First published on April 19, 2015. Three months later I would take my first trip back to Logan, WV in 12 years. A local funeral director informed me that J.T. passed away two weeks before I arrived.

My outing with J.T. first tipped me off that I am a nomad. Over the clatter of his replica Model A the spry, elderly man pointed out the creek that delineated the holler his family inhabited for generations. On this land his great-grandfather, Devil Anse Hatfield, organized his Logan Wildcats for guerrilla attacks on the Union Army. On this same land J.T. raised his family. Whenever he took them to Myrtle Beach, where the other coal miners vacationed, he grew nervous and uneasy the farther away he traveled and relieved when he returned. His sense of place entwined with his sense of identity. He was not fully himself when removed from the hollow of those West Virginia mountains. [ . . . ]  [read more]