally avoided camping in designated “campgrounds”—we strongly preferred backpacking far from roads and picnic tables—but this site seemed like the best we could hope for in a state forest next to a large urban area. We hung a sign on the numbered post indicating that we were claiming the site, and we set up our freestanding two-person tent while Mr. Bones investigated the creek and surrounding undergrowth. When we had finished, we climbed in the car again and drove back to the state forest entrance to try to get another look at the mine we’d passed on the way in.
We wound back up the quiet road through the forest and stopped just outside the park boundary. A gated gravel road led up and into the woods to the left of the entrance; we snapped on Mr. Bones’s leash and started hiking up it. As the road steadily climbed, Jesse and I scanned the canopy for birds. Mr. Bones’s constant tugging on the leash made birding difficult; usually, we let him off his leash in the woods, but since we were on more of a road than a hiking trail, we were nervous we’d encounter a vehicle. When Mr. Bones gets a smell he likes, his beagle half takes over; with his nose to the ground and tail wagging, he zigzags along whatever scent trail he’s found. When he’s in beagle mode, we can call and call but he ignores us. So, to be safe, we kept him hooked to the leash.
We hadn’t been walking more than a few minutes when we heard the call of a male cerulean warbler. We tilted back our heads, raised our binoculars, and searched the treetops, but we couldn’t find him.
“Damn,” said Jesse, lowering his binoculars, “I’d really like to see one of those guys today.”
We pressed on, and the road switched back and continued to climb. My legs began to ache, and I regretted not bringing a bottle of water. Even though it was mid-afternoon, a few birds still sang in the forest. In addition to the cerulean, we heard more black-throated green warblers, Eastern wood-pewees, red-eyed vireos, yellow-throated vireos, and others. We passed a fresh pile of what I thought was coyote scat; Mr. Bones loved the way it smelled, and he wagged his tail faster and faster as he stood over the pile, sniffing deeply. At home, we sometimes heard coyotes running in the cow pastures behind our house. They howl and yap and sound like they’re having a raucous party. Mr. Bones usually sits inside our screen door with his head cocked and his ears lifted, listening to the canine jamboree outside; perhaps something wild, buried deep in his genes, stirs as he listens. Mr. Bones lowered his head and prepared to roll in the fresh scat, but luckily Jesse pulled him away just in time, and we kept climbing.
Then, through a break in the trees, we glimpsed the barren edge of the strip mine on the opposite ridge. As we examined it through our binoculars, I felt my face flush with anger. So much life flourished along this road—thick, mature trees, birds singing and foraging, delicate wildflowers. Certainly there had once been just as much life on that ridge, too. I wondered how many animals had been killed outright; how many baby birds in their nests, too small to fly, had been buried alive under tons of dirt and rock? How many foxes and coyotes were displaced and forced to find new places to hunt? The part of the mine we could see looked like something big had come along and shaved off the side of the mountain—which, actually, was not far from the truth. We could see the different layers of earth; the layer toward the top of the wound was brownish-red, then below a layer of darker material, which might have been where the coal used to be, and then a layer of gray stone. Jesse and I continued walking all the way up the road, cursing the suit-and-tie executives of the surface mining industry who, we were certain, grew fat from the millions of dollars they made by destroying these ancient mountains and the people and animals who called them home.
We rounded another switchback, and the woods opened up to a clearing dominated by what we assumed was a natural gas well. We birded this “soft” edge habitat for a few minutes, but our stomachs were growling, so we decided we’d slowly make our way back to our car. We hadn’t actually seen a cerulean, but we had all day tomorrow to continue searching. Just beyond the well, the wide gravel road narrowed to a thin gas-line path that led into the forest. The overgrown path headed back down the mountain in the general direction of our car, so we followed it. The path was steep and tangled with undergrowth; right away we heard another male cerulean singing. Again, we strained our necks searching, but we couldn’t locate him high in the canopy. Perhaps my cerulean-searching skills were not as sharp as I’d thought. We tromped on, startling a roosting red-tailed hawk, and before long, through the trees, we could see the silver of our car at the bottom of the hill. Our gas-line path intersected with a small dirt road, which a few feet further met with the road we’d walked up.
