The BackWoods Drifter

Another benefit I have recently discovered to moving my blog - I can now do scheduled posting. I’m not 100% sure I couldn’t do that with Blogger but I am 100% sure I couldn’t figure out how.

The last post to this blog was done with scheduled posting. I actually wrote that post when I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about the blogs. And now here I am giving my dirty little obsession away. If I have something to say and I intend to say it with conviction then I need to get it on paper before the conviction is lost. Some may think I could accomplish the same thing with a draft post. It’s a little different for me. If I have drafted a post and scheduled it for posting then I have committed to the post. If I just draft a post then I may post it and I may not. Most of the time, I have to go through and clean out all of my draft posts. (6 from yesterdays blog cleaning)

At any rate - in the future maybe you will see more of what I have decided not to say.

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On another note - I’m dusting off the camping and hiking gear. If the thunderstorms predicted for Wednesday miss us - I’m headed to the hills for a couple of days. It is just coming into the camping season with night-time temps still chilly but finally starting to nudge upwards. I wait the entire winter for right now.

This year it is even more welcome because I have found that battling ignorance takes quite a lot out of a person - mentally and physically (not necessarily referring to the blog). So for a few days I’m going to visit the mountains and some folks that live closer to the heart of West Virginia’s backwoods than I.

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Lately I’ve been perceived as running out of patience - which means my approach to mountaintop removal coal mining is wrong. Even though I am startled every day by an explosion and those very explosions trigger posts like the last one - I can’t be perceived as running out of patience. Believe me, it is not running out of patience it is urgency. Regardless of what you think of me or what I write - the (renewable) energy issue is an issue and it does need rectified. Solving the energy issue will automatically solve a lot of other issues - including mountaintop removal coal mining.

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See what I mean - I have a thinkin’ problem. I’m going back to my roots for a few days. I’m quite sure the battle will go on without me.

Adding - if you link to the old blog please update your links.

Be forewarned - this is a rant post.

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I think the entire planet could use an attitude adjustment.

Something that has become painfully apparent recently and it is something I have thought about in the past. The general I don’t care mentality of the public. If it is not happening between home and work and directly affecting you - most people couldn’t care less - no matter how wrong it is. Oh, believe me, I’ll nod my head at all the appropriate times, give all the appropriate condolences, and then go home turn on every light in the house and take myself a nap.

People just don’t care about people anymore. People care about money - there is plenty of proof of that right here in West Virginia. People care about animals - there’s proof of that all over the internet. People care about football, SUV’s, and Jerry Seinfeld. People just don’t care about people. Look at Iraq - if we gave a rats ass - that war would be over already. Look at Appalachia - if we gave a rats ass - this war would be over already.

Let’s look at Iraq - from somebody in the coalfields dealing with mountaintop removal - it puts a whole new spin on the war in Iraq. With the destruction we are doing right here on American soil for cheap energy - I have to seriously wonder what our real reason for still being in Iraq is. Surely we are not there for the oil and making residents life a living hell in the process.

We are doing it right here in Appalachia for coal with 100% support of the US Government. Basically that means the US Government doesn’t negotiate with terrorists but they will sure back them 100% for cheap energy. The coal industry can be directly compared to terrorism when it comes to mountaintop removal. The destruction to the mountains, the immorality, loss of property, loss of property rights, forced away from your home, hassled by thugs - bullies - destruction workers - friends of coal, the explosions, shrapnel, floods, coal and rock dust, contaminated drinking water, loss of wildlife, loss of every frigging thing.

Probably the only thing the coal industry does that can keep them from being classified as terrorists is that they provide cheap energy - coal keeps the lights on. The only positive thing going for coal in a sea of negatives. There is a reason coal is cheap ladies and gentleman - the industry is run by ruthless crooks that will stop at nothing to get at it.

I don’t know, it just seems like in fighting mountaintop removal coal mining - the battle is not so much in the education arena because more effort is taken to try and simply get you to give a rats ass. We have all the proof you could ever want or need - you just have to break away from the norm and care about something/somebody outside of your circle. This may be your once in a lifetime chance to just do the right thing.

We have to solve this energy issue and we have to do it now - preferably, before the next soldier dies in Iraq or before the next explosion in the mountains of Appalachia.

