West Virginia, Mountain Mama, Take Me Home.

I am from West Virginia.

Let’s say you run into me in airport. Or on some beach in an exotic location. Or I’m sharing a beer with you in some brewery in New England. And you ask “Where are you from?”

I would say, “Well I live in Ohio, but I’m originally from West Virginia.”

I don’t know why I always add that qualifier. 2021 marks the year where I have spent exactly half my life living in West Virginia and living outside of it. 1985–2003: West Virginia. 2003–2021: Columbus, Ohio. By all accounts, I’m not really a West Virginian anymore. Literally nothing in my life besides my birth certificate denotes I have any real attachment to the state anymore. But maybe that’s why I say it, because the document that literally shows Where I’m From says “Charleston, West Virginia.”

I’m what you would call a West Virginia expat. There’s a whole lot of us and the number seems to increase by the day. West Virginia, if you look at its demographics, is getting older. It’s getting smaller. The latest US Census statistics showed that West Virginia had the largest population decline over the past 10 years.

And if you talked to us expats, we largely don’t have any issue with the fact that we moved out of West Virginia. Our reasons for leaving are diverse. For me, I left for college and when it was time to set down roots, I stayed in Columbus. Others followed the same path, we just left for college and never came back. I have other friends that chased better job opportunities or married someone that wasn’t from West Virginia and decided to go with them. But I bet if you asked them “Hey, where are you from?” At some point in their explanation they would bring up the fact that they are from West Virginia.

This is to say: I feel just as much as a West Virginian now, having lived half my life outside the state, as I did growing up among the mountains and valleys.

It’s such a part of your being that you can’t really describe it. It’s like you’re part of this club where the membership is forever. And I know the jokes. West Virginia is backwoods and hillbilly and West By God. Everywhere is a half hour away and when you visit other states Cheescake Factory is a fancy restaurant. Visiting a friend in the same zip code is sometimes a 20–25 minute drive because you have to take a left down some road with “Creek” in the name (no seriously, my zip code, 25526, has 20 “streets” with Creek in the name and I’m guessing my zip code is one of the more affluent zip codes in the state). I brought my college roommate (from Arizona) “home” one weekend and he got carsick on the interstate.

But for all the jokes — which we’re all in on — you’re also part of the club. Tudor’s Biscuit World is Capistrano. Anytime you cross the Ohio River near Point Pleasant, you have to point out where the Silver Bridge used to stand (you know, ‘cause Mothman), you say, with pride, that the gold-leafed dome of the State Capitol is 4 1/2 feet taller than the one in DC. You take pride in the fact that when you were in the marching band, you could drive up to 3 hours to play a team in the same conference as your high school. Your heart swells when you’re in a bar and the acoustic guitarist strums “Country Roads” and all your friends know where you’re from and point at you, knowing that it’s your turn to absolutely belt it. You get texts from out-of-state friends when they pass your exit on I-64 and they remember how it’s prounounced (it’s Her-uh-cuhn, not Her-i-cane, third syllable optional to begin with).

My mom and stepdad still live in West Virginia and obviously I get back a couple times a year — all three of their children now living in Ohio, two of them married to native Ohioans and raising little Ohioan children. At least one night on every visit, I like to sit alone on her deck, overlooking a large hill her house abuts. I like to smoke a cigar with a fire going, a good bourbon barrel stout in my glass, and just take in the quietness. I live in a suburb outside of Columbus, and while it’s very quiet, it’s not still. The air has lightness to it. The sun as it sets behind the surrounding mountains in the valley leaving a glow that is unsurpassed where I live now, as if the sun knows that it’s time to cast a hue that you only understand if you grew up here.

But at the same time, it’s never hard to leave. I know I’ll be back. I go and live my life, loving the city where I live now. Where I can take my kids to the best zoo in the country, where everything I could possibly need is five minutes from house, where I can drive 20 minutes and be in the Short North and knowing the 15 mile radius of where I’m sitting is home to almost 2 million people, where I have season tickets to the NHL team, where our minor league baseball team is still an affiliated franchise (I’m so sorry, West Virginia Power née Charleston Alley Cats née Charleston Wheelers). But damn if when I’m not sitting in a modern AAA baseball facility, in the shadows of our skyscrapers and bustling activity, I don’t think about Watt Powell Park with its cinderblock outfield wall and the train that would pass by during a tense point in the game and say “this isn’t QUITE the same.”

West Virginia is like that state that knows you have to leave it. It’s not an emotional departure. She knows that you’ll be back, it’s just time for you to go and live your life where you’ve chosen to live it. She’s not jealous about it. Like an old grandmother who sees her grandkids grow up and fly the coop. That your visits become a little less regular as you age and have to do other things to do than spend it with her. But everytime you return it’s like you never left. You just pick up where you left off, with a big hug and a kiss, knowing once again your visit is temporary and you’ll pack up after a couple days, not to return again until the next time. Because there’s always a next time.

But everytime you leave, you take a bit of her with you. And that little bit sustains you until you feel like it’s time to come back.

I’ll end this post with a sentence from an essay written by Jason Headley for the Revivalist, as I think it succinctly captures what all of us expats feel about where we’re from:

“I never stopped being a West Virginian. There are some things that can’t be undone. Not by all the gods in all the heavens. Geography be damned.”

Happy 158th Birthday West By God. I’ll see you again real soon.