“Complexify”–The 2024 Berea College Appalachian Tour

Article by Tim Monroe

We set out from Boone Tavern on a Thursday in a bright white, forty-foot-long bus, with tinted windows. It was a thing of beauty--large comfortable seats, a PA system, hydraulics that could raise and lower the entire chassis, plenty of underneath storage space for luggage, enough room for almost 60 people, and even a small bathroom in the rear. Other drivers may have mistaken us for a rock band on tour. At one point during the trip, the driver told me the bus cost $750,000. That’s more money than the vast majority will ever pay for a house.

As large and wonderful as this vehicle was, when it came time to twist, wind, climb up and plummet down the mountains of Eastern Kentucky and Southern West Virginia, its shortcomings became clear. Too tall to go under some of the bridges along the way and too long to navigate the hairpin turns and switchbacks without great difficulty and great skill on the part of our driver, the bus struggled to get us where we needed to go. Despite the moments of doubt during the times we sought alternate routes and the waves of panic when I was not at all sure that we weren’t going to tip over the side of a mountain, we got where we were supposed to go (mostly) and returned home safely. By the time we arrived back at Boone Tavern, I had developed a deep empathy for that big bus. Built to motor powerfully straight down wide and open highways, we asked it to curve and bend and dip and squeeze and climb and scrape the branches and boughs that hung over the road.

At times during our Appalachian Tour, I struggled to navigate all that we were seeing and to make meaning of all that I had learned. I am no Appalachian, no mountain man. I found myself not able to adapt easily to the dramatic and ever-changing landscape of that world or to nimbly integrate all that we encountered into a logical whole. We drove and we stopped at so many places, met so many people and learned about so much meaningful work. Some stops filled me with hope and admiration, some with sadness--even grief--and some connected me to a place and a people and a history. A connection so deep it vibrated in my chest. I have always been one to reach conclusions or tie things neatly together or land on a grand unifying theory. But as the trip ended, like looking out the tinted windows on the road over Black Mountain, I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

Then I recalled a word I heard before we left. Berea’s own Silas House, an Appalachian, a storyteller, a chronicler and advocate for the area and its people, used the word “complexify” in relation to the place. It’s not the type of word I am typically fond of. It’s a bit too long, a bit too fussy, a bit too, well, complex. But not the way Silas said it or what I think he meant by it. I took the word as an urging, almost a command. For so long, the narrative around Appalachia has been reduced to simple stereotypes. It is where poor people live. They are isolated in their “hollers.” They live off the land. They are uneducated and unhealthy. They are the Hatfields and McCoys. They drink moonshine and play banjo on the front porch. They are hillbillys. All of them are white.

What I took “complexify” to mean is that we should avoid making conclusions or developing unifying theories. We should open ourselves to new stories about Appalachia, to a retelling of the narrative. To allow a hopeful perspective that respects the people of the region for who they are, where they have been, and what they are becoming. We should take in the nuance and intricacies of Appalachia and let them percolate. My sixth-grade math teacher used to say, “For every complex problem there’s a simple solution.” Then he would pause and yell, “And it’s wrong.” I think that’s what Silas meant, and I started to feel better about not seeing the whole Appalachian forest just yet.

There’s no denying, though, that during our five-day journey, we saw lots of trees. The trees that cling to the mountains in such profusion and more than once fell across and blocked the narrow mountain roads we traveled. We also met so many people along the way. People who are rooted in the region, in their communities, and yes, in their hollers. People who were working hard to make things better for the town they live in, the people they care about and the entire region.

There were the folks at Thompson Scholars in Clay County. A place once unfairly labeled “the worst place to live in America.” They have started up an educational project where they provide basic needs for kids in their community and an academic enrichment program that encourages them to stay in school. 

We met the entrepreneurial leaders in Hazard, Kentucky. Leveraging the arts, smart planning and downtown revitalization, they are creating a cool destination deep in the mountains of Perry County.

We stopped at Appalshop in Whitesburg and met the team who is working tirelessly to create and preserve Appalachian stories and culture on film, on tape, in archives. Their job made exponentially more difficult by the catastrophic 2022 flood that destroyed their headquarters and damaged the vast majority of their holdings. 

At the Cowan Community Center they help local families grow their own food and sell it at the Whitesburg farmers market. The director there told us that this year they have harvested 50,000 pounds of produce. The equivalent in weight of four coal cars on the freight trains that still run through the region.

We spent one night on the stunning grounds of the Pine Mountain Settlement School in Harlan County. We learned about and listened to traditional instruments used to make music in the region, and then spent the night whirling, and reeling and do-si-doing--an unfamiliar activity for a city boy like me--under the mighty timbers of the cavernous main building.

In Lynch, Kentucky we heard the story of that once booming coal town. Owned and run entirely by US Steel. The area once boasted 10,000 residents with people from all over the world. We met at the Greater Mt. Sinai Baptist church and heard from some of the current residents--all black, all relatively elderly--about what life was like when the mines were running strong. They described excellent schools (segregated, of course) and company owned stores that sold “the best of everything.” One former miner said that Lynch was the “Cadillac of coal camps.” Once the mines slowed down and US Steel moved out, the company did nothing to take care of the families who had worked their mines and generated their profits. Now there are only about 650 people in Lynch, mostly retirees, as the younger folks have had to leave to find ways to make a living. I was struck by how the people of Lynch spoke with such dreamy nostalgia of how things used to be when coal was king but were now living in what might best be described as a ghost town.

One the second to last day of the tour we drove into a sliver of Virginia. We stopped along the side of the road and had an excellent view of a mountain top removal mine. This was the first such place I had ever seen. I wondered how anyone would even consider doing something like that--literally sheering off the top of a beautiful and ancient mountain leaving an ugly scar in its place. We learned that this mine had not been in operation for ten years, and despite the law requiring them to do so, the mining company had done precious little to rejuvenate and restore the landscape.

After visiting Bluefield, West Virginia, the next day we pulled into Matewan, West Virginia. It was here, I learned, where an entire town--perhaps the only one to ever do so--stood up to a mining company. This is where a shootout between company-hired gun men and the local mayor, sheriff and mine workers led to the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921--the largest armed insurrection in U.S. history outside of the Civil War. All of this is displayed and documented at the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum in downtown Matewan. I felt sheepish and a bit ashamed that I knew nothing about this important chapter in American history. I was grateful to learn of the legacy of bravery and sacrifice that these mine workers left for future generations and am eager to learn more.

It was in this little museum in this tiny town, population 412, where I felt that deep vibrating connection to the people of the region and to my own family story. My paternal grandfather was raised in the anthracite coalfields of Hazelton, Pennsylvania and was the first in his family to escape the mines and earn a college degree. There were incidents of labor unrest and violence near Hazelton as well. As I perused the museum’s collection of images of the young Appalachian miners from more than a hundred years ago, I couldn’t help but feel a close kinship with these people and this place.

There were more people and more places we encountered on our trip. All intriguing and inspiring in their own way. Typically, I would be trying to craft a clever way to tie it all together and to make some sort of overarching statement about Appalachia. I’ll resist that urge for now. Too many other people have already tried that. I can say that I learned a great deal, but that learning didn’t necessarily lead me to any definitive understanding of what Appalachia is and what it is not. What I now know is that Central Appalachia is as complex as any region in the nation. It is a place of great beauty with a fascinating history. Its people are strong, smart, resilient and diverse. As a newcomer to this part of the world, I’m glad I now have a firmer foundation from which to learn more, and I will never look at a banjo or a coal train or a narrow mountain road the same again.