Pendleton County, Where you can hear a chainsaw three ridges away on a still morning. Where four railroads were proposed over forty years, and not one of them was ever built. Where the bank most people use opened in Franklin in 1925. Where the trout farm will oblige if the creek will not. Where the size of a woodpile is a weather forecast. Where the maple sap starts running around the tenth of January. Where the hardware store, the bank and the courthouse are all on the same street. Where there is no hospital, and everyone knows exactly how long it takes to get to Petersburg. Where the county was made in 1788 out of pieces of three others. Where ramps season is a season, the same as spring is. Where dark still means dark, and the stars are why people stop the car. Where one pastor serves three Methodist congregations and gets to all of them.