Paw Paw Blooms in Spring

If you ask folks about Appalachia, many different images and ideas come to mind.

For some, it is simply an area somewhere over in the Eastern United States.

For others, it brings to mind a region plagued by poverty and illiteracy.

For some of us, however, it is much more than that. Appalachia is a region of beauty, filled with rolling hills and dark mountains. It is dotted with thriving cities and quaint small towns. It is home to festivals that celebrate and preserve the past, as well as forward thinking businesses with an eye towards tomorrow.

Appalachia is as much about people as it is places.  People who have known hardship and pain, but refuse to surrender.  People who are hard-working and full of pride, as ready to lend a hand to a neighbor as they are to someone they’ve never met.   People whose hands can craft a skyscraper just as readily as they can craft a quilt.  People who are beautiful, strong, and endlessly creative.

Appalachia is a lot of things to a lot of people, but, to me, it is home.

It is the sound of croaking frogs and the swirl of fireflies over a newly plowed field on a Spring evening.

It is sitting by a stream, waiting for a fishing pole to double-over until the sun goes down in Summer.

It is the smell of dry leaves and distant chimney smoke in the Fall.

And it is the sight of a newly fallen snow, weighing heavy on pine tree branches in the Winter.

This is my Appalachia.

The Center for Virtual Appalachia (CVA) was created to serve as a collection of information and data about the Appalachian region. Always

growing, the main goal of the CVA is to help inform the people within and outside of the region about the many wonderful places and faces that

make us the unique area and people that we are today.

This is the Center for Virtual Appalachia, and I invite you to come share it with us.

Thank You,
David Campbell
Center for Virtual Appalachia Director