5 QUESTIONS: Going 'Deep & Wild' in West Virginia
Talking with author Laura Jackson about mountains, opossums, coyotes, writing, ramps, and that confounding state of mind known as West Virginia
Laura Jackson is an environmental writer, humorist, and native West Virginian. Her debut essay collection, ‘DEEP & WILD: On Mountains, Opossums, & Finding Your Way in West Virginia,’ was released in October 2024 from Autumn House Press. Laura’s work has appeared in places such as Terrain.org, Brevity, Hippocampus, and Still. She was listed as “notable” by Best American Essays and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a John Burroughs Nature Essay award. ‘Deep & Wild’ has been shortlisted for the WCoNA Book of the Year. Laura holds an MFA from Chatham University, writes regularly for ‘Wonderful West Virginia’ magazine, and lives in Wheeling with her sons and a West Virginia Brown Dog. WestVirginiaVille majordomo Douglas John Imbrogno tossed some questions her way about the art and craft of writing about West Virginia.
WESTVIRGINIAVILLE: Aside from ‘yourself’ and maybe the Nobel Prize for Literature folks, who is your ideal audience in your head for ‘DEEP & WILD’? Say that you could design your perfect audience, who — among many audiences, perhaps — did you have in mind while writing and compiling the pieces for the book?
LAURA JACKSON: I wrote it for people who aren’t from West Virginia, those who wonder or don’t know what it’s like to live here, to be of this place, and for those who may be convinced that we both fit the hillbilly stereotype and live in misery. I wrote it for people who don’t know the wild beauty of this place, the intense connection with nature and the mountains, and the way West Virginia gets into your bones.
And, of course, while I was writing for everyone else, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that most of the readers would be West Virginians, because we love to feel that connection, to the land and to each other. We love sharing the secrets of this place, simultaneously guarding them and wishing everyone else knew and understood.
WVVILLE: In the ‘Dear Richwood,’ chapter from ‘Deep & Wild’ — possibly one of the finest meditations ever on a mess of ramps — you cover some ground. You go from deep anticipation as you head to the epicenter of what you think will be a ‘World Ramp Appreciation Mega-Event’ (aka the annual ‘Feast of the Ransom,’), to disappointment, standing a bit bewildered in a parking lot where a guy plays ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ on fiddle, followed by an hours-long line with a Styrofoam plate of food at the end. Yet in the end, after a peaceful stop out of town at the Cherry River, the piece settles on this communal, almost reverent, even near mystical interpretation of what you and your family just experienced in this odyssey to mountain-locked Richwood and a plate of ramps. But it’s not a Christian-ized communion. You describe the connection as one experienced by a ‘pagan, a nature worshiper,’ and write: ‘I find no comfort in the linens and colored glass of a sanctuary; my god lives in the mountains. She is the mountains, the red spruce. Her body, the sacred green folds of the West Virginia landscape, is the only place I find peace in the world …’ Can you elaborate, since this seems an animating thread in the book, even when you routinely dash off ribald, deeply funny things about your West Virginia experiences elsewhere in its pages.
LAURA JACKSON: I’ve spoken about this book dozens of times, now, and every time I do, I hear myself say that the mountains are in our bones, that the land is in our DNA, and that we are of this place (as I did in the previous answer). West Virginians tend to be a faithful, church-going bunch, and when I drifted away from that world, I might have felt isolated. But over time, I realized that we’re honoring the same thing — a body from which we’ve all sprung and a place to which we will return.
When I was young, my father — a very gentle, accepting, thoughtful Christian — said it made no sense that God would insist we worship in a building when all of His wild creation was out there, waiting for us. And so the very act of hiking and paddling and touching spruce trees and watching the sunrise became one of worship, for me. As I aged and became a parent, I saw how much of my own spirit I had drawn from what I call these deep and wild places. I’m at my strongest and most peaceful when I’m in the mountains and can hear and see what nature has to show me. And I know that most West Virginians feel this way, though our lenses and our terminology and our rituals may be different. The older I get, the more intensely I feel not only that connection but that I am, indeed, of this place. I see the divine everywhere in it.
