In 1 of my earliest memories, I’m shrinking. I’m successful the backmost spot of my parents’ car, look pressed against the window, straining to spot the peaks of the mountains outside. The roadworthy we’re driving connected snakes done a deep, constrictive chopped betwixt 2 ridges. The farther we go, the steeper the mountains grow, and the smaller I feel. I americium dwarfed by their magnitude and majesty.
Even arsenic a toddler, I’m awed by the mountains. They are confining and comforting, past and noble. They radiate a brushed aged wisdom, arsenic if they were calved astatine the precise dawn of the world. I consciousness arsenic if I were calved from them, arsenic if my bones were formed from their dirt. In a way, they were: I’m an eighth-generation Appalachian, attached to the onshore by thing much sacred, much mysterious, than specified humor and history. There is magic successful that mystery, and in the acheronian of the vale that sits betwixt the sunny ridges. I bounce successful my car seat, thrilled by the swoop successful my tummy arsenic we circular the hairpin curves. My parents glimpse backmost astatine me, amused: A dying small ember town, profoundly isolated adjacent by Appalachian standards, is my favourite spot connected earth.
*
Not that I knew of galore different places. There was Tazewell County, wherever I was calved and raised, and determination was Buchanan County to the west, wherever my parents—and grandparents, and their grandparents, and their grandparents—were calved and raised. That small country of southwest Virginia was my full world, my family’s full world, too. Two and a fractional centuries ago, a German mercenary deserted the British army, fled the war, and settled successful the mountains of what would yet go known arsenic Buchanan County. What drew him there, oregon made him stay, is unknown: The onshore was truthful rugged and rocky that it was ne'er settled adjacent by Native Americans. Since him, each 1 of my ancestors has lived and died wrong a fewer miles of his archetypal homestead, successful the shadowed hills and hollers that ne'er spot the sun.
Even arsenic a toddler, I’m awed by the mountains. They are confining and comforting, past and noble. They radiate a brushed aged wisdom, arsenic if they were calved astatine the precise dawn of the world.
I grew up feeling the value of this legacy. It seemed congenital, truthful cleanable was my family’s loyalty to the land. I would not deliberation astir leaving—it would not hap to maine that I could—for galore years.
My mother’s parents—Nanny and Poppaw, I called them—grew up successful Grundy, Buchanan County’s lone municipality to talk of, and spent the aboriginal years of their matrimony successful Lexington, Kentucky. The metropolis was small, but not to 2 kids from the coalfields. Poppaw dug ditches for a h2o company. Nanny raised my mother. Poppaw racked up promotions—“literally worked his mode from the crushed up,” Nanny would say—until the small household moved from a trailer parkland to a existent ceramic location successful the suburbs and Poppaw had an bureau connected the apical level of a gathering overlooking the city.
But nary substance however acold you go, you tin ne'er permission the mountains. Or rather, they’ll ne'er permission you. Poppaw got antsy surviving among each those people. He grew to hatred the noisy streets and engaged bureau and looking retired his room model to spot the next-door neighbour looking back. He moved his household backmost to Grundy, traded his suits and ties for coveralls, and went backmost to digging. This time, for coal.
Each clip she told the communicative astir wherefore they came back, Nanny’s look shifted successful a mode I grew to expect. She spoke of my grandfather’s hard enactment with bright, arrogant eyes, recalling the smallest details of her respectable suburban beingness arsenic if she feared forgetting. Sometimes she’d exemplify the communicative by pulling retired Poppaw’s desktop nameplate, 1 of his fewer possessions she kept aft helium died. Her grin sagged erstwhile she spoke of his chaotic ache for home. She lamented the move, yet resigned herself to it agelong earlier it happened.
“The mountains are successful our blood,” she’d say. Every time, the aforesaid words. “I knew we wouldn’t enactment gone for long.”
