A View from The Top at Seneca Rocks

Hello readers!

     A few weeks ago, my partner and I spent a week traveling The Mountain State and taking some of the coolest selfies ever. I plan to make a blog post about each of them, and I wanted to start with the one that had affected me most. This journey certainly tested me physically, but it especially tried me mentally. If you called me foolish, I would be inclined to agree with you, but this experience left me feeling braver and more empowered than any other tango I've had with Mother Nature. Here is my tale of ascending Seneca Rocks.

     Seneca Rocks is a big craggy formation of Tuscarora quartzite looming over the town that shares its name in Pendleton County of the Eastern panhandle of West Virginia. It stands 900 feet above stream level and is a very popular site for rock climbers on the East Coast. It's an object of geological and historical interest. I will include the Wikipedia link at the bottom of the page for those of you interested in the sand that was deposited 440 million years ago at the edge of the Iapetus Ocean and the training of soldiers for action in the mountains of Italy in the 1940s. Seneca Rocks was also a significant landmark to Native Americans of the Algonquian, Tuscarora, and Seneca nations who traveled the Seneca area near the Potomac River for purposes of trade and war as far back as the 1400s and 1500s. It is also believed that the Native Americans were the first to scale Seneca Rocks. The officially documented climbing history begins in 1935.

    My ascent did not involve scaling the cliffs with ropes and spikes, as I am the equivalent of a fat housecat on my best day, but I'm going to attribute my inability to fearlessly scale it with my bare hands to the fact that I broke my shoulder in my childhood and my right arm can't lift anything over thirty pounds for more than three seconds. Otherwise, I would have climbed that thing like Spiderman.

    We reached the top of Seneca Rocks via switchbacks and stairs. It's only 1.5 miles each way, which seems simple enough, but if you're a human goldfish like me, 1.5 miles uphill with a 1000 feet gain in elevation is quite the battle. I spent the better half of the day panting on various boulders along the trail, and fending of the hundreds of...centipedes?...millipedes?...some sort of revolting "pede."

What is this thing?

      Finally, I made it to the overlook, which is a deck built into the hillside right where the tree-line ends. You can imagine, we were pretty high up. Insanely high up. I could feel the wind off the wings of the buzzards who had inevitably come to feast on my ample, post-asthmatic flesh. But our journey didn't end here.

View from the overlook.

      A few feet beyond the end of the trail and the observation deck, there was a sign discouraging hikers from going any further. It explained that 15 people have died in falls at Seneca Rocks since the 1970s and proceed at your own risk. These have largely been falling accidents involved in traditional rock climbing, though hikers have also been killed. As you're reading this, you may be asking yourself what kind of lunatic traipses past that sign for any reason? You may feel the need to send me the meme of Sam Elliott calling me a special kind of stupid.

Maybe. 

I was up there. 

      My logic? I had just spent hours of my life pushing my body to the limit. Granted, I'm very out of shape and that limit isn't much, but I'm not sure if I'll ever have the chance to hike that trail again. I'm not getting any younger, and I'm kind of at a pre-pivotal point in my life where I don't know where I'll even be living three months from now (see college graduate tries to overcome the West Virginia budget crisis without much luck). It all came down to being a once in a lifetime opportunity and a view that I could not possibly get otherwise. So I took a deep breath and started scrambling on my hands and knees up the rocky formation. It was steep, it was not a trail, there were no barriers, and it was only ten feet wide in some places.

     By the time I reached the top, I was shaking like a leaf, but the view was like nothing else I'd ever seen. The cows in the surrounding fields looked like proverbial ants. I was eye level with the vultures. A helmet-clad head popped up out of nowhere, and an exalted climber scrambled onto the summit. Up there, the worries of my daily life floated away. My exasperating hunt for a job suited to my degree, student loans, my frustrations with everything on the news and the hateful state of society, the stagnation of the last six months; these things were as small as the cows grazing 900 feet below me. There was life where I was standing, and there was oblivion only five feet away in any direction. I was aware of every respiring cell. I knew that I was breathing and all my frustrations were the result of nothing more than human constructs, intangible human ideals that only mattered if I believed them and gave them life. My problems are as real as I make them. My life is as good as I make it. When I was up there, joy was simple because it was nothing more than jagged Tuscarora quartzite beneath my feet. I learned my joy in my daily life should be derived from the same simplicity, the things keeping me alive. My health, my sustenance, myself. Thanks for reading.

