ALMOST HEAVEN: WEST VIRGINIA

On the highest ridge of Kayford Mountain is an old narrow dirt road that leads up to the Stanley family cemetery. Walking down this old road, one can almost hear the old song that has since become the unofficial state motto:

The cemetery is at the highest point of Kayford Mountain, and the wind often blows hard across the top of the ridge. Standing at the front entrance of the cemetery, one gets the feeling of being on Sacred Ground. It can be felt and heard in the wind and the trees.

But the wind is not the only sound that can be felt and heard in that graveyard. There is another sound that drowns out the wind: the piercing alarm of backup horns and the continuous roar of the monster trucks and endloaders just over the other side. The dead are not being granted eternal rest, and won't be for many years to come. For huge dynamite blasts cause the mountain to shake and tremble and flyrock often falls directly on the graves.

A short walk to the far end of the cemetery reveals the remains of a road that once encircled it, but now one large chunk of the road is gone -- now it's a straight drop down to the coal mine operations, which have now almost completely surrounded the family burial grounds.

For Gibson and other family members the view from Kayford Mountain is no longer serene, there are no more sounds of silence. Gone is the peace and stillness that the old cemetery once harbored. For them, Mountaintop Mining is practically raising the dead, while burying the living.


Standing on the road looking over the south side of the ridge it is indeed "Almost Heaven, West Virginia". But, turn 180 degrees and the difference is striking -- Gibson and others will tell you that it's more like "Almost Hell". The mountains around Kayford peak have been completely obliterated, leaving nothing even closely resembling the once green rolling hills of West Virginia.





* Words from the songCountry Roads by John Denver © 1971