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Manchin plans no investigation of coal, health

And yet, it goes on…

In the last three days I have installed a blog, a forum and three Wordpress upgrades. Some of that went pretty smooth and some of it made me feel like throwing my computer out into the yard. As soon as the new Stop MTR blog was on-line, Wordpress released an upgrade. Wouldn’t you know it.

I had been threatening to upgrade the Bolt Mountain blog ever since the spam issues. I was a little worried about it because of the process of upgrading - delete this, don’t delete that. Today I used the Bolt Mountain blog as a guinea pig - I upgraded it first. Turns out the upgrade instructions are more complicated than they need to be.

At any rate - I’m done. This Sunday is definitely going to be a day of rest for me. I would say I’m not even going to think about the blogs - but we know that would be a lie.

Have A Great Day!!

This post copied in part across multiple blogs.

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After two days of slaving over a hot keyboard - the new Stop MTR site is up and running - two days ahead of schedule.

So far I am extremely happy with the new site. I had trouble installing the coppermine photo gallery so after about ten hours and multiple uploads - I gave up. The site does contain a photo gallery but not up to par as what I would have liked. To balance it out - there is also an embedded photo gallery using flash software right on the site itself.

I’ve also added a Simple Machines Forum and it is currently accepting members by approval. The forum is lacking in info at the moment but contains plenty of categories in which to add info.

I gave the new site a red theme because red means stop, danger, I’m mad as hell - you get the picture. The forum, on the other hand, is blue. I figured there will probably be some upset people there at one time or another - don’t need them seeing red.

As with most sites - the new site will be under a constant state of improvement. I encourage you to stop by there and see what we are talking about.

STOP Mountaintop Removal

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Notice - if you link to either the old Stop MTR blog or the old BackWoods Drifter blog please update your links.

For the blogging community. I found this code to display the Google translation on your blog. All hooked up and ready to go. Add the following code wherever you would like the translator to appear. It produces the flags to the left and takes the reader directly to Googles translation of your blog into the language clicked on.

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The code has been removed. I tried to use it on another blog and it didn’t work.

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… is a failure to communicate.

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I look at mountaintop removal as this giant beast with teeth that can grind boulders into valley fill. I look at all the grassroots and the environmental groups as a bunch of bees swarming the beasts head. As long as the beast can keep swatting them away he can go about his business of destruction. He only needs to buy small parcels of time in order for him to complete his mission. After that, the bees be damned - he has done what he came to do.

I think all the little bees need to turn into the queen bee from hell and sting King Coal right in the buttocks. Sit him on the ground and decide how or if we will let him go. Personally - I’d lock him up in the hottest cell in hell and throw the key into the hottest pit simply on moral grounds alone.

I’m probably going to piss off some allies here but I have this extraordinarily bad habit of speaking my thoughts. I think all the groups need to get together, pat each other on the back for being right - because you are right - and then join forces and put a stop to the madness.

I hear crap from the friends of coal all the time. It’s no wonder they have a strong following - they are in your face. I think it is time to be in their face. Let’s get it together people - literally.

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Every time I mention or think about the friends of coal I think about the literal meaning.

Let’s say I’m a lump of coal and I have a friend. First I’m going to introduce myself to my friend. Well after they take the mountain off of me with explosives and disturb where I have been resting for eons. Then this big machine comes in and puts me in the back of another big machine with a whole bunch of other lumps of coal. I wonder if they have a friend to.

I haven’t got to meet my friend yet. They say I am going to take a bath so maybe we will meet once I am clean. Well… now I’m clean and they are putting me in this big box with wheels on rails. There are tons more lumps here - surely some of them have friends. I wonder what my friend looks like. We are heading to where they say we will do wonders for our friends.

I talk through the night with the other lumps of coal. A couple think they met their friend once but wasn’t sure. One of them was stepped on and the other was picked up off the floor and tossed back into the crusher. By morning, I was hoping not to meet my friend.

We arrived at our destination and told we were going to be sacrificed for the good of our friends. We were going to be supplying them with lights in which to see.

I hoped for my friend until the last minute. I never did get to meet them. The good thing - they will never truly get rid of me. I’ll always be here in some form. One of these days - I will have the last laugh and my friends will wish they had left me in the ground.