The roads all converged close to where we’d parked our car, near the state forest’s entrance. We were about to give up on birding and quickened our pace when we again heard a male cerulean singing softly overhead. I looked up and saw something fluttering in the high branches of a sugar maple. I raised my binoculars. “Redstart,” I sighed. “Those things are everywhere.”
“I’ve got a cerulean,” Jesse whispered quickly. “I see his necklace.” He explained how to find the bird, and as soon as I did, we both noticed a third bird—this one a pale bluish-yellow, sort of like a washed-out looking watercolor painting. It foraged along a thin branch, hopping from twig to twig and running its bill along the undersides of leaves.
“That’s a female cerulean,” I whispered. Perhaps nearby the pair had built a nest of spider webs and grapevine bark on a lateral branch. The male sang softly again, like a song with the volume turned down. I realized we were hearing the “whisper song,” and I nudged Jesse. We stood below, watching the pair forage, until our necks hurt. When Mr. Bones began to tug on his leash, Jesse and I quietly snuck back to our car, both of us grinning.
Before settling in at camp for the evening, Jesse and I got back in the car and headed toward Charleston to find a store. We agreed that our cerulean success deserved a celebratory bottle of wine; alcohol was of course prohibited in the state forest, but that didn’t deter us. We exited the park, hoping to find a nearby store without having to drive all the way into the city, which was about eight miles north. The road led through the small town of Loudendale, which consisted mostly of a handful of houses and trailers along the main road. Bright, round peonies bloomed around driveways and mailboxes. A Confederate flag flapped from a garage, and an old hound dog snoozed on a wooden porch. Among the houses was a convenience store, and Jesse pulled into the parking lot. A clerk leaned against the outside wall, smoking; she took a long drag before stomping out the butt and following Jesse inside. He came out a few seconds later. Apparently, they had no wine, but sold single Bud Light bottles, if I’d rather. I didn’t. We turned onto the steep road that led to Charleston.
The road wound and climbed, and soon we began to notice Charleston’s sprawl. As we got closer to the city, the houses became larger and more luxurious. Most were brick and stone, with SUVs and basketball hoops in their blacktop driveways. Lawns were close-clipped and green, and the bright gardens neatly landscaped. It seemed that if Charleston grew any bigger, the city would push further and further in the direction of the Kanawha State Forest. The forest already seemed like an island, wedged between the city on its north and strip mines on its south, east, and west. We stopped at a gas station in the sprawl and picked up a cheap bottle of chilled chardonnay. It was still early, but we were looking forward to cooking our dinner of just-add-water sun-dried-tomato pasta and sitting around a campfire, so we headed back to the forest and site 16. When we arrived, we happily discovered that no one else had invaded Store Hollow.
We unpacked our camp stove and dinner, and Jesse poured us each a cup of wine. We drank from black plastic camp cups, which were worn from years of use—very discreet, we thought, in case a park ranger came through. As the sun sank lower and the temperature dropped, the birds tuned up for their evening songs. While Jesse stirred our dinner on the camp stove and I sipped chardonnay, we were serenaded by a wood thrush, a red-eyed vireo, and an Eastern wood-pewee. An Acadian flycatcher called pEET-sa every few seconds from a pine tree along the creek. A Louisiana waterthrush investigated our tent, strutting around our campsite, bobbing his tail with each step. Mr. Bones lay next to the picnic table and watched him, but was too tired (or maybe too lazy) to get up and bother the bird. Chimney swifts chittered as they wheeled high overhead. Then, from the mountain slope beyond the creek, a cerulean warbler began to sing.
Jesse and I sat quietly amid all the birdsong. We each took a fork and began sharing mini-penne from the pot. Sipping sweet wine, eating pasta, relaxing in a wooded hollow with my husband and dog, listening to a singing cerulean warbler was perfect. Almost heaven.
I had just refilled my cup with chardonnay when a beige state-forest pickup turned onto Store Hollow Road. “Drink that whole cup,” Jesse said softly.
“I just filled it,” I answered. “It looks like we’re drinking water or coffee, doesn’t it?”
“Not if he gets out of the truck,” Jesse answered, as he slowly lowered his cup and dumped its contents onto the ground. I reluctantly did the same and watched as the wine mixed with the sandy earth under the picnic table.
