Here are some excerpts from Laura Jackson’s debut essay collection, ‘DEEP & WILD: On Mountains, Opossums, & Finding Your Way in West Virginia,’ released in October 2024 from Autumn House Press.
From the chapter ‘Being West Virginian’:
I’ve yet to reach a clear answer on exactly what it is we do so well here, what we can claim as our own. I can feel it, of course — we all can. But the words get lost in the translation from emotion to paragraph. What I return to, again and again, is the green earth that rises above us and the water that carves its way down. West Virginia’s greatest assets are its deep and wild places, those left behind and off the map. This place is old. With age comes contentment; with contentment comes peace. What West Virginia does best it’s been doing for eons: waiting quietly, wearing down, wrapping rough places in forest and smoothing them with stream.
From the chapter ‘Ain’t No Copperhead’:
I hesitate to tie the claims of a giant, venomous snake encounter to the stereotypical mail fascination with length and girth … but if the codpiece fits, wear it. I think it’s probably something a little more primeval, though. “Snake” means fear — memes call them danger noodles. We cannot allow ourselves to trust them or even soften our resolve. Maybe, for some, it’s the biblical origin story — when something goes wrong, blame a snake. (Or a woman, but that’s a different discussion.) “I will put enmity between you and the woman,” God said to the serpent. And he pretty much did. For others, perhaps, it’s the unrelatable physical form. Where are your arms and legs, my dude? Why don’t you blink? Stop sticking your tongue out at me. Reptiles feel different, which is their appeal for some and their distastefulness for others. Certainly, they lack fur and facial expressions, but when you take bodily appendages out of the equation and add lightning speed and fangs, it’s easy to understand why mammal lovers might not know where to start with a snake.
From the chapter ‘Country Roads: A Brief Primer’:
No matter how confident you are, your faith will eventually be tested on country roads. The deep forest, scarcity of other humans (or presence of sketchy ones), and lack of cell service will converge in your mind. You’ll realize you made a mistake choosing this terrible, frightening road that leads only farther into God’s country, except even God wouldn’t come this far because there’s nothing out here except cows and trees and dust. You’ll wonder who the dumb idiot was that said, “Hey, let’s see where this road goes.” And then you’ll realize that dumb idiot was you, but you were so much happier and so very naive, then, when you had signs and pavement and other cars around to remind you that you weren’t alone in this wilderness.
No matter how confident you are, your faith will eventually be tested on country roads.
But then you saw this road, and the mountain serpent offered you an apple that smelled like a shortcut through some pretty scenery, and you took it and ate it and now your eyes are open and you’re in the middle of fucking nowhere and is this even a road any longer because it looks like a tractor path through a field and somebody feed my cat if I never make it back. Country roads are a test of faith, and you’re going to lose it before the journey is over. And that’s okay. You have to lose your faith in order to find it.
From the chapter ‘Oh, Possum,’ in which the author proposes the opposum as Appalachia’s official animal:
Focused, adaptable, and persistent, the opossum makes a fitting Appalachian symbol, though they may not get much support as candidates. Much like Ben Franklin’s unsuccessful attempt to make the turkey our national bird, opossums don’t have that distinguished look you want in a representative species. They lack the bulk and power of the black bear, the mystery of the bobcat, and the jewel tones of the wily brook trout. Indeed, opossums are odd, a creature an exhausted God might have thrown together with parts leftover from a busy week of creation. Whatever He had lying around the shop (grippy hands, snaky tail, crippling anxiety), He chucked into the opposum and sent it down to the Garden of Eden to tip over Adam’s garbage cans and eat the food off Eve’s back porch. It’s an animal so weird, so remarkable, and so frequently maligned that it has earned a notable place in our culture simply by being itself.
From the chapter ‘The West Virginia Brown Dog’:
I think we’re fond of these brown dogs because we see ourselves in them. Not only in their scrappy, adaptable nature, but also because the ancestry of a West Virginia Brown Dog reads a lot like that of a multigeneration West Virginian. Swab our cheeks and you’ll find heavy doses of Scots-Irish heritage, a good bit of German and English, and a smattering of Welsh, Swiss, Polish, Italian, Hungarian, and African American. You’ll also hear a variety of accents. In my hometown of Wheeling, many speak as Pittsburghers do: my grandfather, a Harvard-educated, fourth-generation Wheeling native, worshed his clothes and trimmed the booshes. In the central and southern parts of the state, you’ll hear the speech of Appalachia, traditionally referred to as Appalachian English. Some scholars have claimed it’s an archaic English throwback. In 1978, Dr. Cratis D. Williams of Appalachian State University wrote, “the dialect of the Appalachian people is the oldest living English dialect, older than the speech of Shakespeare, closer to the speech of Chaucer.” That’s debatable. More likely, the dialect evolved from the speech of those Scots-Irish ancestors, and variations exist within the different regions of Appalachia. North Carolinians sound noticeably different from West Virginians because, like West Virginia Brown Dogs, little about Appalachian English is uniform, not even the way Appalachians pronounce “Appalachia.”
Our love of home is as strong as our love of words. We share the simplest bond: we’re from West-by-God Virginia.
From the chapter ‘Finding My People’:
Every June, those friends and I gather in Ripley for the annual West Virginia Writers conference. We speak, we teach, we listen, we learn. But most of all, we reunite as literary family with the shared knowledge that there’s something different about writers, here in the Mountain State. The conference is a safe space, a few moments when we’re reminded that we aren’t the only awkward, anxious weirdos wandering through the hollows, scrambling to capture moment of beauty that might otherwise get us laughed out of a roadside diner or at least regarded with a lifted eyebrow. Our love of home is as strong as our love of words. We share the simplest bond: we’re from West-by-God Virginia. That alone links us in time and space and adds an element to our gatherings I’ve never felt anywhere else. Here we are, struggling to explain determination in a life of hardship and a place of sorrow. Here we are, describing mountains that sit low and silent and old and worn, crinkles of ground down rock that have lived many lives in many ages, trying to explain their gravity while not fully understanding it ourselves. Here we are, poring over words that explain why we stay in West Virginia, even though we wake up many days wishing to be anywhere else.
How do you categorize that ambivalence? How do you explain nonsense? How do you convey sorrowful hope and hopeful sorrow? Writers in this place, don’t know, but we try nonetheless, generation after generation.
LAURA JACKSON is featured in an Author Event starting 1 p.m., Sunday, January 19, at Booktenders bookshop at 621 Central Avenue, in Barboursville, W.Va. Find more information on Facebook or call 304-691-0317.
