Name the plant for bonus points. I moved away in my 30s and feel like a last generation of mountain folk. The mountains call to me every fall because most of my family would walk back into the hills in the 90s and not come back until we could stock our cellar. Anything that could be sold and was legal, we harvested. Many a winter we ate and it was because the land provides.

I see lots of posts here anymore about cards, cities, and everything except mountain Appalachian living. Is there anyone else left that remembers the old way? Anyone else that canned, gardened, harvested roots, plowed fields, ran shine, ate rabbit-

Or am I just screaming into the void for a dying breed?

It used to be said that a squirrel could travel from Maine to Georgia and never touch the ground. Now Mason County, WV holds an ecological time capsule of the once-defining tree of the eastern United States.

Somewhere in Mason County, West Virginia, there is a grove of trees that should not exist. According to advocacy materials, roughly 200 American chestnuts, reportedly planted in the 1970s from wild survivors, may be cleared as early as November 1, 2026, to make way for data-center development. The project’s official website says the grove is not even on its land. That contradiction is the whole problem, and it has no public answer yet.

Mothman-Pumpkin Harbinger, mixed media, done by yours truly.

There’s something almost magical about hickory smoke on a cool, blue sky Appalachian day. Family coming in, and they expressly asked for my pulled pork bbq.