Well well well, we’re still on the road. This week… West Virginia. We’re finding the fun has dwindled a bit. At times Ronnie confesses to feeling like an exposed nerve. It may have something to do with the change of scenery. After all, as a Kanorado native, Ronnie’s comfortable with wide open spaces. But starting in North Carolina, approaching the beginning humps of the Appalachians, Ronnie started developing a contracting state of claustrophobia. This sense of dread actually started earlier, in South Carolina, with conjured imaginings of what it would be like to navagate congested urban sprawl nestled amongst relentless steep grades, up and down and up and down, trying not to ride the brakes but sometimes unable to avoid it. Then what do you know? The two West Virginia college towns Rocinante stumbled into (WVU and Fairmount State) presented conditions exactly like Ronnie’s worst roller-coaster imaginings.

Now, the other side of Ronnie’s Kanorado upbringing leaves him no stranger to mountaineering. And, truth told, our heroes have learned to keep up with the locals. But there ain’t no autopilot moments like those on the prairie, and Ronnie’s exposed nerve feeling keeps interrupting the vagabond felicity. So, this brings us to what appears to be a recurring theme investigating West Virginia’s general “vibe”. From readings and conversations, Ronnie has detected a more than usual sense of bi-polar contradiction, set in some of the most beautiful, lush country our heroes have yet encountered.

West Virginia! A veritable Janus of banjos and 5g smartphones. Even before the rabble in Philadelphia started their tiresome bleating about liberty and taxes, this land of craggy peaks and shadowed hollers harbored a glorious dichotomy. On the one hand, you had rugged frontiersmen, creatures of axe and rifle, suspicious of anyone wearing hats indoors and whose idea of polite conversation involves hitting the spittoon bullseye. Folks of fierce independence, mind you, who’d sooner wrestle a bear than abide a revenue agent or a banker.

Then, cheek-by-jowl with these noble savages, you’d find the seeds of a peculiar sort of… let us call it genteel indolence. Picture the languid river valleys, where the air hangs thick and sweet as overripe peaches, and where ambition rarely stretches beyond a decent slash of corn liquor and a comfortable spot on the porch swing. Folks who view haste as vulgar and consider vigorous debate over the proper way to cure tobacco the height of intellectual ferment.

Enter the great unpleasantness of the Revolution, and West Virginia, bless her conflicted heart, found herself straddling the fence like a hound dog caught in a barbed wire. Still part of greater Virginia, she sent forth her share of flinty riflemen to give the Redcoats a proper thrashing, a surprising burst of collective energy. Yet, even amidst the patriotic fervor, one might suspect there were plenty of mountaineers more concerned with deer season than the pronouncements of some powdered wig in Williamsburg.

The Civil War, naturally, only amplified this delightful schizophrenia. Brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor… a perfect illustration of a populace simultaneously capable of profound loyalty and stubborn contrariness. One faction, fiercely attached to the traditions (and peculiar institutions) of the Old Dominion, marched off under the Stars and Bars. The other, smelling a chance for their own patch of sovereignty and perhaps harboring a lingering resentment for the tidewater gentry, cast their lot with the Union. The result? A bloody, internecine squabble fought amidst some of the most gorgeously indifferent scenery on the continent.

And now, in this glorious age of the World Wide Web, this bi-polar beast roars on. You have pockets of genuine, unadulterated Appalachia, where decent 4g access is as mythical as the Sasquatch, and where the most pressing technological concern is whether the battery in the coon-hunting flashlight is still good. Here, the ancient rhythms of the land persist, the wisdom is passed down through generations of storytellers, and a firm handshake still means more than a thousand likes or shares.

But then, just over the next ridge, you’ll stumble upon a Starlink antenna sprouting from a double-wide, its tendrils reaching out to the digital ether. Here, the denizens are just as likely to be scrolling through TikTok as whittling a piece of wood. They’re ordering drone parts on Amazon while simultaneously canning beets according to a recipe passed down from their great-grandmother. They’re arguing about cryptocurrency on Reddit while their hound dog snoozes by the wood-burning stove.

It’s an all too human mess, this West Virginia. A land where the echoes of Daniel Boone‘s long rifle mingle with stock-ticker notifications. A place where the fierce independence of mountaineers clash with the modern craving for instant gratification and online validation. It is, in short, a microcosm of the American condition, amplified and seasoned with a healthy dose of mountain stubbornness and a suspicion of anything invented after the Mason jar. Long may it remain so, a testament to the enduring human capacity for glorious contradiction.

As for OUR contradicted heroes, they’ll keep pushin’ on. Ronnie’s “exposed nerve” will surely abate. And just as well as the worst is yet to come. In fact, we’re told Blue Highway windshield time in Upstate NY and further North amounts to traveling up endless claustrophobia-inducing tree alleys. It’s funny because delusional Ronnie thought he would NEVER miss driving on endless prairies, but here we are. He probably just needs a reminder that flatlander driving very often includes bucking white-knuckle gale-force head and cross-winds… and that ain’t no fun neither.

Onward through the fog… RH

It makes you dizzy…
Blue Highway shizzy…
In West Virginia…
You can get busy…
And take a page from…
The Tao Te Ching…
This too will pass…
And equalize.