Quote Originally Posted by OC Richard View Post
In response to the thread about songs of the Southern lowlands, here's a thread about the Southern highlands, Appalachia, my original home.

This video is both beautiful and heartbreaking. Yes I used to see such devastation, in my annual visits to West Virginia in the 1970s, but I'm happy to report that in recent decades I've spent many hours driving across WV and I've seen hundreds of miles of lush beautiful forested hills unscarred by strip-mining.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6quNN8_Em_4

Ah! Much better here. This is the Appalachia I know

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glw0zI3P30g

An incredibly beautiful song about the inevitable mining disasters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stbg74o2JYk

I would not want to grow up anywhere other that the Kanawha Valley.

I can remember seeing the dead trees sticking out above the living trees on the hillside above Kanawha City back in the mid 60s. When I asked my grandmother about them she told me all of them had died years before.

I would have like to see the forests in the days before the Chestnut blight.

I too can remember the stripmines and slag ponds as well as seeing how the water quality of the river has improve in the last 40 years. All of it has seemed to have improved over the years.