West Virginia is a photographer’s paradise filled with wildly imaginative scenery. Except for floodplains around the edges, it is a collection of mountains attached to a great westward slanting plateau. The Eastern Continental Divide that serves as a slightly off-center spine is not the monolithic, intimidating series of peaks that is the Rockies. The Alleghenies of West Virginia were the first barrier conquered as America moved west and they have been breached repeatedly since. Our mountains are tree-covered, friendly and manageable. People live on them and grow food on them and hike around them without it being a life threatening experience. More important to the photographer, they present an impressively creative variety of looks.

I don’t know how many different mountain types there are in the state, but I do know that there are several distinctive styles. Long straight ridges dominate the Eastern Panhandle where a hiker can stroll for fifteen miles along a flat trail on top of a mountain. Sawtooth profiles with ragged but spaced edges can be seen slightly further west. The high peaks of the state are a little east of center along the Divide and are cloud punchers at 3,000 to 4,000 feet. There are jumbled mountains on the plateau that look as if a giant finger drew swirls in a pile of sand and it solidified in place, which is geologically what happened a couple million years ago to the inland sea bottom that is today’s West Virginia. Distorted, winding hollers twisting and turning through discrete rounded humps pretending to be mountains are another fashion group -- the punk-look. All of them are ancient, eroded to nubs and cores before the Himalayas were uplifted. I’m certain there are official geological names for these varied formations but I’ll leave those to the scientists. With Steve’s photographs you can see for yourself.

The state flaunts other varieties in its geographic splendor. There are flat, wide rivers and narrow, snaking ones. A few are calm, most are hyperactive; plunging over rocks, chopping out gorges and generally churning up a foaming frenzy that people choose to ride. Extravagant rock formations share the vista with waterfalls and climbers silhouetted against the sky. Misplaced, too-far-south sub-arctic environments introduce unexpected faces and forms in the natural kingdom of specific regions. When ascribing colors to states, there is no doubt that West Virginia is green, not in political terms but in visual ones. In spite of an historical plundering of old growth forests, trees have survived and once more cover 75% of the land area, accessorizing virtually all of the state’s million dollar views.

Seasons provide reliable changes in wardrobe, from the simple and always elegant white of winter to the variegated green splattered with soft colors of spring to the almost too gaudy hot pinks and vibrant greens of summer to the five-star technicolor production of fall.

Moving around the busy natural landscape has always been a challenge, and it leaves marks. There footsteps atop the ridges and through the valleys and along the riversides. Ancient footsteps. Colonial footsteps. Revolving frontier footsteps. Recreational footsteps.

Then there are the other means of transportation. Railroads opened up vast areas of West Virginia previously inaccessible. Then they left and the isolation returned. Now the trains are museum pieces perfect for a scenic ride. Rivers are ridden for work and pleasure and maniacal thrills. Roads are wonders in themselves with switchbacks and twists that result in two or three times as many miles as are needed if they did not have to cross and circle and climb all those elevations.

Steve Shaluta loves roads and is always searching for new ones to explore. In the slice of Heaven on earth that is the state he loves, drive-by shooting is a modus operandi not a terrifying part of urban warfare. He never goes directly from one place to another and he never travels without his trusty cameras. Like all great photographers, Steve makes magic. Check out the barn photo on page 43. Think he saw a rainbow arching over a picturesque barn and stopped to snap a picture? No way. He set up to photograph the barn and on cue, a rainbow appeared.

After the publication of my book “Way Out in West Virginia” my publisher kept trying to get me to do another. I resisted all offers until he came up with the dealmaker. “How about writing the copy for a book of Steve Shaluta’s photographs,” he offered. I accepted, and it has been a real treat for me.

I could spin a few more pages of adjectives and descriptions of mountain tops, river bends and gorge sides but the old saying is really true. Each of Steve’s images captures a tiny gem of stunning beauty and is worth a thousand of my words in presenting to the world The Wonders of West Virginia.

Flip through the book and let the homage to West Virginia begin: beautiful, capitvating and always open.