You are obliged to carry it "on your person" before accessing the site and pledge not to assert at any time that it is a "public park."

 Miners on Black Mountain

My father and I drove the road up to the summit from the Virginia side, which rises precipitously and circuitously above the town of Appalachia: not an unpretty town, but you can taste the black-lung litigation. The road winds around several strip mines as it goes up to and over the Kentucky border. As most of the sources on the highpoint will tell you, if you see the sign for the state border, then you have gone too far, at least coming from the Virginia side. Near the top you glimpse the sign for the FAA en route radar station at Lynch, Kentucky; you park there, at the base of the road, and walk along the rut the rest of the way.

 The radar station is an enormous dome you pass before hitting the highpoint itself, home to a derelict cable TV broadcast tower and a plaque honoring the man who put it there. A gentle buzzing sound emanated from nowhere in particular, recalling a Beckett play I once saw. My father, a man of infamous impatience and antipathy to uphill walks, stayed behind at the car. Several passers-by stopped and asked him if he needed help. Evidently pausing at the top of Black Mountain is something a local would do only under duress.