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Friends of Coal Mining would be more accurate. Friends of Mountaintop Removal would be dead on the money.

… brought to you by the coal industry.

The more I talked with people in Drews Creek the more it became obvious they didn’t have a clue about the new mountaintop removal site. It was just like one day there is peace and quiet and the next day your picking broken picture frames up off the floor and wondering how many explosions it will take to knock your house down.

That is just wrong in so many different ways. This is what I mean when I say the residents should be made aware. The coal industry can just move in and change life forever with no warning. The people in Drews Creek will not see their peaceful days return for a few years. They’ll never see their hollows return.

I’m going to tell you what I think is a damn shame. I think it is a shame that mountain people are still being stereotyped in this new age. How else can the coal company destroy a culture? Only if the masses believe the dumbass hillbillies need wiped out. Even other West Virginians dub the coalfield residents as ignorant inbreds - who live 26 hard miles south of nowhere. I have news for those with that mindset - you have pissed off the wrong dumbass hillbilly.

If I have to start 20 websites - I’m going to hang the coal industry’s dirty laundry all over the internet. The new mountaintop removal site in Spring Hollow - now you are on my turf - just try to keep my camera away. I can get to the site a half dozen different ways.

Inbred? Give me a break. Ignorant? You are about to find out how ignorant we are.

Don Blankenship, Bill Rainey, Roger Lilly - ignorance defined.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post entitled Bolt Mountain, Under Attack!! That may have been a little dramatic at the time. Mainly because I wasn’t 100% sure if what I was seeing was a mountaintop removal site. It was too far in the distance. Friday, with my friend from Ohio, I went searching for the new site.

I kind of wish we hadn’t but at the same time I’m glad we did.

This photo shows the site from quite a distance. I’m actually standing just down from Rte 99 on a gas well road. The mountaintop removal site is about two miles away as the crow flies. Or in a straight line from me to it - for all of you non-hillbillies.

If nothing else - one thing good came of myself being homeless in these hollows. I know my way around and I knew the names of the ridges and hollows between myself and the site - maybe it would be safer to say I had a pretty good idea.

From where we were standing the ridge directly in front of me was Peachtree ridge. If you drive up Peachtree road from route 3 you will go about 7 miles and Drews Creek hollow turns to the right. Which would make the mountain the site is on somewhere in Drews Creek. (I realize a lot of people who visit this site will have no clue where I am talking about but those that live locally will know exactly where I’m talking about.)

From the way the ridges line up I estimated the site to be somewhere in the vicinity of Spring Hollow in Drews Creek.

Sometimes I really do hate being right. In this case I was exactly right. This new mountaintop removal site is in the very head of Spring Hollow in Drews Creek on the mountain that separates Drews Creek from Hazy Hollow.

There are a few reasons this strikes close to home for me. The first being - it literally strikes close to home. I grew up in Peachtree Hollow just a couple of miles back down the road from here. I spent my entire childhood and a lot of my adult life roaming these very hollows.

Since this is my stomping grounds I felt pretty comfortable stopping and talking with people I have known forever concerning the new MTR site. The first house we stopped at, which was about a mile away from Spring Hollow had no idea what was going on. The only thing they knew was the explosions was knocking pictures off the walls. The second house we stopped at was even closer to the new site by maybe a half of a mile. They thought it was a logging company up there and had no idea where the explosions were coming from.

The last house was about 5 miles away from the site by road and about 2 miles as the crow flies. There we talked with Elbert and his wife Alvie. This family has always been my second family. I grew up close by and spent just as much of my childhood here playing with Elbert’s boys as I did at home.

I’ve always enjoyed stopping in and talking with Elbert even after I grew up. They are a family that is very close to my heart. For years people have been driving up and down this hollow and glanced up on the hill to see Elbert waving from his front porch. Any other visit to his house and you would be kept enthralled for hours of hunting tales, camping, area history you name it and if it happened in Peachtree, Elbert could tell you something about it. But now they are afraid. Elbert and Alvie’s house is falling down around them. This is the front corner and is supporting a large eave portion as well as the entire front porch.

Alvie sat and talked to me for the longest in years. Her pictures are falling off the wall. The foundation is coming apart all around the house. This is an old couple that have intentions of dying right there. Everything they know resides within a few miles. I think they damn well deserve to live the rest of their lives in peace. They made this house a home for a reason. And I can guarantee you that reason wasn’t to move late in life. Which is exactly what the coal industry would love to see.

