Branches touched both sides of the car at once; the more stalwart scratching slowly down the whole way. The thin parallel tracks continued on as Andrew and I wondered if we had made the correct turn. West Virginia mountain hollows tend to betray outsiders and we were most certainly outsiders.

The first clearing eventually revealed a garage spilling over with mechanicals and, nearby, a house dripped in the thick shade.

60 years before, around 1950, Jimmy Weekley trudged this mountain split to inquire why the girl from further down had stopped attending school. She wasn't telling, so Jimmy had to learn the details from someone else who may (or may not) have talked to her. There aren’t many secrets in a West Virginia Hollow and this one didn’t last long. As it turned out, young Sibby’s sole dress was beyond repair.

The courtship of Jimmy and Sibby began when Jimmy negotiated with his relatives, ensuring the girl would be discreetly provided serviceable clothing. “I couldn’t see her if she didn’t go to school,” Jimmy explained.

By the 90’s Sibby was terminally ill, Jimmy could no longer work, and their home was threatened by a coal company eager to tear the mountains from all sides. Dressed men walked childhood paths in the hope that money would pry Jimmy from the mud-struck land of his ancesters. Thus began what Jimmy told me would be his last negotiation – to save his home and town from Arch Coal.

After an hour or so Andrew and I had the recording we’d come for and so we turned around to leave. Just as before, the trees relented hard, applying the same force they’d used in resisting our arrival. This time, though, it seemed far more appropriate as if, somehow, the trees and mountains and Jimmy were singular, acting together to guard against the foreign and protect the familiar.