 When the NPR senior correspondent, Noah Adams, followed the New River North for his book, Far Appalachia, it elicited memories of the region's pioneer past. I tried to think of what it would have been like for my forebears to come there and how much more courageous they were, actually, than any of us could be now. It's just an entirely different existence. Just to go down that river for the first time, going west and not knowing what you would come up against,