On top of the world!

Seneca Rocks Wikipedia

If you would like to share your existential revolutions or awesome selfies, feel free to get in touch at mountainbloodwv@gmail.com or like me on MountainBlood WV Facebook.

Story Time: The Windmill Disaster of 2016

Hello folks!

     I have been having some really interesting adventures this spring, and I thought I would share with you a humorous anecdote of my last trip home. For the new readers, I grew up in Nicholas County, which is nearly smackdab in the center of West Virginia. Lots of mountains, questionable cell phone service, you get about one stoplight per town.

     I had been at my parents' house on our WV "staycation" for less than 24 hours, when my boyfriend (a city boy) asked if we could go see the windmills I had talked so much about. This particular windmill farm is accessed by a dirt road starting in Fenwick, WV (near Richwood), and more than once a wrong turn has led me to Rupert. The windmill farm, like many windmill farms, is located on the top of a mountain, and in my first several trips, a truck or SUV was required to reach it because of the rough roads. I've been scooting around in a Grand Am for the last few years, so I couldn't go visit them myself. My teen brother volunteered to take us in his truck, which was my first questionable choice of the day.

     After a lot of winding roads and driving that will eventually require legal (if not medical) intervention, we got to the windmill farm. Like I said, I've been there many times before, usually with my father when we went on a Sunday drive. There are usually lots of other people up there. In my neck of the woods, wind turbines are a site worth seeing. There are probably a hundred different twists and turns up there, and we drove around for nearly two hours. We were just seeing what views each hill had to offer (we believe Cottle Knob, the hill behind my house, is visible).

     In the course of all our twists and turns, we somehow ended up behind a gate. When we tried to exit the windmill farm, the gate was LOCKED! My heart sank. We were miles away from civilization, with little to no cell phone service, and we were trapped on a windmill farm. The forecast called for thunder and lightning, we only had a few bottles of water and a few bags of chips, this was not a good start to our vacation. There were a few signs hanging around, and I called the numbers on the signs from my one bar of service. All were disconnected, except for the one that connects to a coal mine in Boone County, and the fellow I spoke to had no clue what windmill farm I was talking about or how I got that number. Ugh. I tried calling the non-emergency lines for the Nicholas County and Richwood Police Departments, but no one answered (I'm guessing because it was Sunday).

     I finally had a little luck when I tried calling a non-911 number for Nicholas County Emergency Services. Since we were on the Nicholas/Greenbrier county line, they patched me through to Greenbrier Emergency Dispatch. I explained our situation, but had no clue how to communicate to them our exact location on this expansive windmill maze. As luck would have it, I remembered passing another gate at the entrance of a coal mine and I could actually see the mine. (A coalmine on a windmill farm, how poetic is that?) The dispatch lady called me back, told me someone with keys was on the way, but it would be a while, and that we were TRESPASSING.

     This is where I panicked, because I was not about to go to jail for trespassing when about 50 other rubberneckers were up there taking windmills selfies too. I told her I was unaware of that, to which she tersely replied "There are signs everywhere and you had to go through a gate to get there." There were lots of signs, but they all said "NO HUNTING." Unless I am mistaken and all my college criminal justice courses were for naught, "no hunting" and "no trespassing" are not interchangeable signs. So I spent the two hours we had to wait for the keeper of the keys contemplating running off into the wilderness, away from locks and gates and the human construct of "trespassing."

