Vacation off the beaten path.

When we travel we like to venture off the beaten path, sometimes so far off it might not be a path anymore. It may turn into a wild game trail. West Virginia makes it easy.  It is a state with a scattered population living in small towns that seemed to spring up in the few flat places available. Rugged mountains, flowing rivers, and small outposts of humanity. Sometimes it isn’t really a town at all, just three or four houses built in a place more hospitable. 

Most of the towns in southern West Virginia are small, there is not a lot of room for anything larger. And most of the people give directions in a sort of comparative, relational altitude shorthand. “Take that road, and when you get to the bottom of the mountain, turn right.” “Go across the bridge, turn left, in one block turn right, about halfway down the hill there is a one way street, take that and it will get you there.” 

Following directions is hard for me, it takes me a while to figure out right and left; north, south, east and west are just words to me. Now these people are adding a new dimension and it was hopeless. In a town of less than 10,000 people I couldn’t find Kroger. Well, I could find Kroger, but only by driving on almost every street in town. I was playing checkers and everybody else was playing three dimensional chess. 

But, it is difficult to criticize people who are so polite, and assume you can follow simple instructions. They even look at you with a little sympathy, as if they can’t believe you would have to ask directions in a place so small. And they didn’t realize they were they were third group of people I asked. I wanted to scream at them “don’t streets have names, or numbers, or some sort of designation?” Down the hill, across the bridge, at the bottom of the mountain. If you drive into the lake you’ve gone too far.

We did find Kroger, and places to eat and places to kayak and small towns too numerous and unique to believe. Everywhere we went, though, we ran into wonderful people. 

Sometimes, in places that had nothing, no stores, no cafes, nothing, people would look at us as we drove through, uncomfortable with our intrusion. In some of these places trailer houses, and small shacks lined the road.  The only road into town, a one lane road, overgrown on both sides, and often we didn’t even know why we were there. It was a road running by the river, and we just followed it. 

A town would blossom, hugging the road. People on their porches, trying to find a little relief forms the heat. Porches filled with totems, icons, artifacts of a world they cherished.  Love of God and country well represented, and other things, personal things, a life on display for all the world to see. At least anybody with enough time to drive off the beaten path a way. Some porches were so crowded with colorful little trinkets it was almost impossible to see the people watching us roll past. We were outsiders, it was obvious.

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But, as I looked at them, looking at me I realized we were not that different. Certainly we had taken different paths. These people had a history, a past, roots in the mountains, streams and rivers. I never had that heritage, we moved a lot when I was young and my traditions are mostly transient or imagined. But, we are both struggling to face a changing world. We are together in our feeling of being excluded from modern society, they have retreated into the valleys of the Appalachians, and I hide in plain sight in the middle of the city.