There is always hope

In the hills of Boone County West Virginia nowadays there isn't much more than hope. The last ray came from the indictment of Don Blankenship for his responsibility in the mine explosion that took the lives of 29 miners in 2010.

Only minutes after turning off Interstate 64, cell service disappears and a world that seems untouched by time appears in the fog-covered valleys that unfold along sinuous Coal River Road.

There are none of the chain businesses that make towns across America look disconcertingly similar. The houses that dot the roadside were last updated long ago, and many of the arteries that branch off the main thoroughfare and into the hills above remain unpaved.

Though so much wealth has been extracted from these once coal-rich mountains, there are no visible traces of any windfall to the people or the land that made it possible. There is no sign that any thought was ever given in preparation for a day that could have been foreseen, a day when coal wouldn’t be king in the country’s choice of energy sources and when the people here wouldn’t be needed.

Instead, now that coal can be blown out of the mountains rather than mined from within, and natural gas is cleaner and cheaper to use, what’s easiest to see is the bust that hit in the wake of the boom times.

Yet despite its national decline, coal still rules here.

Time of course hasn’t stood still, but limbo does mark the lives of the 24,000 and dwindling inhabitants of these Appalachian hollows in Boone County, southern West Virginia.

Some people are waiting for coal to roar back and return with jobs and hope. Others are waiting for it to leave them — their water, their mountains, their air and their lungs — completely alone.

If there is a shared heart here, it was broken five years ago this April, when the explosion at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine in Whitesville took the lives of 29 miners and forever scarred those of the family, friends and neighbors left behind.

While everyone might not agree about who is to blame for the explosion, the consensus has always been that something was bound to happen at that mine. Even if the disaster shocked the collective pulse of these hollows, locals weren’t surprised it blew. Not since Don Blankenship became head of Massey. The combative and now former CEO famously broke the unions here and drove a furious production pace that demanded shortcuts at the cost of miners’ health and safety.

What no one saw coming, though, was Blankenship’s federal indictment in November 2014, blaming his leadership for the tragedy. The corporate head had long been seen as untouchable.

There is hope he will pay for his crimes but not a lot of faith that the courts will deliver justice.