Their remains poke up in the landscape here and there like snaggled teeth. Like me, you will wheeze from the grit and diesel smoke from coal trucks, drilling and blasting. You will be able to stand in one spot, scan the strangely level horizon and count seven mountains with tops sliced off and smoothed over. Should you fly low along the Kentucky-West Virginia border, you will see how whole stretches of that part of Appalachia could be mistaken for a blitzed war zone. On these mined mountains, don't expect to see trees, topsoil, spring-blooming bushes or delicate native grasses.
Animals are just as scarce.
Small valleys they are no more. They are filled with crumbled mountaintops. Their streams are rock ditches draining into stagnant holding ponds. All this cleared land with its expansive vistas may lead you to think of golf courses or housing developments. But not many people around Brushy are golfers, nor can they afford that kind of housing.