     I was gazing at some fibrous plants, thinking about all the episodes of "Naked and Afraid" I'd been watching, considering weaving myself a weed blanket for the winter, when the guy with the keys turned up. He let us loose, told us that a researcher studying the dead bats and birds (the ugly side of this green energy) locked us in by mistake, and told us to have a nice day. We specifically asked if we were trespassing, and he said no. It was a happy accident. The only reason I can come up with for the dispatch lady reading me the riot act is that perhaps she thought I meant we were on the coalmine property when I told her I could see the coalmine. In that case, we definitely would have been trespassing and probably been sent to Guantanamo Bay as eco-terrorists.

Boyd Crowder knows.

     Fortunately, we were not on mine property, we didn't go to jail, and I was not forced to use my boyfriend's glasses to start a fire with some dead leaves to boil rainwater in a soda can while I stored acorns for the winter. Thanks for reading!

Tell me your funny stories, leave me feedback, and feel welcome to get in touch at mountainbloodwv.@gmail.com. Like me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mountainbloodwv/

Out of Hibernation

Hello Appalachia!

     It's been a (long) while since my last post, and I've let the MountainBlood aspect of my life lie pretty dormant. As far as explanations go, I was busy finishing up my last semester of school. I don't include much of my personal life, but I am going to announce that I now have a degree in Forensic Chemistry from Marshall University. The post-graduation job hunt is a special kind of hell, and I could probably dedicate a blog to that, but we're here to talk about Appalachia, so let's do that.

     My time left in the Mountain State is unknown because of the aforementioned job hunt, but I'm not going to let it get me down since I get most of content through the participation of my wonderful readers. I'm going to make a few adjustments and tweaks to how I run this blog. The first one is a change I'm still trying to figure out, but I have a created a "like" page for MountainBlood WV. Now you can just hit the like button to get blog updates and interactions, and this allows new readers to join the MountainBlood community immediately instead of waiting for me to approve a friend request. So, if you're new here or haven't already done so, please go to www.facebook.com/mountainbloodwv and hit that thumbs up button.
     Another alteration is going to be to the Featured Appalachian column. I initially was doing a monthly post about a Featured/Remembered Appalachian, but unless I can get more people to participate, it will be posted as I get new information instead of trying to scramble and throw one together each month.
     Lastly, I would like to thank the 260+ readers that stuck around during my hiatus, and everyone that reads my blog at all. For a lot of these posts, I'm just putting a pen to paper, and the readers participating deserve the credit for what goes on here. I love your stories and interactions, and your submissions help keep this mountain tale going. Please don't ever hesitate to get in touch on here, on the Facebook page, or at mountainbloodwv@gmail.com, because if you have a story, I want to help you get it out there.

Thank you all for reading and supporting and sharing the Appalachian tale. Keep an eye for new posts in the upcoming weeks.

Phrases of Appalachia

Hello Appalachia!

I polled the Appalachian Facebook masses last week for some phrases you hear in rural mountain communities. I don't think that all these sayings are strictly Appalachian, because I'm sure you also hear them in the south and probably the midwest. but I'm sure if you told someone in California that they're "crazier than an outhouse mouse," they would give you a funny look. The participation I got for writing this post was overwhelming, and I want thank everyone who participated. I couldn't possibly publish so many sayings, so I narrowed it down to my ten favorites. Some of them speak for themselves, and for some of them I included the poster's definition. I can assure you, grammatical infractions are intentional, and I truly think they spice up some of these mottos. So here you go: 

1. Make your bed hard, you turn over often. (Be careful of the choices you make.)
2. Shit fire and save the matches.
3. If you don't hush, I'm gonna give you something to cry about. 
4. Sounds like a dying dog in a hail storm. (Something making awful noise.) 
5. Finer than frog’s hair. (Something that’s really nice or fine.)
6. Gettin' too big for his/her britches (pants). (Someone is being cocky,)
7. I'll dust your britches. (Spanking)
8. Living a champagne life on a beer pocketbook. (Spending money hastily.)
9. Start out like you can hold out. (I think this one means don't bite off more than you can chew.)
10. If you're gonna be stupid, you better be tough.

