April 2004 – August 2004
By mid-spring the weather had softened, and I liked to think I carried some of that South Carolina warmth with me. One of the first things I did was transfer my license and registration to West Virginia so I could vote in the upcoming primary election. Normally, I procrastinated on anything related to the DMV until the absolute last minute, but this time it felt important. I wanted to stand beside my parents at the polls, as if claiming my place in this new community meant standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them in the most civic of rituals.
On May 11th, we drove to the end of the county road to Teverbaugh Chapel, a one-room church I’d passed hundreds of times but never stepped inside. The outside was plain—white clapboard siding, no steeple—but when we pushed the door open, the wood floors groaned under our weight. The air smelled faintly of old hymnals and dusted pine, and I caught myself wondering how many sermons, weddings, and funerals these walls had absorbed over the last century. The place carried its age like a quiet elder: weathered, unpretentious, but still standing tall.
I lingered for a moment before picking up my ballot, almost preferring the chapel itself over the act of voting. Politics had never been a frequent topic in my family, and truthfully, I knew little about the local candidates. I marked my choices in the state and national races, feeling more like an observer than a participant. Still, when I glanced over at my parents bent over their ballots, I felt a swell of pride. We were three people, connected not just by blood but by the act of choosing together.
When we left, sunlight filtered through the budding trees, and for a brief second, I wondered if I’d remember the names of the politicians on my ballot. Probably not. But I knew I’d remember the sound of those creaking floors, the way the chapel wrapped around us like a witness, and the pride in standing between my mother and father as I cast my first vote in my new home.
I also transferred to the Outback Steakhouse in Bridgeport. Walking into a new restaurant crew is always tricky—you never know if people will size you up as competition or welcome you in. To my relief, they were warm from the start. Within a week, I knew who I could joke with, who moved fastest on the line, and who to avoid during the dinner rush.
Fridays grew into a kind of ritual. After long shifts, a half-dozen of us would spill out into the back parking lot, leaning against cars still warm from the day’s sun. Someone always lit a cigarette, and soon the smoke drifted through the air, mixing with the faint smell of fryer grease that clung to our clothes. Music sometimes leaked from a car stereo—country, classic rock, whatever someone left playing when they shut the door. Our conversations hopped from venting about impossible customers (“Did you see table 42 tonight?”) to survival stories from rush hour, to the kinds of personal confessions you’d never expect to share with near-strangers. Those nights were less about what was said and more about the feeling of camaraderie—that sense of having survived something together.
Inside, though, I was stuck on salads. The lettuce was prepped in the mornings, but if the waiters didn’t run them, they stacked up in the window like little green reminders of my place. That meant raising my voice for pick-up, which I hated. I’d been on the other side, hustling tables, and I remembered how sharp those shouts could feel when you were drowning in orders. Sometimes it got tense—servers snapping back, me biting down frustration—but usually I found ways to smooth it over. Still, I longed to be back on the floor. The floor was alive with energy, where your personality mattered, where you could turn a table’s mood with a smile or a joke. Back on salads, I felt invisible.
The strange thing was, I knew I was good at waiting tables. I’d done it before, I could do it again. But standing in the kitchen, watching my co-workers trade stories out front, I realized how much I enjoyed being in the thick of it.
At the same time, I was preparing to return to college. I requested my transcripts from USC, checking the mailbox each day like a kid waiting on a birthday card. The thought of enrolling at WVU in the fall filled me with a kind of nervous excitement. I had already spent plenty of Saturdays, squeezed into the sea of gold and blue that flooded the stands. I remembered Marc Bulger slinging perfect spirals in the late ’90s, and the electric October night in 2003 when WVU stunned #3 Virginia Tech, 28–7. That stadium had shaken under our feet, the noise rolling through the hills like thunder. Those moments etched themselves into my imagination.
But when I finally looked deeper into their athletic programs, I hit a wall: WVU didn’t have a men’s track team. The news stung harder than I expected. Sprinting wasn’t just something I did—it was a discipline, a rhythm I had built my life around. Without it, I felt unmoored. Watching highlight reels of football glory only underscored the emptiness of knowing my own sport—the one I’d poured years into—had no place here. I considered other options: intramural sports, maybe club teams, but none of them carried the same weight. Running had been my language, and without it, I struggled to find another way to speak.
