9/5/2012 West Virginia Sitting on the porch staring at the ridge of poplars, willows, the fog hanging heavy today in between the rain. Reading Breece D'J Pancake stories. Recognizing some of the people in these stories as those I see going about my business here in WV. Those older folk sitting on the porches we passed riding the jeep yesterday with Tammy,, down the dirt roads, up the ridges through the hollows. People I see and empathize with but whose lives I don't really know. Catch a glimpse of them in stories people tell or lying in the pitch black in the damp nights in this valley. Walking around with the stars to go pee at night. But I have a flush toilet in my bathhouse and an umbrella for the rain. Feel their stories but my body betrays me. Always be a city girl. Blow up with chigger bites, hair won't lay down for bangs or grow that long ponytail. Frizzes up with the genes of Eastern Europe and the mediterranean, the warmth that I'm so used to now from living in Key West, and which suits me. Never could take the winters well, my hands would get too cold, couldn't play the piano or much else. Even now, in the damp nights my hands cramp up. Our heritage singing in our blood no matter where we go. Is that what Pancake was saying? He paints such a vivid picture of these hills and these lives, you can taste the dust, smell the woods. Feel this whole life dying. The folk growing older whose clans settled here and whose roads carry their names and their lives. McCutcheon Run, Munday Ridge, Frog Hollow. The young torn between being from here and needing to leave here. Not so many options , maybe college or sports open up a few more. Otherwise it's the military, or driving a truck or workin somewhere in town, a garage a small diner. Or it's less romantic, Walmart and Welfare. Driving through the dirt roads, almost all the homes have ramps- so many older folk. A 97 year old woman lived there, was still climbing up on the roof to clean out the gutters. She died a few winters back and the house is falling into the earth. Family still owns it, but no one to live in it, love it every day. Still, it's the last little bit of the family farm that hasn't been divided up, sold. Even if you can't live here, or even want to, you still love this earth, this smell, the simple making do .