Something I have been thinking about a lot lately is the main reason we fight this battle - we love our mountains.

The majority of the people in this country live in the city. I have lived in the city quite a few times. No where have I experienced the freedom of the mountains. It is something special that needs protecting. The feeling of going to someplace where there are no signs telling you what you can and can’t do or how and how not to do something. The mountains and hollows of Appalachia represent our choice to live a more free life than most. Most of us in the mountains don’t value our material possessions as much as we value the land that has sustained us for generations.

You can go up a lot of hollows and see ramshackle buildings and generations old home places. Some people would say that those people live in poverty and that may very well be the case. But at the same time the same people others would perceive as impoverished are some of the richest folks in the nation when it comes to their freedom. People look at old houses and judge the residents for living so poorly and those same people completely miss the mountains surrounding these homes. That is no small oversight because the mountains are our home and our houses are used to keep the weather at bay.

If a person were to live in the city it is easy to understand how they would value a Mercedes Benz more than their surroundings. In the mountains it is as different as night and day.

A few years ago I took my ex to court for custody of our children and lost everything in the process literally becoming homeless in Ohio. What did I do? I came home to West Virginia. Once I arrived back in WV I still didn’t have a home in the literal sense of the word but I was home in the mountains.

We don’t fight this battle for a tree or a bug. We fight this battle for our home - the Appalachian Mountains.