Barges navigate this river up to coal processing facilities near Montgomery, our first stop after Charleston. We pass Dollar General, a video store and other businesses through the main part of town, the tracks paralleling highway 61. This town is the home of West Virginia University Institute of Technology, its small campus nestles against the mountain rising to our right. In the valley, dried leaves of all shades from green to yellow and red and brown still cling to the woods on the river bank, while higher on the mountains the trees are bare. At times the river is broad and deep in a narrow valley, at other points it also narrows and is lined with large boulders between rocky cliffs. Now only an occasional fishing shack clings to the bank, and there is only space for the railroad tracks which lie on either side of the river between the mountains.
This is beautiful country as we climb to join the New River. We are about to pass under the gorge bridge where once each fall the road up there is closed to allow the adventurous to bungee jump or parachute from the bridge to the river below. The New River is really likely the oldest on the North American continent, and the best place to experience its rocky gorge is from this train, unless you want to ride an inflatable boat down the river’s rocky rapids.
It is quiet in the coach now, many are napping and others are reading or looking out at the river, cliffs and foliage. We have risen above the fog into the cloudy November day. The day is Veterans day, the time nearly ten o’clock. We are now crossing the river above some rapids, and nearby passengers stir and comment in awe of the view. Just yesterday a memorial service was held for the 13 killed and many others injured in the shooting at Fort Hood, Texas last Thursday. What insanity or desperation does it take to drive a “human being” to commit such an act against other innocent persons? In the wonder of this centuries old natural beauty it is impossible to imagine what motive could sustain such an inane act.
This last weekend I picked up 25 large garbage bags of leaves from our yard. Monday, as I was finishing mulching the big oak leaves in our backyard, the wind picked up and the mother tree started shedding her huge brown foliage like a gentle rain. By yesterday morning my work of the previous day was unapparent. Sometimes, much of life is that way. We go about day by day in a routine that seems to have little result. The more we make the more we spend and the more we have the more we want. But what satisfies us? We live a much easier life than did our ancestors, but when it is all said and done, what is our purpose? Each generation appears not to have profited from the success and mistakes of the last. We keep making more people, living in closer quarters, inventing new devices and discovering new truths, but as far as civility is concerned we haven’t gained.
I do know that it pleases me to behold the natural beauty around me now. But while the natural surroundings here along the New River are astounding, the small towns we occasionally pass through evidence extensive poverty that is too prevalent throughout a land so rich. Too much poverty, too many people who show signs of having eaten the wrong things, knees and hips suffering from carrying too much weight, lungs coughing from too much smoke. We, the people, mar the beauty of our land with junk cars, lawn mowers, appliances and other things we have discarded in yards and along the roadside, and too many of ourselves are not beautiful either, on the outside or inside.
Now, a young woman, slim of figure and otherwise attractive, rises and stands on her seat to retrieve something from her bag on the rack above. In doing so she presents an unattractive and offensive sight of posterior cleavage exposed between her fashionably low-riding jeans and her t-shirt. With that example, I conclude what I have been trying to say about our culture and civility.
Two hours later. We should have arrived in Clifton Forge 45 minutes ago, but have been sitting for over an hour just east of Alderson, WV. because a tree is down across the tracks. The mountainside rises steeply to our right and it is not surprising that such an incident could occur. We have been told that a chainsaw crew is on the way, and just now a vehicle passed by on the tracks to our left which appeared to have equipment necessary to the task.
We passed the time having a sandwich in the lounge car and having pleasant conversation with another passenger. A pleasure of train travel is its leisurely pace. It turns out that two trees had fallen across the tracks and had also taken down a power line which knocked out signaling and perhaps switching equipment for several miles. So after we finally began to move the pace was only 15 miles per hour because of the signals and we made several short stops before finally resuming a normal pace near White Sulfur Springs. It was 4:30 when we finally arrived in Clifton Forge, welcomed by a gentle rain, the remnants of tropical storm Ida. As the pilot of a Piedmont airplane I once flew on many years ago announced near the end of a puddle jumping flight from Cincinnati to Fort Bragg, "sometimes the farther you go the be-hinder you get."
