Human Nature

The trilliums are blooming in big rafts of white on the hills, and the red buds are a blushing smudge along the roadside. My drive to work is a snapshot of life in West Virginia, and probably a good portion of quasi-rural America, that edge between city and country that in a wealthier place might be called a suburb. I pass old coal camps, independent now, and new houses. I pass abandoned mine entrances and an active surface mine with coal trucks to dodge. I pass several potential meth labs and a junkyard that is "Liquidating! Everything Must Go!" because the county is preparing to seize the property. Every morning I pass the history and the stereotype, the surprising and the sadly predictable, and every morning the hills rise up behind, and Scotts Run goes on to the Monongahela.