WVVILLE: Speaking of ribald, I laughed often — and was also educated — while reading such well-observed, often irreverent, takes as when you describe the life and times of opposums; cicadas; lightning bugs (don’t call them ‘fireflies’ in West Virginia); an epic investigation into the DNA of the West Virginia Brown Dog; and why we should love the poor eastern coyote more than most West Virginians do (and how you’ve had it with the wiseguy Coyote trickster of legend out West who gets all the good press.) Plus, you drop a few F-bombs along the way. So much so that many times reading ‘DEEP & WILD’ it feels like hearing and laughing along to a skilled, irreverent stand-up comedian. A lot of writing that amounts to ‘A Case for the Defense and Appreciation of West Virginia’ can feel overly reverential, defensive, and tetchy. Your tack seems to be: ‘I love this place, here’s why you should look out for opposums and cherish them — no, really, dammit …! ’ How did that tonal approach develop in your writing as a West Virginia native?
LAURA JACKSON: I’ve always written with curiosity, irreverence, and a rather colorful vocabulary, and perhaps it’s a contrast to the long, respectable tradition of nature writing. Nature writers in history were thoughtful and erudite and they were mostly men. We revere them, but it’s also easy to feel removed from their experiences, not only because they were ‘the great nature writers‘ like Thoreau and Emerson and Muir who define the genre, but also because the nature they encountered was very different from the hot mess we’re facing now, literally. You can’t write about the natural world today the way they did because theirs was wild, hopeful, and enormous. Ours is on fire as we speak.
Part of the problem is that we’re so burned out on the messaging. Beautiful writing used to inspire people to take up a cause, as Rachel Carson’s words did in ‘Silent Spring.’ Now, we’re bombarded, constantly, by bad news and sad news from ecological writers trying so hard to start a conversation about important things like climate change and extinction rates. But the world has taken a dark turn, and people have closed off their hearts. They’re tired of crying. And I’m as tired of delivering those messages as readers are of hearing them.
Humor — especially self-deprecating humor — takes the sting and the agony out of the problems we’re facing, and it opens the door for a conversation with a writer, not an admonition from one. I’m not talking down to you; I’m inviting you to join me as I explore nature and West Virginia, because I’m not an expert — I’m learning, and we’re in it together. We all deserve some joy, dammit, and if you’re laughing, you’ll probably keep reading.
LAURA JACKSON is featured in an Author Event starting 1 p.m., Sunday, February 16, 2025, at Booktenders bookshop at 621 Central Avenue, in Barboursville, W.Va. Find more information on Facebook or call 304-691-0317.
WVVILLE: Speaking of writing, what writers were — or currently are — gods to you? Who has influenced your own way of looking at things, your style, your worldview, your survival in the world? Also, what writers and works of creativity might you recommend to either a youthful, un-tutored West Virginia kid and wannabe creative and/or someone outside the state who knows nothing about the actuality of West Virginia, and might then learn more about the true heart and soul of the place?
LAURA JACKSON: I’m not sure I’d call them gods, any longer. I once would have, but I’ve begun to meet a few of my favorite writers, the ones I’ve so admired and been intimidated by, the ones I read when I was obtaining my MFA. Turns out they’re mostly insecure people who feel like they’re faking it.
Nevertheless, one of my favorite writers is Jon Krakauer. He writes about mountaineering, often, but generally he’s a master of good storytelling, whether or not it’s a personal narrative. I absolutely love Mary Roach, who is a science writer with a wonderful ability to weave humor into her research. She’s able to take some pretty heavy science and translate it for a general audience, which is what I do. She’s my hero. And I love Lyanda Lynn Haupt, who writes a lot about backyard wildlife with a similar levity.
I’m at my strongest and most peaceful when I’m in the mountains and can hear and see what nature has to show me. And I know that most West Virginians feel this way, though our lenses and our terminology and our rituals may be different.
