Spruce Knob, the tallest peak in West Virginia, is 4,863 ft high. Easy to drive to the top; not so easy walking up to the top on foot carrying a backpack. That was our recent hiking trip itinerary: hike down 1,500 ft to beautiful Seneca Creek, camp that night, then hike back up to Spruce Knob. ...
During my corporate life, the company I worked for was part of a crew doing a workover on a gas well. Suddenly we hit something hard, shallower than it should have. Whatever it was, we couldn’t get any deeper. Everything stopped while we all tried to determine what was going on. The first guess was our measurement was off or the pipe tally was wrong. Well records and history were reviewed. Phone calls were made to confirm, with well records at the corporate office. An entire morning was wasted trying to solve the problem. I was standing on the rig floor when one of the new rig hands ...
On Aug. 25, the world lost a giant in so many respects. Especially in this day and age, you are hard pressed to find a person who bridges nearly every divide and who so few people, if any, have an unkind word to say about them. Dolly Parton, a self-proclaimed country girl from the mountains of east Tennessee, created a legacy that spans so many pieces of today’s popular culture, but almost none more than her love and respect for our natural world, and the lengths she went to keeping them as wild as could be. If you’ve never heard Dolly talk about her beloved Smoky Mountains or ...
I’ve always been fascinated by the paths that people take in life caused by what seemed like minor events at the time. This coming week, Marietta Elementary School will mark 100 years since it first welcomed students on Sept. 7, 1926, as the “new” Marietta High School. If you grew up ...
Today, there seems to be too much salt in our diets. But salt on the frontier was a scarce yet vital resource. Blueridgetales.com: "Life (then) hinged on one thing: salt. It preserved food, kept animals and humans healthy, and was used as trade currency..." Salt in Washington County in the 1790s was $8 ($200 today!) per bushel if bought in the east. Finding local sources was imperative. Most salt deposits had been discovered centuries ago by animals and indigenous people. Animals were attracted to “salt licks”; buffalo (yes, they roamed the Midwest) wore paths to the salt which were ...
Last week, Lynnda and I hosted a foreign company we met at SelectUSA who visited our region looking for potential sites for their high-energy manufacturing business. They will create over 100 high-wage jobs. We were their tour guide and chauffeur. We had a full schedule of meetings and site visits. Everyone involved did an excellent job. This company makes several important products the USA currently imports from China. They said, “We are coming to Shale Crescent USA because you have…” * A large and existing market. * A stable operating environment. * Freight cost and time ...
