Straight Outta The Holler
No matter where I roam, Appalachia will always be home. Been an expat living amidst the flatlanders for half my life now but taking the hillbilly out of the holler does nothing to take the holler out of the hillbilly. I can camouflage it a bit better now, at least til I open my mouth. Been doing a project on Red River Gorge, but photos are only half the picture, to get a good sense of place you need music.
Best place to start is with what is basically the unofficial anthem of eastern Kentucky, You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive In a place where just about everyone is high on either drugs or Jesus, decent jobs are few and far between, and money and hope are scarce and not expected to return you tend to wind up with something of a fatalistic outlook, which the song captures nicely. Come to think of it, all of these songs do.
All these photos are from Red River Gorge, which is only 20 miles from where I and these next two artists grew up. Parts of the video (particularly the tunnel) for Between the Country is from the gorge and the singer, Ian Noe, was just a few years behind me in school. The rugged beauty of the area helps to conceal the enduring poverty of the area but we grew up watching things slowly decay and crumble and the song gives you a good sense of the mood that goes with that.
You can hardly talk about eastern Kentucky without mentioning coal. It was never good for the area and it's slow, agonizing death has been even worse. The L&N Don't Stop Here Anymore is a tune from the 60s that speaks to that, although this cover is by a classmate of my little brother and her band, The Local Honeys. Growing up coal trains were the only trains I ever saw, but in the years since I moved to Louisville they've stopped running entirely back home.
Wandering in Red River Gorge it's easy to get lost in the beauty of the landscape but I can never quite forget what all else goes with it. Hopefully this has given you a little better sense of that as well. Drop me a comment and let me know what you think.
I would love to visit Appalachia some day. The mountains here in the west are a completely different environment. I wonder if it would feel crowded, considering how the population density overall is higher back east, although much is concentrated in the eastern seaboard megalopolis from Boston to Richland. I would hope the remote mountains are somewhat insulated and isolated.
I know coal has been a huge industry, with some good and a lot of bad over the decades. I couldn't hack it as a miner. Too broken already. I suppose I want to be someplace remote enough to poach a deer every now and again, but close enough to civilization for decent internet.
It's definitely worth a visit, tis something to see. It was wild to me when I was out your way how the mountains there could seem so similar and yet so different. I suspect eastern Kentucky wouldn't seem much more crowded than your neck of the woods, it's always been rather isolated, and with the steady out-migration it's population densities are only getting lower. Where I grew up it was at least a half hour's drive (to another county) to get to a McDonalds and an hour or more for a Wal-Mart supercenter, with only ~ 7000 people in the entire county. Insulated and isolated for sure, with all the good and bad that brings.
Never could see what good we got out of coal but that's a rant for another day. Yeah, that's not a job I'd want either. Eventually enough people said that that by the 70s-80s they had to start offering decent wages just to get people to do it. One of my grandfathers did it for a short while but he didn't stick with it long.
Eastern Kentucky might be alright for you, they've finally got decent internet and it's always been a place where what you did on your own property was your own business.
No matter where we visit and how far we go
Home will always be home
Exactly!
La pobreza económica del lugar , no puede competir con la belleza del mismo , es impresionante su hermosura.
Gracias, sólo desearía que no estuvieran tratando de arruinar su belleza para aliviar la pobreza.
Awesome! Cormac Mc Carthy also depicted it well.
A lot like my country too
Interesting, didn't realize Cormac McCarthy had did anything on it. You wouldn't happen to recall the title would you?
Ahh, one of these days I'll have to pay SA a visit.
He was raised in Tennessee and Suttree in particular is semi-autobiographical. Child of God also comes to mind. His ear for dialogue is excellent
Woot, thanks!
Appachalia has an amazing view
It looks like a great place to be
Nice one!
The views are great if you can find a place where they trees aren't blocking them :)
Thanks!
Those are some beautiful mountains. Quite different from what I'm used to, but beautiful all the same. Sounds like you're associated with some pretty incredible musical talent :)
A bit older and shorter but much warmer. Still jealous of your opportunities to get above treeline, had never seen anything like that until I was out your way. Have you ever seen an ugly mountain? Feel like I'm going to have to start searching for one now.
The perks of being from a small and isolated area, don't think there's more than two or three degrees of separation between anybody in eastern KY.
Yes, two of them in fact, but only because humans made them ugly.
1 - Mt Evans - these motherfuckers decided to put in a paved road to the top. Now everyone with four wheels and a tiktok can drive up there and show the world how good they are at harassing goats and how bad they are at driving mountain roads. Hell, I could probably run up that road faster than most of the fucking flatlanders who lose their minds while trying to drive it.
2 - Pikes Peak - same story as Evans, except Pikes has an actual tourist shop at the top. People literally drive up there to eat donuts and drink coffee and make pissworthy small talk about an incredible view they don't deserve to witness. If it were up to me I'd burn the whole place down.
Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about those. I've been to the summit of Pike's Peak but I don't count it because of all that. You forgot the cog railway there too...
One of the ways they mine coal in eastern Kentucky is the euphemistically named "mountaintop removal" where they just blow the fucking mountain up and into the valley below. When we were kids our dad took us to see what it looked like when they were done and had 'reclaimed' the land. Anger and rage are insufficient terms for the feelings seeing that incited. Enough to make you want to take thermite to everything...
It's sad what people do to the earth for financial gain. There's a famous mine just north of Leadville called Climax. They are literally carving the mountain down into nothing.
Wow, these are beautiful photos
Congratulations. Today's #monomad second place is yours.
Thank You very much for participating and for being part of the Black And White Community!
All such places are very beautiful and nice to see and when these pictures are converted to black and white, their beauty increases even more.
he photos are beautiful, and the music you shared is haunting and evocative. It's clear that you have a deep love for your homeland, even though you've been living elsewhere for many years.