" How do you calculate fish fries in the backyard, kiddie pools in the front yard, and unfettered views of a thousand starts in the night sky? So much of life is intangible, and places don't feel like they're disappearing to the people who are living there.

I went to Accomack County and I found endless metaphors for a dying county in a changing landscape. There were endless metaphors that went the opposite way, too: rural life as a fairy tale, better than the rest of the country.

The reality is probably somewhere in between. The people who lived in Accomack were happy to live in Accomack. It wasn't small, it was close-knit. It wasn't backward, it was simple. There weren't a hundred things to do every night, but if you went to the one available thing, you were pretty much guaranteed to run into someone you knew. "

― Monica Hesse , American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land