I was born and raised in a small town on the border of Maryland and West Virginia that most people don’t know exists. My part of Maryland is in the foothills of the Appalachians, but not quite mountainous. It is neither north nor south. It is exactly in the middle of no man’s land.

Politically and culturally, Garrett and Allegany counties are much more similar to West Virginia and the South than they are to the rest of Maryland. Coal, Trump, and the Rebel flag are a few of the more popular bumper stickers you will see on the trucks driving on and off road (despite the historical fact that Garrett County supported the Union during the Civil War).

There has even been a “Liberate Western Maryland” secession movement that aimed either to form an independent state or merge with a neighboring state. Unsurprisingly, the movement did not clearly define itself and faded into obscurity almost as quickly as the outrage over then Governor O’Malley’s gun control and redistricting measures.

Western Maryland is a wasteland of other such abandoned projects. To me, it is a place where passion only dies. From the infamous claims that we are “rebuilding Noah’s ark here!” where there stands only a spare I-beam framework to plans of a bypass that never left the drawing board and business franchises that close almost as quickly as they opened, it would seem that no opportunity for innovation goes unrealized.

At first people question “Have you heard anything about that bypass?” There is no news. A few years later someone may happen to remember there was supposed to be a new road here. Eventually the very mention of a bypass becomes a joke. People try to laugh off yet another plan chance did not smile upon and the government failed to achieve. They laugh because there is no other outlet for the constant disappointment they have faced.

The people of Western Maryland are lost, just as the people of the former coal towns of West Virginia and of the dying manufacturing cities of the Rustbelt are forgotten. There is an underlying tone of bitterness and resentment over what they once accomplished and produced, what has fallen into disrepair, what will never come to be. Some people hold onto hopes that manufacturing jobs will come back. Coal will come back. They are empty shreds of hope that merely keep these people and this region in the same state of stagnation and decay.

Whole families have lived, breathed, and died in the name of the coal and the electricity that brought America into the future. All they ever knew was coal, and coal mattered. Now it is a dirty word just as it has always been dirty work. Coal miners are no longer respected as good hard working individuals essential to the very infrastructure of the country. They are regarded as ignorant remnants of the past who would do better to find a new line of work. But as long as there is the promise that some politician will bring coal back, they will keep waiting for the day to come again that the mine shafts are reopened.

People from outside Appalachia tend to condemn the backwardness of this way of thinking. What outsiders fail to realize is that progress is so hated in Appalachia because it is exactly what lost the region all its prosperity and respectability. Change toward renewable energy, automated production, and consumer culture left places like Garrett County behind in the coal dust. Change is met with suspicion, opposition, and even fear precisely because of all that has been lost in the name of progress. This is a mindset that is incredibly difficult to overcome.

Any attempt to “educate” mountain folk out of poverty is resented as a patronizing implication of ignorance, inferiority, or incompetence. If there is one characteristic that is valued among the People of Appalachia more than any other, it is self-sufficiency. The ability to fix anything and survive off nothing is highly respected. Aid is rejected out of this subtle form of pride.There is grit in their stubborn insistence upon making a way for themselves, and yet that same stubbornness often keeps them from achieving their full potential through innovation. It is a cruel paradox.

I am proud that I can say I have grown up with my bare hands in the earth. I have labored for my bread and learned the steady determination and adaptability that comes from dependence upon external circumstances for survival. I have learned how to survive in hard places, to make my own light, to blaze a trail where there was none set before me, but now I want more.

I want more than a lifetime of scrambling to survive. I want more than that daily toil. I want to thrive. I want to learn and grow, and I cannot do that in place where passion for innovation is quenched. I cannot continue to expand my mind and my experiences in a place where things are done because that is how they have been done for generations.

I truly believe there is a quiet beauty in Appalachia that goes unnoticed. There is honor in the simple lifestyle of honest hardworking folk. But there is a sadness in it that weighs heavily on my heart. There is too much that could be that shall not come to pass. I have grown up with vision for what my home could become, how its people could learn to love one another and end cycles of oppression. I have worn myself to exhaustion and desperation in the name of these ideals and still, it seems, that Garrett County is the same as it has always been.

Throughout Appalachia, it is common to drive past old rusted cars overgrown with weeds, houses with broken windows, or outbuildings in shambles. Inherent in the detritus that litters these properties is a desperate hope that what is broken can be fixed. It is a mindset that is derived from the need to survive based on limited resources and uncertainty. While it is unlikely that any parts from that old car can be salvaged, hope that it will someday become useful means it will sit and rust and continue to disappear into the weeds until it is forgotten.

I cannot help but think that when I leave, my dreams for this place will become yet another abandoned project like Noah’s Ark or the bypass. My heart breaks at the thought of leaving behind another skeleton of what might have been. I love this place so deeply, and yet it pains me. I cannot look at a car overgrown with weeds without pity for the man who expects it to grow wings.