Appalachia Bare

“There is a lesson in the mountaineer’s all-out search for freedom. He worked so hard to gain it, that eventually he lost it. The mountaineer withdrew from the doings of the larger society, and it passed him by, but not before it bought up the resources around him. The industrial system was interested in the mountaineer as long as it needed his muscle to extract the resources. When it no longer needed muscle, it cast him aside.”
— Loyal Jones, “Appalachian Values,” from Voices from the Hills