The truck came all the way down to our site, turned around, and drove back down the road without even a wave from the driver. “Figures,” Jesse said, and as soon as the truck was out of sight, we refilled our cups, and Jesse began building a fire in the pit. The folks who had camped at this site the previous night had kindly left some firewood. Soon, orange flames were blazing.
The gates to the park closed at nine, and Jesse and I were delighted to have all of Store Hollow to ourselves. But just as a whippoorwill began calling in the growing darkness, another pickup truck turned onto the road and drove toward our campsite. “That’s not the law again, is it?” I asked, squinting. The truck pulled into an empty campsite three or four down from us, and its two teenage passengers got out and slammed the doors. They began to unload a tent and other equipment from the bed of the truck.
“Oh well,” said Jesse. Mr. Bones didn’t like the other campers either, and growled deeply. We sipped our wine, poked at the fire, and tried to ignore the intruders.
Despite the fact that we were no longer alone in Store Hollow, I was in a great mood. Sitting in an Appalachian hardwood forest at dusk, watching and listening while the day faded to evening and then night, heightened my senses and made me feel truly alive. I inhaled deeply and let my head fill with the warm smell of the campfire. I jabbed at it with a carefully chosen stick and watched a balled-up page of newspaper collapse and smolder before erupting into orange flame. Simple, perfect. While I enjoyed sitting, watching, and listening, Jesse reveled in the small challenges of camping; he liked building campfires, especially when conditions weren’t perfect—if the firewood was damp or wet, for example. He liked using his camp toys, especially his hatchet and buck knife. He always made sure our small tent was perfectly situated on its tarp, with its rain guard stretched tightly over the roof and walls. Jesse was almost always the one who unfurled and inflated the bedrolls and laid out our sleeping bags.
When Jesse and I crawled into those sleeping bags around ten (we’d planned to get an early start birding the next morning), our neighbors were still awake, talking loudly around their now-roaring campfire. At some point—probably an hour or so later—another vehicle drove down Store Hollow Road and stopped at their site. Car doors slammed. Loud greetings were exchanged. Mr. Bones, who slept inside the tent with us, growled again at the newcomers.
I eventually tried to fall asleep, but it was difficult because of the laughter and voices from the other campsite. I was glad that teenagers liked to hang out in places like state forests, but when I checked my watch at 3:30 a.m., they were still awake and talking. I briefly woke up again around 4:30 when the first birds of the morning started to sing, and by 5:30, Jesse was shuffling around our campsite, putting gear away and getting ready for our hike. I tried to stay in the tent and sleep longer, but it was futile.
By six, I was sitting at the picnic table, rubbing my eyes. The Acadian flycatcher was frantically calling again from the pine tree and two crows were taking turns raiding the other campsite. The teenagers were all sleeping inside the tent, and the crows marched around their fire pit, stealing little bits of food and cawing boisterously back and forth to each other. I made sure I slammed the car door a few times and talked a little more loudly than usual to Jesse, who smiled and shook his head at me as he smoothed his hair into a ponytail.
We loaded up a daypack with water, our camera, field guide, my notebook, and a few granola bars, and started up Store Hollow Trail, which began close to our campsite on the opposite side of the hollow from the creek and the other tent sites. Store Hollow Trail was a short, steep climb up out of the hollow, switching back a few times as it wound between red oaks and sugar maples. We let Mr. Bones off his leash and he had a pup celebration, sprinting up the trail, then back to us, leaping and twisting his body. He was definitely ready for a pup-venture in the woods. I may be accused of anthropomorphizing, but Mr. Bones seemed to be expressing pure joy as he galloped and skipped along in front of us.
The forested slope was dry—no gentle streams flowed, and no mud pooled in the trail. Almost immediately after starting up the trail we heard a cerulean, but we couldn’t find him in the high canopy. We did, however, get a good look at a worm-eating warbler and a scarlet tanager; since worm-eaters stay close to the ground, they can sometimes be easily spotted, and the bright red tanager stood out amid the green. Ovenbirds chirped their dry teacher teacher teacher call and red-eyed vireos asked, where are you? Can you hear?
