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Unedited article (below) and video/photos (above) to appear in the September edition of A Wide Place in the Road

Healing Appalachia

The long, wonderful weekend at Healing Appalachia had come to an end. We were in the middle of packing up our campsite when some commotion caught our attention. Trying as hard as we could, we waved at the speeding golf cart and its two red shirt clad workers. Emphatically, we were attempting to point out the trail of garbage that had been falling out of their cart behind them.

They eventually saw us and waved back.

"Hey y'all!" They yelled, waving like you would if you were the Grand Marshall of a parade.

We stood at the campsite laughing and shaking our heads as the scene played out. In the cart there were wide smiles. Behind the cart was a trail of garbage. More trash fell out with each bump they hit as they bound down the grassy hill.

We started pointing at the garbage left in their wake which made them slow down enough to peer back.

"Ohhh shit. Yeah.....” They both surveyed the garbage for a minute and then smiled and yelled to us, “Yeah, we'll be back for that."

With no hesitation the accelerator was pressed to the floor, and they were off again. We could hear their voices and laughter well into the distance.

They were happy.

Vibrant.

In the moment.

And most importantly, alive.

Had I not spent the past few days learning what some of the red shirt wearing workers had been through to get to this point, I would have been very pessimistic about them driving by like that. What I had learned though, was a valuable reminder that some people's paths make my own struggles look like a day at the beach.

They did come back for the trash. It took a few trips, but they came back and got all of it, goofing off, smiling and laughing through every second of it.

Three Days Earlier…

This was my second year attending Healing Appalachia and I was having the time of my life. Soaking it all in while I was wandering around backstage, taking up close pictures of the performing artists and I was even able to get a small conversation in with my personal heart throb Sierra Ferrell. Hanging with other photographers and writers in the front stage photo pit is the best place to be and I was on cloud 9.

While walking around it was hard not to notice the hundreds of workers at HA all wearing bright red shirts. While waiting to go through security the first day I saw a red shirt girl taking the metal detector wand and waving it over her necklace. She did it over and over, making a “beat” with the noise it made as it passed over the metal. When she got to me, she must have been upset at the lack of noise the detector was making so she started making noises for it, “beeee-oooop, boop boop boop” she said as she passed it over me. “Yer good honey, you can head on in.”

I started paying more attention to the “red shirts” after that. They were all working diligently, but at the same time “differently” than everyone else.

I said something to HA board member Thom Boggs about the people in red shirts and asked if he minded if I interviewed a few of them. He got this huge smile on his face and said, “They are why we’re here. Yes, please talk to as many as you can.”

 I knew HA was about ending addiction “or something” along those lines, but if you’re like me you’ve been to plenty of fundraisers, and after a while the heartfelt speeches and donation requests all blur together, and you just hope a couple bucks of your ticket money or donation makes it to those who really need it.

 After I conducted a few interviews, my idea of what the festival was, had been turned upside down. I realized the story wasn’t on the stage, it was under those red shirts.

 Four hundred and fifty people from all over Appalachia had traveled from the recovery houses they were living in to spend a week camping and volunteering at the WV state fairgrounds to “Heal in Appalachia”. Four hundred and fifty people actively in recovery from addiction. All of them working, laughing, crying, struggling, and helping each other live one day at a time.

 Less than two months before he came to HA as a volunteer, Mark Laws had overdosed and was lying unconscious while his eighty-year-old mother was performing C.P.R. on him. Here now, from Bridge to Shore Recovery in Tennessee, and with fifty two days of sobriety under his belt he was able to return the favor as he was the one to perform C.P.R. on a gentleman during his first night working security at HA. The result of which saved a life.

 “It’s mind-bending.” He said as he pointed to a fellow red shirt, “Me and that guy on the end were in rehab together, we were looking at each other yesterday and saying we can't believe thirty days ago this is where we'd be. We’re just trying to pay it forward, just like it’s been done to us, and keep it going.”

 I asked Antony Horton what it was like to make connections with people that have had some of the same struggles he’s had.

“Where I come from is manipulation and treachery. Usually if people try to help you it’s because of their gain, but with this community it’s not. They want to see you sheltered and clothed and then they want to ask you what’s going on between your ears [and ask] are you OK? They don’t use that [information] against you. That’s a beautiful thing at this point in my life, because I’ve never had that.”

Dave Lavender, president of HA explained that some of these people have made such bad mistakes that their families won’t speak to them anymore. He continued to say that many have no luck at finding work, and that some have broken trust with people so many times that when they really need help, no one is willing to take a chance on them, leaving many without hope or the resources to rise from having fallen so far. You could see Dave’s expression change from despair to joy when he said that HA, is here to give them jobs, show them trust, and provide community for all.

“I feel pretty to be special here really, we’re recovering… and they’re allowing us to do a big responsibility, TRUSTING US to do big responsibility. It feels good [to be trusted].” Julie Lucas on what it means for her to be at HA.

I watched as the volunteers set up the stage, their iconic red shirts covered with signatures from musicians signing them. There were endless smiles as they worked the festival grounds together, chatting it up and enjoying the sun on their faces (and the rain on their backs). The work was being done gleefully, maybe not “perfectly” but gleefully. After some of the stories I’d heard them tell about death, despair and pain, I wouldn’t have thought that gleefully would be a word you could use to describe anyone who had gone through that much trauma. Yet they were gleeful.

“This is a very big deal. The whole point of Healing Appalachia is [that] it’s a healing process for everybody where we can get together and share our stories and know that we are not alone, that we can beat this addiction thing and people don’t have to die anymore. This is one of the best opportunities I’ve ever had.” Jamie Barrs

I watched board members Dave and Thom both transform from being focused with furrowed brows in the mountains of work it takes to keep the show running smoothly, to excited and cheerful when I told them of the positive connections I’d made. They should be, Hope in the Hills (the organizing body of Healing Appalachia) will have given away over one million dollars by the end of 2024 and is recognized as the world’s largest recovery-based music festival.

It’s a rare bird when you find a fundraiser of that size doing what it is supposed to be doing: helping people directly with no middleman. It’s another thing completely for them to be doing it so well, that the work becomes invisible, and you only see results in action. Red shirt after red shirt working in the trenches with one another, feeling alive, feeling needed, feeling normal. I know there are hard times that I don’t see, but from what I did see there were hearts full of love searching for a way to keep that feeling going.