Landmark Communications Inc. The barn slouches atop a meadowland knoll high in the Alleghenies of western Virginia. It's a forlorn thing, roof fuzzed with rust, boards warped and worn by a century of long highland winters. Its floor is ankle-deep in manure, and hay dangles from cracks in the ceiling.
Crickets chirp in the gloom.
In the windswept yard, ancient farm machinery lies rusting between clumps of purple thistle, along with a wedge of old wagon wheel, a piece of shotgun-sprayed sheet metal. Cold wind sweeps over the knoll, and I zip my jacket tight around my neck. It seems abandoned, this place, forgotten. For the state's two mightiest rivers begin here, within yards of each other. And I aim to journey to the sea, more than 400 miles away, on one of them.