I decided that every fall break I shall volunteer. Last year it was Biloxi, this time around West Virginia. We traveled to Appalachia, an impoverished region located in a valley between the mountains. We stayed in a small center and each day drove to our work site. Mine was a man named Eddy, a scrawny man with no more than three teeth in is head. He was old but his eyes were a vibrant blue and he walked around with vigor and anticipation. His house had not only been victim to a flood but an electrical fire had also completely destroyed the top floor. When I walked inside for the first time I was surprised. There were no walls, only yellow insulation nestled between moist wood. There was a couch, a stereo, a fridge, a heating unit, and not much else. There was no shower or hot water. We figured they used the river behind their home to bathe, and what they ate or where they slept was anyone's guess. All of the houses and trailers were horrendously run down. They seemed to be scattered on either side of the winding road with no set course or pattern; it was as though they had just fallen from the sky and happened to land where they did. With each poorly maintained shack I passed, I thought, people live like this? No luxuries, no cell phone service, growing up to be a mechanic or a coal miner, this is all these people ever got out of life. Yet Eddy seemed happy, even though he lived in a house with no walls. Appalachia had a kind of rural charm to it, one that grew on me the longer I stayed. There was a certain purity to the land and the people, as if they and their surroundings were shrouded in an innocence I had never seen before. The trees, with their fiery turning leaves, were absolutely gorgeous. There were no monstrous office buildings or seventeen year old punks driving sports cars. Everything was simple and necessary. While we sided the house and put the insulation up Eddy cooked corn bread and beans. There was an old Iroc sitting out in the back that he and his family members would take turns sitting in. They never turned it on and I doubt it even worked; they would just walk outside, climb in, smoke a cigarette or two and chat, then mosey on back inside. We worked hard to bring that man's house one step closer to being completed, and at the end I was proud of myself and everyone else with whom I had worked. I, like most of my peers, have become very dependent on material excess, but this weekend I did without it all. Biloxi had gotten a lot of publicity, being a consequence of Katrina, but the people in Appalachia never received such notoriety. I'm sure they don't want it either, for they seem content living the way they do.