     I would also like to add a few that I've heard my family use a lot. My dad is fond of describing lazy people by saying "He's never took a lick at a dead snake," which means this person is too lazy to even kill a dead snake, which maybe is difficult task? I'm not in the business of snake killing, so I don't know if it's taxing on the body. My grandpa tells me at least once a week "Don't take no wooden nickels." I'm assuming that means don't let anyone take advantage of you or fool you. And finally, I often catch myself saying "I've never seen the beat," which means I am shocked or can't believe something that just happened.

    I hope you've enjoyed these mountain phrases. I certainly smiled while reading them. Maybe you've even found something quirky to enhance your own vocabulary. A lot of the submissions were creative ways to threaten a spanking, which is a form of discipline that is rapidly fading from society, so maybe ten years from now, you'll tell your kid you're going to tan their hide, and they won't have a clue that their bottom could be in grave danger. I wonder how Appalachian language and dialect will evolve and transform in this booming technological age. I guess we'll see! Thanks for reading! 

*Do you have a favorite Appalachian saying? How did your grandparents threaten your behind? Let me know at mountainbloodwv@gmail.com, or on Facebook under the name MountainBlood WV. 

My Roadtrip to Charleston, South Carolina

Hello Appalachia!

      I've been a busy bee for the last month and a half, but I got a nice break this week in the form of a roadtrip to the deep south. So much scrimping, scraping, and sacrificing went into making this trip a reality, so I'm pretty sad that it was over so fast, but the days I spent in Charleston, South Carolina were wonderful.

     We started our trip at 7 a.m. and spent the whole day traveling from West Virginia to South Carolina. We stopped for lunch. It was my first time eating at Bojangles, (which is apparently a big deal to a lot of people). It was okay, but I think all the hype had my expectations a little too high. We rolled into Charleston around 5:30 in the evening, where we dropped off our bags at the hotel and continued on to Sullivan's Island. This moment in my trip was probably my favorite. I'm nearly 24 and this was my first time ever seeing the ocean. It was such a special moment.

     After some wading, I got to pick dinner. I was determined to continue the theme of "trying new things for the first time," so I chose sushi. After a lot of fumbling with the chopsticks and steeling myself for the likely event that my lunch from Bojangles would end up on the table, I took a bite. At the time, I really enjoyed it, but when I think about it now, I get so grossed out. I don't understand why, because I ate the entire plate of tuna/spicy mayo sushi. I also ordered a side of fried calamari (squid), and it really was delicious. I would forsake chicken nuggets for the rest of my life if I could just have fried calamari instead. Too bad we don't have squid here in the mountains.

    The next morning, we woke up super early and packed our picnic for our afternoon at the beach on Sullivan's Island. A sign at the entrance led me to believe that coyotes frequented the beach, and that I "shouldn't" feed them, which my wild mountain brain interpreted as "it is possible to feed them and temporarily join their pack for a day of coyote beach fun." But alas, no coyotes made an appearance.

    This beach is mainly used by locals who own the fancy beach homes, so there weren't very many people there at all. We snacked on our picnic, collected shells, and returned to our basket to find that a flock of seagulls had stolen our entire bag of pepperoni rolls. I hope they enjoyed them, because unless they come to West Virginia, it isn't likely they'll ever have them again.

    I also spent a lot of time playing in the ocean. I also got to experience a full on "fight or flight" response for the first time. I was chest deep in the salty water, which unlike the crystal lakes of my homeland, was very murky, I couldn't even see my feet. This made me wary enough. The real fun started when I thought I saw a bird floating on the water about 30 feet away from me. No big deal. I've shared my swimming space with ducks plenty of times. Until it suddenly disappeared. The ocean is noisy and choppy and constantly changing. I didn't let it alarm me, because I thought my eyes were being tricked by my ever changing surroundings. Until a moment later, before my very eyes, a big gray back with a big fin broke the surface of the water 20 feet from where I stood! Now, I've seen bears and snakes, and I've heard a pack of coyotes howling in the distance during a full moon, but in that moment, nature was no longer my friend. It was very likely a dolphin. The locals didn't seem too freaked out about it, but being from the sweet, dry land of Appalachia, I had no experience in discerning sharks from dolphins. My brain replayed every shark attack story I had watched on the news this summer. I thought of every movie where a fin breaks the water, and moments later, the ocean is a sea of blood. I high-tailed it out of that water faster than you can say "West Virginia or bust." I didn't get back in after that.

