The Quiet Zone

by Stephen Kurczy

  AT A CAROL SERVICE on Christmas Eve, I’d felt like I knew half the congregation. Jenna and I sat a row behind the family of Laurel Dilley, the high school math teacher. They sat in the same row as Heather Niday, the radio station manager and wife of Chuck Niday, Quiet Zone cop. Behind us sat Diane Schou and her husband, Bert. Debbie Ervine from Trent’s shared the piano bench with Pastor David Fuller’s son, who tooted on a harmonica.

  When the lights dimmed for a nativity reenactment, the church was silent and attentive. There were no ringing phones, no blinking screens, no temptations to scroll through social media or check email. Two children dressed as Mary and Joseph walked down the aisle and sat by a manger, soon joined by the three wise men, those foreign astrologers who had been on a mystical quest to find a savior. I thought of how so many people were on a quest to find quiet, which manifested itself in Green Bank, with the electrosensitives worshipping the giant white telescopes, finding healing from the sacred quiet. They had faith in Green Bank to save them from the ills of the modern world.

  For the electrosensitives seeking relief from their pain, for the astronomers in need of a quiet sky, for the hippies desiring a peaceful landscape, for the tech-addicted tourists forced to go offline, the Quiet Zone was an unexpected refuge. It was an escape, at its best, from ourselves. Perhaps quiet, in itself, could be a savior, redeeming us from our own noise. The electrosensitives were right: we do need a break from our devices. The hippies were right: we do need to reconnect with the land. The astronomers were right: we do need to be silent to listen.

  Before returning to New York City, I said goodbye to Betty and Ebbie at Trent’s. One of their stores, Trent’s 3, had recently shut down and been bought out by the Par Mar gas station chain. The restaurant Station 2 was also up for sale, as if the businessman Buster Varner were giving up on the area. How long could Betty and Ebbie hold on to their way of life? With the National Science Foundation preparing to announce its decision on the observatory’s future, who knew how much longer the facility would remain open?

  “Y’all come back now,” Betty always said when I left Trent’s, as if she expected me to pop back in any day. She’d tease me to bring Jenna more often to Green Bank, making me feel like she was welcoming us both into the community.

  “We’d like to be around her some,” she said.

  “Maybe she’ll be my wife one of these days,” I responded.

  “Don’t wait too long, she might decide to get somebody else. You better marry ’er and keep ’er.”

  “Maybe we should get married here.”

  “Well, that’d be great. The church would be a great place for you to get married.”

  “And you and Chuck can sing in the choir,” I said.

  “And Debbie can play the piano.”

  “And you can make mac and cheese.”

  “Don’t you forget this,” she said. “We’ve got it all worked out.”

  Betty waddled away from the register, her arthritic knee swinging.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “The Never-Ending Story”

  “YOU DIDN’T BRING YOUR GIRLFRIEND this time?” Betty Mullenax asked. It was a warm summer day in 2019. I stood by the register inside Trent’s General Store.

  “She couldn’t come,” I said. “And she’s no longer my girlfriend.”

  “Oh,” Betty said apologetically.

  “She’s my wife,” I said.

  “Well, congratulations to you!” said Betty’s daughter Debbie Ervine, who was standing nearby.

  “And we’re having a baby,” I said.

  “You’re becoming a papa real quick, aren’t you?” Betty said. “Well, congratulations. Maybe next time she’ll be along.”

  “Maybe the whole family will be along.”

  It was good to see Betty. She’d had a tough summer. Her husband, Ebbie, had died in June. He’d gotten pneumonia and spent several weeks at West Virginia University Medicine’s Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, three hours away. On the day he was discharged, he suffered a stroke while walking to their car and passed away soon after. The afternoon of his funeral was the first time Trent’s ever closed on a day that wasn’t a Sunday or a federal holiday. About 150 people attended the service, so many that Pastor David Fuller delayed the start so everyone could squeeze inside. Betty had saved a handful of bulletins, and she retrieved one from the back room to give me.

