Where is Judy Branch?

To get to Judy Branch you have to drive a good while. On this drive, you follow a creek to where it meets a river, and then follow that river to where it meets up with a railroad line. You then follow both river and track, passing several stages of the coal and gas industry: two or three mine entrances (mainly strip), a few fluctuating roadside gas wells, a processing plant, a tipple, a loading track (to put the coal on the train), repair shops for trucks and equipment, riverbank graveyards for unfixable parts, another processing plant and a deep mine...

It may be hard to imagine, but there's immense beautry and life alongside these industrial eyesores. Fall, spring and summer are best. It's always best when the leaves are on the trees. Those leaves remind you that there is still life here despite the constant pillage.

I have grown to love the drive to Judy Branch and all the places it takes me. I have not grown into comfort with my own complicity and participation in the system that makes things so. I hate that by simply being a human being living in our current society, I am inextricably linked to the complex system that brings all these industrial monstrosities to my distant holler. I have spent my entire life participating in systems that I do not believe in. I have yet to discover a way to feel okay about that.

Judy Branch is the place I find myself right in the middle of it but with a quiet distance to reflect. Every time I come home or leave, I go on a journey that forces me to think about the real costs of our "quality of living." When I get home, I go on a journey of rediscovering the challenge of growing your own food and fending for yourself. Neighbor Billy Joe (Neighbor Bill's wife. She calls him William.) thinks that if folks would go back to getting by with what they have, our world (and country) would be in a lot better place. I tend to agree.