Meanwhile, life on the farm shifted. My parents moved the alpacas to John and Barb’s ranch, a place that felt instantly different from Heart’s Desire. Where that larger farm overflowed with hundreds of animals—each one a number in a ledger—John and Barb’s land carried a quieter rhythm. Their herd was smaller, and because of that, every animal received careful, almost tender attention. You could see it in the way Barb brushed out the fiber, talking to each alpaca like it was a friend, or how John checked the fences himself, making sure no post leaned the wrong way.
It didn’t take long for John and Barb to become more than just fellow ranchers. They became friends. The kind you didn’t schedule weeks in advance, but the kind who showed up with a dish in their hands and laughter already on their lips. It was regular to find Mom and Barb at the kitchen table, laughing like sisters over coffee, or Dad and John outside sketching plans for the next alpaca show. Their dinners together stretched late into the night, plates pushed aside while conversation carried on.
What struck me most was the easy way they fit into our lives. With them, it didn’t feel like business. It felt like family. When the alpacas settled into their new routines, my parents did too—lighter, more relaxed. It was as if moving the herd also shifted a burden off their shoulders, replacing it with something warmer and lasting. Looking back, I realize that John and Barb weren’t just friends of the farm; they became an integral part of our story, woven into the fabric of who we were becoming in West Virginia.
Around the same time, West Virginia was becoming the epicenter of a natural gas boom. One afternoon, a representative from Waco Oil and Gas pulled up the drive. I can’t remember his face now—just a pressed shirt, a clipboard, and the kind of polite smile that said he’d practiced the pitch a hundred times. He walked the land with my dad, pointing to maps, talking about royalties and opportunity. The offer sounded reasonable enough: a steady check in exchange for something buried deep beneath our feet.
After some back-and-forth, my parents signed the agreement. The choice wasn’t reckless—it was practical. Farming, even with alpacas, had never been about big profit. This was a chance to take the weight off their shoulders, to make the land work for them instead of the other way around. Still, I wondered if we really knew what we were agreeing to.
By summer, the east hill of our property hummed with activity. Trucks rattled down the dirt road, drilling rigs rising like skeletal towers against the green. Even when they were still, they seemed to vibrate in the air. The machines groaned and whined, and when water was released, it came with a rush so sudden it echoed through the valley.
Waco did a careful job blending the new wells into the hillside—fresh gravel, neatly fenced, nothing sloppy—but no amount of polish could hide the change. Where the farm had once been marked by rolling fields of grass or the steady whirr of cicadas, now it carried a constant, low mechanical hum. At night, lying on the couch, I could hear it all: the groaning rigs, the hiss of pressure, even the faint voices of night-shift workers drifting up the hill.
It wasn’t loud enough to keep me awake, but it was enough to remind me the farm was no longer just ours. Something else had moved in—something we had invited—and now it shared the same night air, the same silence. The land hadn’t lost its beauty, but it had gained a presence we couldn’t ignore.
June 22nd started out ordinary enough. I was driving down NASA Boulevard, a road I knew well. It wound through the hills in a series of sharp, twisting curves that demanded respect even on the best of days. That afternoon it had just rained, the pavement still slick and shining like glass. Drops clung stubbornly to the edges of the windshield, refracting the last hints of gray light.
I came into the curve at only four miles over the limit, but in hindsight, it might as well have been seventy. The tires skidded as if the road had turned to oil. I cranked the wheel, but the car refused to listen—sliding forward, stubborn, unyielding. Time seemed to bend, stretching each second into something longer, slower, more deliberate.
Ahead of me, headlights burst into view, rounding the curve in the opposite lane. A Chevy Blazer. In the brief instant before impact, I locked eyes with the driver. Wide, panicked—his expression mirrored my own. There was no anger, no judgment. Just the raw recognition that we were both trapped in the same unfolding disaster.
The collision came like an explosion. The airbag deployed with a deafening crack, the white fabric slamming into my chest and face. For a heartbeat, the world vanished into smoke and powder, a chalky haze filling the car. I didn’t even register the pain at first—only the disorienting silence that followed. Then came the smell: burnt chemicals, acrid and sharp, mixing with the damp air drifting in through the broken seams of the car.
