"Oh, like the 'Country Roads' song, right?"

Almost inevitably, every time I disclose to someone that I am from West Virginia, I am asked this question. John Denver's folk song "Take Me Home, Country Roads" seems to be one of the only reflections of the Mountain State which resonate with many. Toward the end of last semester, one of my friends from New York insisted on singing me the song everytime he encountered me--complete with an exaggerated Appalachian twang.

(Needless to say, his renditions of "Country Roads" quickly dissipated after one 2:30-something A.M., during final exams week, at which he set a speaker outside of my door and played the song at maximum volume. A mob of stressed, sleepless females then angrily rushed into the hall to bombard him, and that was the end of that.)

Generally, the comments on the song are positive. "Oh, that's such a good song!" "I don't really like country, but that song isn't bad." "He really captures how beautiful the state is."

Coming from an ardent admirer of simple, heartfelt folk music, I agree. Yes, "Country Roads" is, in itself, a good song. Coming a West Virginia native who has no choice but to accept the song seemingly as part of my identity, I cannot form a personal opinion toward it. I neither particularly like nor dislike the song.

After all, when was the last time you thought, "Hm, that 'Star-Spangled Banner' song really deserves a Grammy?"

And yes, like students learn the national anthem or the pledge of allegiance, a girl once asked me if West Virginian students actually learned "Country Roads" in school.

Maybe, if anywhere in the state, they do in Morgantown.

On the contrary, I can recall the first time that I ever heard the song. I was five or six years old. Ironically enough, I was actually riding along the infamous winding, wooded backroads with my aunt--herself the epitome of a true West Virginian, a die-hard WVU Mountaineers fan and a manager of a whitewater-rafting company on the New River. I remember asking her to play it again and again, wondering whether or not we could see the singer in concert.

She told me about his sudden death in a plane crash, to which I asked again to hear the song. At such a young age, I remember realizing how his death somehow fit so appropriately to the song and to the state itself. It somehow reflected even more perfectly the tragic loss, and the desperate longing, of a place that, despite being so naturally beautiful, remains economically poor and socially stagnant.

The song is not perfect. Often, my father and I have jokingly questioned whether or not John Denver is actually singing about West Virginia and not westernVirginia because his first verse sings of "Blue Ridge Mountains" and the "Shenandoah River"--the latter which only partially runs through West Virginia and not Virginia, and the former not crossing into West Virginia at all (The Blue Ridge Parkway stretches through Virginia into North Carolina).

However, the next verse sings "All my memories gather 'round her/miner's lady, stranger to blue water." Now he describes the Mountain State. My memories do gather around my home, and the coal mining industry is at the heart of West Virginian identity. I can recall several "miner's ladies"--my own aunts, grandmothers, and friends' mothers among them.

They are some of the most resilient women I know. As for "stranger to blue water," my own interpretation may seem strange, but I have always considered the lyrics to refer to the blue water of the ocean. West Virginians are familiar with the crashing "whitewater" of the rivers and streams flowing throughout the mountains, but, in a landlocked state, we do not experience the "blue water" of the ocean. Of course, "misty taste of moonshine" refers to none other than the infamous bootleg liquor itself, which does indeed abound in West Virginia.

However, it is the third verse that, especially hearing it now that I have moved away from the Mountain State, thoroughly resonates with me:

"I hear her voice, in the morning hour she calls me.

The radio reminds me of my home far away.

And driving down the road, I get the feeling

That I should have been home yesterday--

Yesterday."

John Denver's repeat of the word "yesterday" is not an accident, nor an added frill for auditory pleasure. If you have heard the song, you recognize that when he utters the word, his voice rises and wavers--a vibrato cry that is so rich with the feeling of regret.

If you are a native of West Virginia, you understand. You understand that your state is not a place people leave. Your people are a people who, for centuries, has hidden so deep within the mountains and has been digging so deep into the earth to survive, that they had no choice but to turn their gazes toward the ground rather than to the sky.

The world that lay beyond the mountains was a government that economically exploited their labor and a nation that socially ridiculed their intellect. The state itself was born out of its people who did not belong with the southern aristocrats of Richmond. The Appalachian people learned that they could trust no one, and they just wanted to be left alone.

This mentality has changed little. Mistrust of what lies beyond the mountains gives way to a fear of anything that is unfamiliar. Growing up, you are weaved into this culture and are tightly bound to your family and to home. However, also growing up, you learn about what is "unfamiliar." You learn that your state is economically struggling, that there is little opportunity unless you study engineering or accept a career in the medical field.

So, you become dissatisfied. Your dreams grew too large to be confined to the mountains. You move away.

Yet, that initial bind to your home never really leaves. Inside you, there is a guilt that settles within you, like the coal dust that settled in the lungs of your ancestors that you now abandon. You receive a call that your grandmother is gravely ill, that your little brother has won a statewide award, that your best friend is engaged to her high-school sweetheart--and you are not there.

You are no longer on the inside of the mountains, and you realize that you yourself have become the outsider to distrust. You too think, "I should have been home yesterday--I should be, I should--"

Thus, there is this conflict. There is the struggle to stay when, in reality, you know that you cannot. A real movement, #thestruggletostay, is being led by young West Virginians who, in leaving their home, suffer this inner conflict. (More information on #thestruggletostay will likely follow in future articles.)

Yes, my state is the state featured in John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads." No, it is not my favorite song, nor is it even the official state song. It is one out of four state songs, and it was approved as one only in 2014. Unless, of course, you're in Morgantown, where students have been taught it is the state song for probably over thirty yearsnow. (I'm totally kidding by the way. I really do love some of you Mountaineer fanatics!)

In all honesty, albeit cheesy, seriousness, however, I do feel nostalgia every. single. time. Every time you even mention that song to me, I smile and even quietly laugh accordingly. Inside me, though, is that little guilt ever weighing against my heart. Inside me are those binds that still tie me to the mountains, to the rivers, and to so many loving faces ever winding softly around my memory, like the country roads themselves.

John Denver's voice sings, "Almost heaven--" and I think of yesterday. For a fleeting moment, the regret that I am usually able to ignore suddenly presses unrelentingly. To the place I belong, right? I think, "I should be home."

Perhaps that is why I cannot ever really like the song.