“You are not your feelings. You just experience them. Anger, sadness, hate, depression, fear. This is the rain you walk in. But you don’t become the rain. You know the rain will pass. You walk on. And you remember the soft glow of the sun that will come again.” ~ Matt Haig
The day after our trip to Robinson Forest last week, we headed further into Perry County along Troublesome. They said we were going to one of two strip mines being developed into a new community for those who lost their homes and wished to relocate from future flooding. As we drove down Highway 80 toward Knott County, I remarked that my great-grandfather Terry was buried just to the left of the highway near the county line, his grave and that of his second wife having been relocated because of Highway 80. I talked about it in this post and this one. You won’t find the Terry Branch of Ball Creek on maps anymore. In fact, even Ball Creek has had a name change. It’s now called Ball Fork. I’d no sooner pointed out the cemetery than we turned left onto a road going up the hill by the cemetery. It was the road leading to the strip mine where the newly planned development was being constructed. The irony was nearly overwhelming. The first photo of the second post shows the light from the strip mine making its way through what is left of the forest. What the highway hadn’t taken of the Terry homeplace, this mine had finished, and on this particular day, my classmates and I were going to help build one of those new flood survivor houses being constructed by the Housing Development Alliance (HDA) on top of my ancestral home.
It was unusually cold for March, and there was nothing to stop the wind on a strip mine. That morning, we had awoken to a quarter inch of snow and we proceeded to suffer squalls all day. We were not wholly dressed for the occasion. Nevertheless, we piled out the vans, grabbed hammers, and got started. Trinity Adams and Jacob Johnson (above), and I put up siding. Many others worked on the roofing of an adjacent house. Others ran materials between the two and helped in other ways. Everyone did something, and we all froze equally. The construction crews and Scott McReynolds from HDA could not have been nicer. They were easy-going, funny guys that played great classic rock and roll music while they worked. My kind of people. It turned out to be an extremely important day for me, and wildly important for my research. It was, after all, a class, and experiential learning was part of the gig. It more than hit the mark with me, and I am eternally grateful to Dr Kathryn Engle (who snapped the group photo for us) for being wise enough to stick a hammer in our hands.
Leave a Reply