Soon, Store Hollow Trail met Pine Ridge Trail at the crest of the hill. Jesse and I turned right and hiked along the ridge. Thick, lichen-covered trees lined the trail, and sunlight broke through in patches, encouraging seedlings on the forest floor. I couldn’t help myself—I hugged a few of those wide oaks. As we hiked along, we heard several more male ceruleans singing. We stopped near a rocky outcrop and sat down and searched until we found one of them, hopping and flitting around the thin branches that extended out over the edge of the ridge. He’d hop, then stop and sing, his dark beak opening wide, his head thrown back. Then he’d repeat the pattern of hop, stop, sing, sometimes mixing it up with flit, stop, sing. It occurred to me that this bird was fortunate that his territory was here, in the interior of the state forest, instead of beyond its borders. But even though this forest was protected, it seemed safe to assume that there was coal within the mountain under us. Would there come a time when greed finally trumped conservation? Could the state of West Virginia sell this forest to a coal company?
We climbed around the outcrop for a few minutes, and I remembered something that Dr. Wood had told me about Allegheny wood rats and their connection to cerulean warblers. Wood rats needed rocky outcrops in their habitat, and rocky outcrops often occurred along ridges. Cerulean warblers in this part of the county preferred to live on ridges. Both species, and scores of others, needed this same small piece of habitat. I imagined silent creatures hiding all around me, waiting for us to move on.
After a short walk along the ridge, the trail intersected with Dunlop Trail, which descended into Dunlop Hollow. We took Dunlop Trail to the left; soon, a small stream appeared next to us, and the woods darkened and became damp. Moss crept up the thick tree trunks, and the ground around the trail was covered in ferns and delicate wildflowers. This was exactly the kind of place where, as a child, I imagined fairies and unicorns lived. Bits of pollen suspended in the air, and the ferns around our feet were still wet with morning dew. The forest vibrated with life. Everywhere I looked, something was alive: the moss, the ferns, tiny blue wildflowers, insects skittering in the narrow stream, hovering mosquitoes. The lazy zur zur zur zeee of a black-throated blue warbler, the tuwee tuwee tuweeo of a hooded warbler, and the ethereal chime of a wood thrush filled the hollow. I thought about the surface mine just outside the park entrance, and all the other mines within a few miles of here, and imagined this hollow choked with tons of dirt and rock and debris, the gentle stream filled in, the flowers and ferns buried. I wondered if the people in charge of local mountaintop removal operations had ever walked through a hollow like this one.
At the very bottom of Dunlop Hollow, the trail intersected a gravel road, and the tiny stream soon disappeared into larger Davis Creek. Hemlocks towered above the creek, blocking most of the sun. The understory here was less dense, and we were scolded by Carolina chickadees while a yellow-throated warbler sang from somewhere overhead. We continued along the gravel road, which led through meadows and eventually a picnic area with a baseball diamond. This proved to be a great spot to see birds. In addition to robins and other common birds, we identified Kentucky, yellow, and Tennessee warblers, lots of chipping sparrows, and—surprisingly—another cerulean, which Jesse actually identified by sight instead of by call. The bird foraged in a large sycamore at the edge of the meadow, but after a few minutes he took off and flew into the woods. Jesse and I took our cue from the cerulean and headed back to camp.
We loaded the rest of our gear into our car and left the same way we’d come in—by the windy dirt road that passed the surface mine—but at the bottom of the hill we turned left and headed east toward Hernshaw and Marmet, where we would merge onto Interstate 77 south. The road to Hernshaw—Route 94—passed close by a vast mountaintop removal site, but we couldn’t see it from the road. Highway 94 intersected with the interstate near huge mounds of coal and a processing plant on the banks of the Kanawha River. Train cars lined up end to end near the plant, some filled with coal and some empty. Barges on the river also waited. A bulldozer crawled up one mountain of coal, and from a bridge over the Kanawha River we could just make out the very top of the golden M of a McDonald’s.
As we drove south toward Blacksburg, we realized that the prime time for viewing ceruleans was almost past. Soon, the males would sing less frequently as nesting and raising chicks took top priority. Without the buzzy song, ceruleans would be almost impossible to locate high in the leafy canopy. I planned to lie low as well for the next few weeks and take care of my “nest” while Jesse headed to Georgia. Another portion of the cerulean’s season had ended, but the next stage—babies!—was about to begin.