By contrast, I love cantankerous Edward Abbey, who loved the west, despised tourists and Lake Powell, and said, “As to the charge that I am a cranky old man, I plead guilty.” Abbey had strong opinions on environmentalism and apologized for none of them. I wish I had his intestinal fortitude.
I’d advise a West Virginia kid to read West Virginia writers and to pick a wide variety of books, both fiction and nonfiction. There are many narratives about growing up poor, coal mining, and family hardship. And they’re so important. But there are other stories too: voices of color, queer voices, and books as unassuming as roadside geology guides (for the rock hounds among us). Some of my favorites are: ‘Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place‘ by Neema Avashia; ‘Crappalachia: A Biography of Place’ by Scott McClanahan; ‘Perfect Dirt‘ by Keegan Lester; ‘No Son of Mine‘ by Jonathan Corcoran; and ‘Hollows, Peepers, & Highlanders: An Appalachian Mountain Ecology‘ by George Constanz.
The loveliest of all West Virginia publications is ‘Wonderful West Virginia.‘ I’m a little biased because I contribute regularly, but the magazine shares uplifting stories about conservation and good folks doing important work in the Mountain State. It really showcases the best of who and what we are.
CLICK HERE TO READ EXCERPTS from Laura Jackson’s ‘DEEP & WILD: On Mountains, Opossums, & Finding Your Way in West Virginia.’
WVVILLE: Several times in ‘Deep & Wild’ you honestly address the conundrum of living in West Virginia: the spiritual, psychic nourishment from its vast open spaces and easy natural solitude and its ever-entertaining idiosyncrasy and oddball wonders. And, yet, the state’s politics, the long history of external looting of its wealth, its confounding health and poverty issues — sometimes, fleeing across its borders to a progressive promised land Shangri-La wiggles its finger our way. (There must be a good and righteous one somewhere, right?!?) Yet, still you remain. You write on. What is your prognosis for the state’s future — or maybe your strategy for survival when facing West Virginia’s less positive features?
LAURA JACKSON: West Virginia drives me absolutely nuts. There were many years when I planned an escape, but it never fell into place. At least ten times a month I get so tired of the challenges, the policies coming out of Charleston, the environmental degradation, and the way we seem to vote against our own interests that I say, “$#@* West Virginia!” and start looking at real estate in Costa Rica. I think I could find a better place. And maybe I could, but then I imagine never getting to stand on Spruce Knob or float down the Cheat River, and it hurts more than the thought of leaving.
The earth that is West Virginia has never let me down. But in the book I say that the human element is an endless loop of joy and pain. Being a West Virginian means struggling with a range of emotions you never quite settle and living with contradictions that are so hard to explain to outsiders. But life is short, and we owe it to ourselves to find a heart-place. This is mine.
As for the future, I have a quiet but very strong feeling we won’t remain a secret for much longer. Climate refugees are going to need a place to live, one with plenty of affordable land that doesn’t (usually) catch on fire. I believe the next worldwide conflict will be over water, and West Virginia has plenty of it. People will come. That will bring an endless source of problems, the kind that come with population growth. But what a gift to find ourselves in such an imperfect place with so much potential.
WVVILLE: BONUS QUESTION: Ask yourself a question — and then answer it
LAURA JACKSON: You’ve spent most of your life in West Virginia. If, on the last day of your life, you could go back and relive just one of them, which would it be?
LAURA JACKSON: Last summer, on a bluebird day in July, my sons and I went to Blackwater Outdoor Adventures, near Parsons, to spend a day tubing the flatwaters of the Cheat. We’ve kayaked it many times but hadn’t tubed it. The water was a perfect temperature — warm but refreshing — and it was crystal clear. We brought our lunch in a cooler, which got its own little tube that we towed along. We floated north through Tucker County with the high green silhouette of Cheat Mountain to the east and bald eagles circling overhead, and we laughed hysterically and told jokes and let go of everything else in the world that was heavy or sad or negative. It was a West Virginia wild baptism. Best day of my life.
Memories of a life in WV. I grew up just over the mountain from Richwood along the Williams River. I will be getting Ms. Jackson's book. Memories.