The explosions in the head of Spring Hollow that rattle my windows - approximately ten miles away - are the same explosions that are tearing Elbert and Alvie’s house apart.

Massey Energy only thought I was a nuisance before.

What can I say besides - I needed that.

My friend Dennie arrived from Ohio Thursday evening. I must be in Mother Natures good graces. It was nasty the day before he got here - it warmed up into the high 60’s the first day of his visit and the low 60’s the next. Today, Dennie is on his way home and the temps are once again in the low 30’s.

Friday we spent the day in the head of Peachtree hollow and Drews Creek. We were on a mission to pinpoint the mountaintop removal site I had been feeling the explosions from. I’m not going to get too much into that now. I have a post in draft talking about the new site. I will say this though, it hits a lot closer to home than I first thought.

At any rate - we were all over the head of those two hollows, spending nearly 8 hours roaming the backwoods. My mission was actually threefold - first and foremost was to make sure my buddy received a good dose of mountain air. I have lived in the Cleveland area. It feels good to come to the mountains.

The second - pinpoint the exact location of the new MTR site. The third - mark three cemeteries in the head of Peachtree and Drews Creek with a GPS for registration. One of which I wasn’t able to get to - another we could drive to - and the last we had to park and hike about a mile. I’ll have to go back with a four wheeler for the first one. But besides that I would have to say the first day was a complete success.

Dickens Cemetery - Peachtree, WV - N37 48.234, W081 27.792

Martins Creek Cemetery - Peachtree, WV - N37 48.794, W081 28.846 (I don’t know the official name for this cemetery, asking area residents yielded no results.)

Saturday was a totally different day headed in a different direction. About a year ago I bought a Garmin GPS for the purpose of Geocaching. As much as I love to be in the outdoors I thought this particular sport would be right up my alley. It took a year to finally put the GPS to use with its original intended purpose. Yesterday, Dennie and I found two caches hidden in the Lake Stephens area.

When we started out I only had one cache programmed into the GPS. We were led on about a two mile hike around the backside of the lake directly to the first cache. I think it was finding the first one at which point I decided this is a hobby I would very much enjoy.

After we found the first cache we went out and got something to eat while I tried to remember how to program coordinates into the GPS. The cache we had already found, I had programmed from a year earlier. Programming the second showed it being in the vicinity of the first but not quite so far out. Basically we walked right past the second cache in our search for the first. I was a little disappointed we would be hiking the same trail as before but found the second cache actually more difficult to locate. It was hidden very well and we had to rely more on the accuracy of the GPS.

I was standing beside of the second cache and told Dennie it’s right here somewhere. He was about 20 feet away and informed me I was standing beside of the cache which was an ammo box in this instance. Sure enough - we had officially found our second cache.

It turned into a pretty decent couple of days. I took a little over 100 pictures from the hollows in Peachtree and the lake.

I finally got the redirection to work - somewhat. It still doesn’t go to the corresponding post from a post on the old blog but from an individual post on the old blog will bring you to this sites main page. I can live with that.

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I probably won’t be posting to the blog after today until Sunday evening. My friend is coming in from Ohio tomorrow. It’s our annual get together. In the past he has come down and we would go four wheeling for a few days. This time is going to be a little different. We are going to do some hikin’ and ramp diggin’.

I’m ready for a trip to the mountains. I feel like I’ve been cooped up all winter and it is high time to get out for a bit. There is a word or two for what I have - spring fever - and I’ve got it bad. I can look out around my front porch and see a whole bunch of the perennial plants coming up. The little Rhododendron I planted last year - and was so worried about - has new buds on top. It’s going to be just fine. I would get a picture but it’s pouring the rain.

Speaking of the rain - it’s the kind of rain that is going to give all the early flora the boost it needs. This spring is going to be a lot better than last as far as plant growth is concerned. Last year it was so dry it was hard to find plants/mushrooms that thrive in wet locations - morel, ramps, ginseng. I’m not speaking for all of WV when I say that but just for the Bolt Mountain area.

At any rate - I plan to be hiking for the next few days weather permitting.

I hope everybody has a wonderful Easter weekend!