  “We were married for sixty-five years,” Betty said. “See if you can make yours last that long.”

  “I’ll be lucky if I live that long,” I said. “I’d have to live to a hundred and one if I wanted to be married for sixty-five years.”

  “He was a good one,” she said. Her lip quivered as she held back tears. She turned to the register to ring up another customer.

  THAT SUMMER, the National Science Foundation announced it would continue to fund about two-thirds of the Green Bank Observatory’s annual $14 million budget for another five years, which came as a huge relief to many astronomers, though not as a major surprise. It had become understood that the NSF’s review was a hard nudge for the observatory to become more financially self-sufficient, and in that regard the initiative was successful.

  As for whether the National Security Agency influenced the decision, the answer was befitting for a spy organization: it was a secret. Anthony Beasley, director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, told me that the impact to Sugar Grove from the Green Bank Observatory’s potential closure had been discussed and it would have been “a cheap thing” for the NSA to reach out to the NSF on the observatory’s behalf. As for whether that happened, “I don’t know,” Beasley said, “but I’m not sure that I would.” The NSA did not respond to my requests for comment.

  Aside from NSF funding, the other third of the observatory’s budget was coming from tourism, from a collaboration with the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), and from the Breakthrough Listen initiative to search for alien life—even if the search for E.T. seemed as whimsical as ever. Breakthrough Listen had recently announced that a survey of 1,327 nearby stars found no signatures of technologically capable life beyond Earth. But other discoveries were still in the offing. Over the summer, the Green Bank Telescope detected the most massive neutron star ever observed, with 2.17 times the mass of our sun crammed into a sphere only 18.6 miles across, contributing to an understanding of just how dense an object can get before imploding into a black hole. Such discoveries could continue until the NSF put the observatory back up for review, at which point the question would again arise: What is the Quiet Zone worth to us?

  The observatory was already strategizing ways to bring greater appreciation to Green Bank. One idea was to host “digital detox” retreats, offering conference space to corporate groups that might value being “away from the distraction of connection,” according to Michael Holstine, the business manager. He had also broached the idea with the NSF and the state historic preservation office of applying the Quiet Zone to the National Register of Historic Places. “We think it’s a national treasure and don’t want to see that changed,” he told me. Green Bank already had one National Historic Landmark: the Reber Radio Telescope, built in 1937 in Illinois and relocated to the observatory’s campus. The NSF’s recent review of the property had concluded there were at least forty additional structures of historic significance. But while a telescope or building is a tangible object, humans have proven less adept at valuing something invisible and nebulous like radio quiet.

  In just the few years that I’d been visiting, the Quiet Zone had changed irrevocably, with the amount of cell service beamed into Pocahontas essentially tripling. At the start of 2016, the only cell provider in the county was AT&T, which had antennas in Hillsboro, Marlinton, and atop Snowshoe Mountain Resort. Since then, AT&T and T-Mobile had started transmitting from Caesar Mountain near Lobelia; T-Mobile had installed antennas in Buckeye and Marlinton; and T-Mobile and Verizon were now in discussions to provide cell service ato
p Snowshoe, joining AT&T on the ski slopes.

  In the basement of the observatory’s science offices, I found Chuck Niday amid a tangle of electronics, toolboxes, radio equipment, and machinery. I asked for his latest assessment of local WiFi. He swiveled to his computer and opened a map that showed all the hotspots he’d found recently: about 175 within two miles of the observatory and 355 within about a five-mile radius. At last count, the observatory estimated there were about 150 households within two miles. There now appeared to be more WiFi signals than homes, if that was even possible.

  “This means everybody has WiFi,” I said with astonishment.

  “That’s pretty much true,” Niday said. “We go out on these site inspections, back on some godforsaken road, and anywhere there’s a house, there’s almost always a WiFi signal. And it’s gonna get worse.”

  Interference was also coming from within the observatory. Niday had recently seen an employee pay for a meal at the cafeteria using a credit card app on a smartphone, a device that was supposed to be powered off at the observatory. “This is somebody that should have known better,” Niday said.