    After our lovely, mostly peaceful, slightly terrifying, morning on the beach, we decided to check out historic downtown Charleston. We hailed a horse and carriage, where we learned all about  the local architecture and history. I learned that the city used to be protected from pirates by a stone wall that was 20 feet high. I learned that the houses were vibrantly colored because of the slaver's who brought some of their culture from Barbados. During the Civil War, the city was under fire for over 500 consecutive days. Rice was briefly Charleston's main cash crop, until slavery was abolished, then the rice business died. Malaria was a major problem, especially for those working around the damp swamps. I swooned over the beautiful, southern style gardens. It was a very informative little tour, and a great way to kill an hour.

   We then explored the local farmer's market. It's my new goal in life to learn to weave baskets by hand. We had BBQ for dinner. We strolled along the beach, gathering more shells and watching the crabs scurry underfoot until it was too dark to see. We left early the next morning and came home to work and school and all the other obligations we managed to escape for 72 hours. Back to the grind. Thanks for reading!

Have you ever explored Charleston, South Carolina? Have you ever had a frightening animal encounter like my dolphin/shark experience? I'd love to hear about it at mountainbloodwv@gmail.com, or on Facebook under MountainBlood WV. 

 

Appalachian Science: Appalachian Blue People

Hello Appalachia!

    Did the title of this post rouse your interest? Am I talking about mountain folks who are down in the dumps? The registered Democrats of this region? Literal blue people? If you chose literal blue people, you are correct! You may be reading this and ask yourself, how can a person turn blue? What does this have to do with Appalachia? Let me explain.

    If you've read the "info" section of my page, you know that I am currently studying Forensic Chemistry. I'm in my 5th year, so I can explain a few droplets in the vast ocean that is science. One of my current courses is biochemistry, and last week we discussed the physical outcomes of flaws in our biological systems, and the topic of the Appalachian Blue People was brought up. I know that most of my readers haven't studied biochemistry, so I'm not going to get really technical with the upcoming condition. If my explanation is still too technical, please forgive me. Let's begin.

    So, what is this condition I'm referring to that makes (usually Caucasian) people have a blue tinge to their skin? It's called hereditary methemoglobinemia, or met-H. A famous case is the Blue Fugates of Hazard County, Kentucky. What is it? How does one acquire this condition? Is it harmful? I'm going to answer all those questions in the upcoming paragraphs.

    In a person with normal blood-related enzyme activity, a protein in our red blood cells, called hemoglobin, picks up oxygen molecules in the lungs and carries them to tissues all over our bodies. Hemoglobin contains iron, which is what grabs the oxygen and turns the blood bright red, it's the same reaction that forms rust. An iron nail will bind oxygen from the air, and your nail turns red. When your oxygen rich blood gets where it needs to be, the shape of the hemoglobin changes, and this makes that oxygen come off the red blood cell and go where it's needed. Once the blood has dropped off its oxygen, the "rust" effect is no longer happening, and the blood turns blue.

    There are several proteins and mechanisms in place that let your red blood cells know when to pick up oxygen and when to put it down, but that's beyond the scope of this blog. Just know that the iron in the hemoglobin picks up the blood, the pH of the tissues lets it know when it's time to let it go, and sometimes nature makes mistakes. Individuals with met-H have a malfunction in the machinery that makes the hemoglobin capable of grabbing oxygen, so it makes large amounts of that person's blood blue or brown. In a light-skinned person, this makes them appear blue instead of peachy pink.

