If I'd known I was going to fall in love that day for the first time in my life, I would have taken the attendant trials and tribulations in stride. But I didn't know, so I spent far too many minutes considering whether my parents would buy me a ticket back home to Seattle if I called up and begged.  The remainder of my stay in the West Virginia airport was devoted to figuring out how to get to Kentucky, which meant trying to break through the Appalachian language barrier.

You'd think that, since I mastered Spanish in high school and picked up a smattering of French from Canadian visitors, I would have had travel within the U.S. covered.  You also would have been wrong.  Stopping by the information desk at the airport felt like a Peanuts cartoon—you know, one of those scenes where the teacher is talking and all you hear is "wa wa wa, wa wa, wa wa."  The ancient attendant's excessive head-shaking seemed ominous, though, so I decided to try my luck elsewhere.

I didn't remember my new smartphone (and the airport's free wireless) until the nice lady at McDonald's laughed at me for suggesting bus or train service to the Pikeville area.  She, at least, seemed to speak English, albeit with a mountain twang—perhaps the problem at the information desk had merely been the old guy's lack of teeth?—and she was quite ready to give me driving directions to Kentucky.  Until, that is, I mentioned my lack of wheels.  Then the lady started to look concerned and to call me "sugar," so I made up some excuse about having family who could come and pick me up after all, then retreated to a waiting area to figure out Plan B.

Now, before you take my parents to task for stranding me in no-bus-service West Virginia, let me speak in their defense.  Actually, I probably should back up about a week and explain what a suburban girl like me was doing stranded in an Appalachian airport....

I hope you enjoyed this first installment of Forsythia's adventure.  Stay tuned for another chunk of her story tomorrow, or download the entire ebook of Watermelon Summer here.

This post is part of our Watermelon Summer lunchtime series.  Read all of the entries: Watermelon Summer In which our heroine sets foot in West Virginia In which our heroine wins an argument with her mother In which our heroine learns that she can't get there from here In which our heroine finds a ride

Want more in-depth information? Browse through our books.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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