I remember reaching for the steering wheel, trying to steady myself, only to feel the strange dead weight in my wrist. It wasn’t agony, not yet—just a dull, growing throb, as if my body was only now catching up to what had happened.
We stumbled out of our vehicles, the driver of the Blazer shaken but upright. “Are you okay?” I asked, voice trembling. he nodded, though I wasn’t sure if it was true. My wrist pulsed harder with each second. Blue lights arrived quickly, sirens carving through the hills. When the officer handed me the citation—for failing to control my vehicle—I didn’t argue. I had lost control. That much was obvious.
While I recovered, John and Barb sent food home with my parents—homemade casseroles, fresh bread, the kind of meals that warmed more than just your stomach. Those simple acts of kindness meant more than I could say. It wasn’t just food; it was proof that we weren’t alone, that even in the middle of uncertainty and injury, someone was thinking of us.
I stayed busy during the day—helping with chores one-handed, keeping up with small tasks around the farmhouse—but nights were different. With my wrist wrapped in plaster, I’d settle onto the couch and listen. The rigs on the east hill groaned like some restless creature in the distance, their engines droning low and steady. Sometimes, carried through the humid summer air, came the voices of the two night-shift workers. I never saw their faces, but I came to recognize the rise and fall of their tones, the easy rhythm of their conversations about hunting trips, family stories, and even ghost tales passed between them to break the monotony.
Lying there, half in pain, half in rest, I realized their voices had become a kind of lullaby. The machinery droned, the men talked, and somewhere in the mix was a strange comfort—like overhearing the world continue on, steady and unbroken, while I healed. I never told them, but in those nights, the sound of strangers’ voices kept me company.
Life at home came with its own frustrations—and its own comedy. My dad had bought a four-wheeler, and the moment he climbed on it, the world might as well have disappeared. He’d roar off into the woods like some pioneer blazing new trails, and Mom and I would be left pacing the yard, dinner cooling on the table, shouting into the trees like lunatics. “Dinner’s ready!” … “Where are you?” Nothing. Just the cicadas answering back.
It became a running joke, though not always a funny one. Sometimes we’d sit with food my mom picked up growing cold, sometimes we’d be late for plans in town, waiting for Dad to emerge from the woods like a kid who lost track of time.
One night, while watching Stargate SG-1 together, I noticed the team using walkie-talkies to stay in contact as they went through alien worlds. It clicked. The next day, I drove to Walmart and bought a set. When I handed one to Dad, he grinned like I’d just given him a new toy. From then on, whenever he disappeared into the woods, we’d click the radio.
“Dad, head back to the gate,” I’d say, channeling my best Colonel O’Neill voice.
“Copy that,” he’d reply, as if he were about to step through a wormhole instead of ride back for meatloaf.
What started as a solution to a problem turned into a running gag, a way of keeping tabs that made us laugh instead of argue. It didn’t stop him from disappearing, but at least now we had a way to bring him back—Stargate-style.
By late summer, my WVU acceptance letter finally arrived. I can still picture it—thick envelope, the kind that made your heart race the moment you pulled it from the mailbox. For weeks, I’d worried I’d overlooked something in the application, forgotten a transcript, or simply wasn’t good enough to get in. Tearing it open and reading those words—Welcome to West Virginia University—was like letting go of a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. Relief washed over me in a way that made my whole body feel lighter.
We celebrated in small, quiet ways—a smile that lingered on my mom’s face all evening, my dad clapping me on the shoulder with a kind of wordless pride. For me, it was the certainty I’d been craving. After months of change, detours, and doubt, the path ahead was finally clear.
Orientation came quickly, and suddenly I was swept along with hundreds, maybe thousands, of other students and their parents. The bookstore was pure chaos—lines snaking between shelves of gold-and-blue gear, students juggling armfuls of textbooks, parents trying to make sense of maps and class lists. But beneath the noise and confusion was a current of energy, electric and alive.
I caught myself smiling at the sheer possibility of it all. Standing there among strangers who were about to become classmates, I felt something click: I belonged here. Not because of track, not because of the past, but because a new chapter was opening.
On August 23, 2004, I walked into my first class at West Virginia University. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t just drifting. I was stepping into something bigger, and I thought, I think I’m going to like it here.