     But how do you get it? Well, let's talk genetics. Everyone is made up of 50% Mom and 50% Dad. You only inherit met-H if you get the faulty gene from both parents. You need 2 copies to be blue. If you just have 1 copy, you won't be blue. So let's say Mom has 1 copy, and Dad has 1 copy. This means you have a 25% chance of not being affected or capable of passing one the gene. You have a 50% chance of not being blue, but you could pass on the gene to your offspring. Finally, you have a 25% chance of being blue, because you got both copies of the gene from both parents. If 2 blue people have a baby, there is pretty much a 100% chance that their child will be blue, because the only gene they can pass on is faulty. In small, isolated, mountain communities in the 1800s, people didn't have much issue with marrying a distant cousin, so the odds of mating with a carrier increased dramatically. That is to say, a pink carrier could marry someone with a shared ancestor, and if they had 4 children, at least 1 would be blue. Genetics can be confusing, so I'll try to add some helpful graphics.

    Finally, is it harmful? The symptoms are about what you would imagine of a person who carries large amounts of de-oxygenated blood. Fatigue, muscle problems, tissue damage. But it can be treated by making temporary repairs to the faulty machinery that prevents your red blood cells from picking up oxygen. These "repairs" can be made using ascorbic acid (Vitamic C) and methylene blue (I use it to dye cells that I'm viewing under a microscope). Methylene blue was used experimentally via IV drip, and within an hour, the blue individuals started turning "pink."

    I know this post is a real change in gears, but it's something that has been seen in our region, and it illustrates the results of that awful stereotype of cousins getting married. It's truly terrible, but it has happened, and met-H is one of the outcomes. There are some living descendants of the original Fugate clan, which settled in Kentucky in the 1800s. They decline most TV appearances and interviews, because like everyone, I'm sure they want to just live their lives in peace. This disease has also been seen in Alaska, another place isolated from other people who could add more variation in the gene pool. You get the same results.

   I hope you've found this interesting. I was very fascinated by it. I also got an A on that biochemistry test...just saying. If science and medicine aren't something you care to read about, I apologize. I just wanted to try out something new. If there are any scientific or medical anomalies in Appalachia that would like me to write about, please let me know. It is definitely my cup of tea. Let me know if you liked this. Thanks for reading!

You can send me questions, suggestions, and feedback at mountainbloodwv@gmail.com, or on Facebook, MountainBlood WV. 

 

July's Featured Appalachian!

Hello Appalachia!

     My summer biochemistry class is in full swing, and I am learning all about scurvy and perms and the horrors of thalidomide (see morning sickness, 1960s). I managed to get enough homework done to write up a quick post about this month's Featured Appalachian before the next onslaught of rain comes...hopefully I won't end up floating on a mattress in the Ohio River. So kick back, possibly on a raft, and check out the life story of my mom's neighbor, a lady called Lovonne.

     Almeda "Lovonne" Mullens Moore was one of five children belonging to Lloyd and Olive Mullens of Nicholas County, West Virginia. Olive was a homemaker, but she briefly worked in the kitchen of the Craigsville Motel, and Lloyd was a coal miner. Her chores growing up were feeding the animals on the farm, helping prepare meals, and helping with housework, she was also responsible for the sewing and laundry. She completed the 12th grade, and her first paid job was working at the Craigsville Drive-In (editors note: this theater should be re-opened instead of just serving as a large screen in the middle of a cow field). She first had a TV in 1950 and indoor plumbing in 1952.

Olive and Lloyd Mullens

Lovonne (I think in the white dress) with her brothers, sister, and parents. 

     Lovonne married her husband Alva Moore 1957. Together they have 4 children, 7 grandchildren, and 7 great-grandchildren. She has lived all but two months of her life in West Virginia, which she has enjoyed. She likes to watch the seasons change and take walks in nature while enjoying the beauty of West Virginia.

Lovonne and Alva with their children.

Stay dry and thanks for reading! 

Is there someone you would like to see as the Featured Appalachian? I'd love to hear about it at mountainbloodwv@gmail.com, or on Facebook under MountainBlood WV.