*
As the crow flies, determination were 30 miles betwixt my parents’ location successful Tazewell County and my grandparents’ location successful Buchanan County. The driving region was treble that. It took an hr and a fractional to spell sixty miles, longer if you got stuck down a ember truck, which happened much often than not.
My parent hated the drive. “It’s similar going down into a hole,” she’d say, white-knuckling her spot loop done the scariest curves. The roadworthy descended from Tazewell’s gentle hilltops to constrictive canyons, winding deeper into Buchanan County until you yet reached the small municipality of Grundy. It sat successful the shadows, cradled by mountains that held backmost the light. The buildings were dulled with property and ember dust. The ones nearest the stream were slated for demolition, their walls brushed and swollen with mold.
The Grundy of my grandparents’ puerility would person been unrecognizable to me. Main Street was erstwhile arsenic bully arsenic immoderate city’s buying district: You could find decorator clothes, luxury furniture, and the latest grounds by immoderate set you could deliberation of. On weekends, the sidewalks were truthful crowded that you could hardly compression through. Now the shops were empty, decaying. Nobody had a crushed to locomotion down the sidewalk unless they were headed to the courthouse. In the clip it took my grandparents to turn old, the ember manufacture waned sharply, and the municipality mislaid astir fractional its population. The aftermath of this exodus was the Grundy I knew, palpably unsettled by abandonment, shocked to soundlessness by the consciousness of what remained.
King Coal, arsenic it was often called, was the crushed Grundy existed, and the crushed it continued to exist. Yet ember had doomed Grundy earlier the municipality was conceived.
Still, Grundy enchanted me. Maybe it was my humor transportation to its history. Maybe it was the oddity of its existence, the mythic lore of its emergence and fall.
When radical talked astir the Appalachian coalfields—my Appalachia—I hung connected to each word. Their voices were reverent, the information of the mountains transcended to legend. They spoke astir ember arsenic if it were sacred, and it was: Grundy was a single-industry town, built by mining companies and the men who flocked to enactment for them a period earlier I was born. King Coal, arsenic it was often called, was the crushed Grundy existed, and the crushed it continued to exist. Yet ember had doomed Grundy earlier the municipality was conceived.
Mining was a cruel and fragile industry. Even successful its post-World War heyday, the ember marketplace was unpredictable, a constant, accelerated rhythm of roar and bust. Mines would open; mines would close. Miners would locomotion into enactment not knowing if they inactive had a job. When Poppaw moved backmost to Grundy successful the mid-1970s, helium started mining successful the fallout that followed a grounds accumulation year. He’d support a occupation for a fewer months, possibly a twelvemonth with luck, past get laid disconnected without announcement oregon furloughed indefinitely. That was however it went for the remainder of his life. I person a fewer aboriginal memories of him successful his coveralls, achromatic from caput to toed successful a movie of greasy ember dust, but I mostly retrieve him stuck astatine his location for days and weeks astatine a time, pacing from the patio to the beforehand structure to the patio again.
“Antsy,” Nanny would say.
*
There’s a bronze statue of a ember miner successful beforehand of the Buchanan County Courthouse. If you’re passing done Grundy, you’ll spot him astatine a region of astir 50 yards, lasting connected a basal of acheronian stone. He appears beardown and proud, with wide shoulders and a wide stance. He holds a pickax with steady, assured hands.
If you look closer, there’s a antithetic story. The miner’s cervix is strained. His rima sags. His hard, level eyes regard truthful precocious supra the mountaintops that his pupils astir vanish into his skull.
As a child, I was unsettled by those eyes. Looking astatine them stirred thing wrong me, a feeling I couldn’t yet enactment into words. I sensed they were tuned to different world, determination acold beyond the mountains. Years later, aft I had made my mode retired of Appalachia, the enigma of the miner would remain. No substance however acold I went, and nary substance however galore times I returned home, it haunted maine always, the longing successful his weary, heaven-bound gaze.
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From All That’s Unseen: An Appalachian Memoir by Emilee Hackney. Published by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a part of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2026 by Emilee Hackney.
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