  In response to the problem of smartphones and WiFi, the observatory was considering building a tall wall or a large dirt berm around its property, a way of physically shielding the telescopes from radio noise. Since the community couldn’t—or wouldn’t—respect the quiet, a last option was to hide behind an actual wall.

  But a wall wouldn’t do anything about what was overhead. The astronomers were also voicing concern about proposals from private firms such as SpaceX and Amazon that wanted to roll out global WiFi through a network of tens of thousands of orbiting satellites. The proposition was also alarming to the electrosensitives.

  “That’s a death sentence for me,” Jennifer Wood said of global WiFi. To escape it, she had developed plans for a kind of “hobbit house” with thick clay walls and a sod roof that would block the incoming radio waves. She had also helped lead a protest in Washington, D.C., against global WiFi. “We need to start lobbying for radio quiet zones throughout the United States and the world,” she told a small crowd from the steps to the U.S. Supreme Court.

  Across the hallway from Niday, Paulette Woody sat at her desk, her hand in a brace. That summer, she’d undergone surgery for carpal tunnel in her right hand. If ever there was an indication of the rising amount of paperwork that the Quiet Zone administrator faced, it was that Woody’s hands were failing under the load. In her first week back, Woody had processed “a couple hundred” coordination requests. Applications were still primarily for cell service, radio, emergency services, amateur radio, microwave, and television. She hadn’t seen many 5G installations yet.

  “Heaven only knows what’s going to happen after 5G,” Woody said. “It’s going to be 6G, 10G, 12G, it’ll be like the Rocky movies. It’s the never-ending story of cell and technology.”

  Beyond threats to the Quiet Zone, Woody was anxious about what tech was doing to her own family. Her granddaughter had an insatiable appetite for YouTube videos and once used up Woody’s monthly allotment of satellite internet data in two days.

  “I remember when I was a kid, the social place was the kitchen table,” Woody once told me. “That was the original social media, and we’ve lost that. Now when I go to visit with people, they’re always strapped to that phone, even in the living room or around the kitchen table.”

  “There’s something that works really well,” she said. “It’s called O-F-F. Just turn the thing off.”

  Or you could not have a cellphone, I suggested.

  “You don’t have a phone?” Woody responded, bewildered, when I told her I didn’t own a cellphone. Even the Quiet Queen had a flip phone. “Oh my gosh, a millennial without a cellphone? You are living rural, aren’t you? You are just an oddball.”

  QUIET WAS NO LONGER a default of living in Pocahontas. Cell service had also arrived to High Rocks, spurring the young women’s camp to create new rules to help break youths off their devices. Campers were now asked to check in their smartphones for the duration of their stay, and this hard line against tech had turned into the organization’s biggest recruiting hurdle, according to Sarah Riley. “The idea of stepping away from your phone is a bigger and bigger and bigger challenge that takes you far outside of your comfort zone,” she told me.

  Going offline had become way scarier than being within a mile of a neo-Nazi organization, or what was left of one. High Rocks was, by virtue of its quarter century existence and influence on the community’s youths, a subtle rebuke to the legacy of William Pierce. High Rocks praised diversity, challenged youths to examine their biases, and sought to build inclusive communities. Thousands of young men and women—some of whom had family once associated with the National Alliance—had received support from High Rocks and were now carrying that mission forward.

  Meanwhile, the National Alliance was still trying to sell its remaining land. It’s a “million-dollar property,” the organization’s chairman, Will Williams, told me. He thought a church group might like to turn the half dozen buildings into a religious retreat, which sounded far-fetched. David Pringle told me that “most of that place needs to be burned down at this point.” Aside from the property’s disturbing history, any buyer would have to expect the occasional neo-Nazi or white supremacist to wander through. Williams said the National Alliance retained a right-of-way to the top of the mountain so people could pay their respects where Pierce’s ashes were scattered.

