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Truck; Spec Mine
Truck; Spec Mine

Across the mountain from my home is a quintessential rural-Virginia back road. It shares a valley with a lovely little stream and a railroad track. Having lived most of my life in the relatively flat midwest, it always interests me how the railroads chose river valleys in which to lay their tracks, having allowed mother nature and millions of years of geologic forces to do the work of cutting through the mountains for them.

Those same forces created iron ore deposits under the mountains that were mined to fuel the industrial revolution in the United States. The Spec mine is one of these, now hidden on the mountain slope a few miles away. The ore removed from the mine was transported to the main line on a little set of tracks of its own, where it was loaded into rail cars next to the abandoned powerhouse.

A bit further along, a side road crosses the railroad tracks and meanders up the mountainside. Just past the crossing at the very edge of the road sits the carcass of this truck. Over the years any parts of value have been salvaged; the remains left to the force of entropy, and for target practice.