West Virginia is a beautiful state.
It is beautiful country, and has some of the most wonderful people in the whole wide world.
West Virginia is wilder by nature than Virginia. Considered frontier by the colonists, it was considered savage land, and in some cases, it still is.
I am still reeling, still unsettled … and still broken-hearted by the fishing trip I took there this week.
The poverty there rivals east Africa, just an hour from my house.
I was the invitee of two young men who are column readers to sample the brown trout of western West Virginia.
They said, “be prepared.” I wasn’t.
Driving down Route 52 towards Welch, I saw houses pieced together with linoleum, & asphalt siding.
I fished in the community of Kyle where the residents drive to a roadside to pull water out of a hillside spring because their town has no potable water.
And in the Elkhorn River, I saw pipe after pipe dumping raw sewage into a mountain trout stream that is surviving -- despite every best conscious and unconscious effort by the local residents of incorporated towns on Route 52 -- to kill it.
The Elkhorn River runs 17 miles beside Route 52, and has a great population of brown and rainbow trout, but it is so massively polluted by trash, debris and waste water that even in 90 degree heat, you don’t even “think” about wet wading.
I saw car parts, a child’s crutch, an old Halloween costume, and enough and non-biodegradable plastic and Styrofoam to stock 5,000 Wal-Marts in this stream.
Casting was an art of not hooking plastic sheeting, and metal objects, and despite all this, I caught some beautiful trout.
The key to West Virginia economy is not mining. It is not manufacturing.
It is tourism.
West Virginia has the most stunning natural resources, but no sane person would want to vacation in this hell of a holler.
This is an area that should be dotted with livable homes, quaint little mom-and-pop diners, and fly shops and hiking outfitters. Instead, it is America’s dirty little secret tucked off the main road, too remote from Washington, and not telegenic as Africa.
The population is composed of mainly poor blacks and whites, and everyone I met in this area couldn’t have been nicer, despite looking at me like I was an intergalactic traveler in my waders and chest pack.
Everyone stopped and talked to me, and bragged about the big fish they caught in the Elkhorn.
They need to enjoy them, because soon they will all be gone.
Trash, pollution, and unabated harvesting in this area is at critical mass, and the ecosystem will be gone.
With the land gone, and the brick-and-mortar industries declining every day what will be left?
Today, I called Martha Moore, the mayor of Welch, and offered to come back to meet with her to brainstorm a solution to this holocaust.
Martha Moore was a beacon in the blackness.
She is well aware of the problem, and is looking for solutions.
She showed me how the Elkhorn River avenged itself, decimating every inch of Welch downtown in 2002.
In the middle of a massive reconstruction of her town, the last thing on her mind was fly-fishing.
This is a woman who is building roads, rebuilding businesses and extending basic infrastructure such as running city water to its residents, and selling companies on a high concept: that Welch is a viable place to put their businesses.
Welch’s and Mac Dowell County’s population is radically declining, and she agrees that with its brutal topography, tourism that will be its salvation.
Martha knows there will have to be paradigm shift in the residents. With a legacy deeply rooted in strip mining, they view the land as disposable, almost as their enemy.
There will have to be enforcement, strict fines, and a no-bull approach the squatters who live in abject poverty with their stream as their toilet.
If there is a person who can do it, I think Martha Moore is it.
She will do what it takes in Welch to help the Elkhorn, and in the process, help her community.
Leaving Welch full of hope, I fished the Elkhorn on the way home.
I heard a banging on the back window of the home in a public-access stretch.
Looking at the pipe stubbed in the grass, I saw a trickle of human waste entered the water directly downstream from where I was fishing.
If there was any doubt before, I knew what I was fishing in. So sad.
Tight Lines,
Richard
