Mount Lookout, West Virginia is a blip on the radar, little more than a collection of families, a few modest doublewide trailers, and a post office. To get to my parents’ house, you have to break off from US Route 19 and take East Mount Lookout Road, driving through a collection of trailers scattered through the hills, past big-ass trucks resting in driveways like content, fattened grizzly bears. That night, I sat in the living room with my mom and dad, watching the nation break down over Trump on live TV. My dad sat to my left, slightly in front of me, my new nephew, Joshua, bouncing on his knee. Every once in a while my dad turned around and looked at me, to make sure I was still there and that I was having a good time. He said he’d like to go kill a deer. I said I’d like that, too. Understand this about me: I’ve done this for most of my life. It’s simply part of who I am. It’s part of who you are, too. Pull back the curtain of civilization and what you see is the quasi-medieval zombie world, or a Lord of the Flies, in all of us. It’s just the modern world that keeps a lid on it. I’m tempted to indict it, but my complicity makes such a critique feel self-righteous and hypocritical.
On TV, they were debating whether Trump is a total climate-change denier or if he merely denies that human activity has contributed to climate change.
“Don’t ever be one of them environmentalists, Joey,” my dad said. His gaze turned elsewhere when he added, “First they take your job, then they take everything you got.”
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