West Virginney - Part III

The mountains of West Virginia are actually quite beautiful. And when it snows big chunky fakes, it’s even more gorgeous. Especially if you’re in somewhere warm.

But if you have to drive the curvy mountain roads through a blizzard, it’s a bit scary.

But it was really beautiful, like living in a big snow globe. It snowed like this up near Parkersburg, both on the day we arrived and on Thanksgiving morning.

The area is really gorgeous. But it’s still funny to see a steep drive leading down to a highway. You look up that drive and you see an old rusty mobile home or a beat up Winnebago. And someone’s living there. You wonder how these people give directions to their place. You hope they aren’t in there surrounding by empty bourbon bottles and listening to Patsy Cline LPs, too lazy to brush the pile of burning cigarette ash off of the arm of their broken La-Z-Boys. Or pregnant, eating a can of frosting over the sink while E! True Hollywood stories blares out lives more fabulous than they’ll ever achieve. They turn the knobs on their old Zenith with a channel wrench.

If it were clean, such a Spartan living sort of attracts me. I could do it for a week, at least. I could! You’re up there all alone, reading any book you want, making sure you have enough frozen veggies to make a different soup every day. You work for a couple hours a day on a play you dreamed about only a week before. Your place smells like lemongrass candles you bought earlier. You drink warm herbal tea and always wear flannels and thick socks. You take lots of hot baths. You make hand-made postcards to send to your friends, who think you’re nuts for doing this for a week. Sort of a West Virginia sabbatical, a white trash cloistering, a spiritual journey in a scrappy doublewide.

I could definitely do it. I hate snow, but I picture spending time in a cold barren land, like Iceland. I have comforting visions of walking across a frozen lake all alone. I wish I found a cold primordial cave only I knew the existence of.

These times alone; they don't seem to fit my personality, but I still dream about them. In the long run, I wouldn't trade my friends for anything, but I might abandon them for a few days.