  It was probably in Williams’s best interest that he not visit Pocahontas County much anymore, since De Thompson told me he wanted to kill him. At some point, Williams had blocked the road to the compound, which enraged Thompson. He’d gotten his rifle, snuck up a nearby ridge, and trained his gunsight on Williams. He said he would have pulled the trigger had Jay Hess and two young men not walked into the scope.

  “I don’t talk about me putting crosshairs on people, but now that I’m closer to dying I don’t give a fuck,” Thompson said when I stopped by his RV that summer. “The only reason I haven’t done something too outrageous is I’ve got to pull something off to make enough money to leave Linda and my dogs in a little better condition than what they are.”

  I didn’t doubt that Thompson could be dangerous, especially as he launched into a bizarre, bloody tale of having “lived through the Pablo Escobar days down south,” working as a kind of hatchet man for criminal drug organizations in Florida and South Carolina. He said he’d robbed a string of pharmacies and homes, with a resident once waking up as Thompson tried to steal a diamond ring from the man’s finger. “Last thing he saw was the butt of that .357,” Thompson said. “I went wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! ‘Go to sleep, motherfucker!’”

  “That’s a violent assault,” I said, somewhat shocked.

  “That’s the only time it ever turned violent,” Thompson said. “Nobody ever knew I was there. They’d just wake up and everything would be gone.”

  Linda’s voice crackled over a handheld radio. Through the static, I heard her say she’d found a half dozen ginseng plants in the forest. According to state law, ginseng season was still two weeks away, meaning Linda faced a fine of up to $1,000 for illegal foraging. But the Thompsons were desperate for cash. Ginseng was going for around $500 a pound. And I was getting roped into their scheme for selling it.

  “Keep digging money,” Thompson replied to Linda. He invited me to have a seat in a plastic lawn chair. He said he’d reached an agreement with the new property owner, Oak Hall, to continue parking his RV on the land. I asked what kind of “terms” they’d reached. “I’ve known the boy since before he was a squirt out of his daddy’s dick, okay?” Thompson said. “It’s that simple.” In short, he wasn’t budging. (Hall confirmed that he didn’t “have any intent to remove” the Thompsons.)

  Thompson started quoting from “Desiderata,” a 1927 prose poem, which he said he reread every couple years “when things get bad.” He considered it his personal code. “Go placidly amid the noise
and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence,” he recited. He paraphrased the rest of the poem.

  “There’s only one thing I can’t agree with,” he said. “‘Speak your truth quietly and clearly.’ I can speak my truth, but it won’t be fucking quietly.”

  Linda showed up with a sack of ginseng slung over a shoulder. She was using two golf clubs as hiking poles. Missing all her teeth, her mouth appeared even more sunken in than when I’d last seen her. She looked sickly thin, just bones holding her gaunt frame upright.

  “I’ve been pulling weight for everyone,” she said, referring to Thompson and his two sons from a previous marriage. “It’s just been really stressful.” Adding to the difficulties, Thompson had recently totaled their van, and their Subaru had died. Without a vehicle, Linda had no way to sell her illicit ginseng.

  “Do you need a ride into town?” I offered.

  “How much time do you have?” she asked. She had a ginseng buyer in Renick, a forty-five-minute drive south into Greenbrier County, but she’d first need to make a call from the area’s only spot with cell service, in Hillsboro.

  “You do have a cellphone that works, correct?” Linda asked.

  I shook my head.

  “You don’t have a fucking cellphone?” Thompson said. Even he had a smartphone, just no data plan because money was tight. “Really?”

  AROUND THE COUNTY, the tourism bureau had begun distributing a new brochure that read:

  Life is fast paced. But vacation shouldn’t be. Welcome to the National Radio Quiet Zone. 13,000 square miles of land, federally protected from artificial radio wave interference, where the secrets of the universe can be revealed by the world’s largest steerable radio telescope at the Green Bank Observatory. Meaning no cell service. No WiFi. Just you, your family, and our grand outdoors. Find your peace.