Ghost Towns, Today and Memories.

While we were in West Virginia we visited a ghost town. Nuttalburg, WV was a coal mining town in the New River Gorge. It is at the end of a long lwinding, narrow road, with several tiny, narrow bridges, a few places where wash outs had made the road even narrower, and some spots where you just had to question whether the trip was worth it. It was.

West Virginia is a place of magic, a land filled with deep, tree covered draws, steep, forested mountains and after a rain it is easy to imagine the white, cotton mist as a living thing. We met so many welcoming, wonderful people. The WV Department of Natural Resources does such an extraordinary job it is hard to think of them as merely human. And Nuttalburg was no exception. They mapped the ruins, describing the function of each, explaining the location, most importantly maintaining them in such wonderful condition, much better than the road.

This is the chute that moved the coal from the mine down to the railroad tracks. It was very elaborate. Careful plans were made to ensure that the coal was not damaged or reduced in any way, as it was conveyed down the mountain. Of course the miners had to walk up and down a long steep path to get to the mine. But, that’s the price of being human.

The ruins probably covered a half mile, a narrow strip of a forgotten time, hopes, wishes, prayers. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to hear the children laughing and playing outside of the ruins of the school house. Children with their own dreams, children whose parents made the long trek from all over to scrape out a living in the coal mine. Families whose lives were bound up in the mine, the coal, the trains that took it away. 

At the far end were the ruins of the company store. People traded their time for wages from the company and the wages from the company to the store owned by the company. It was a closed system,  the circle of life. Everything was there, everything rode the rails in or out. It was a perfect circle. It made me a little uncomfortable, it seems there should be some homage paid to the sacrifices made, the work, the industry, the ingenuity of these people. 

Today, I woke early and sat on the deck, and I thought of those people whose lives were tied to the mine, the railroad, the river, the company. Did they ever have the opportunity to set, drink coffee in solitude and wonder about the nature of living, the cost of being human? In a hundred years would people have different dreams? And, I couldn’t find any answers, so I looked at my pictures, said a silent prayer for all of humanity, past, present and future, and wrote this post. It’s the way I escape.