FRANKFORT — It started out like a flashback to the turbulent sixties — but it ended on Valentine’s Day with almost warm feelings all around.

On Friday, opponents of mountaintop removal, the surface mining technique employed in eastern Kentucky and West Virginia that blows away portions of mountains to get at seams of coal, occupied the outer office of Gov. Steve Beshear, vowing to stay until he spoke to them or had them forcibly removed.

But Beshear pivoted from his initial announcement that he wouldn’t talk to them and did. Then he told them they were welcome to stay and would not be arrested. They did. They slept on the floor; they made friends with capitol security guards and the governor’s office staff; they received phone calls on their cell phones from across the state and nation, even from South America and Europe, encouraging them for “standing up.” They stayed until Monday morning when they joined several hundred others outside the capitol demanding an end to mountaintop removal. Before they did, they had their photos taken in the outer office of the governor who has promised to come visit the coal fields and see the destruction they say strip mining causes.

They were former coal miners — like Stanley Sturgill of Lynch who fears the destruction of Black Mountain, Kentucky’s highest peak; like Beverley May of Floyd County, a nurse practitioner who feels physically threatened in her own community because of her opposition to mountaintop removal and felt it necessary to have relatives stay at her house while she camped out in Frankfort; people like Ricky Handshoe behind whose home in Floyd County Raccoon Creek is devoid of living things and sometimes runs the color of orange soda pop.

They were noted authors Wendell Berry and Silas House, and anti-strip mining activist Teri Blanton of Berea.

Berry, 76, said Beshear “surprised us a little bit by talking to us,” on Friday and called him “very gracious” for allowing them to stay. But Berry was just as clear the group isn’t satisfied. They want Beshear to withdraw from a suit against the Environmental Protection Agency, the agency they see as their only protection.

“If state government is using our tax money to file a suit on behalf of the coal industry, then the coal industry has too powerful a grip on our state capitol,” said Berry. “We’re here on behalf of the people who don’t have the money to purchase a government.”

Blanton said the group has successfully spread its message “across this state and across the nation. The message is out there that our water is being destroyed.”

But even Blanton, an outspoken critic of surface mining and pollution, said the group was well treated by the governor’s staff and security guards. When Handshoe spoke to the assembled crowd on the capitol steps, his voice broke when talking about one of the security guards whose sister died suddenly over the weekend and offered condolences.

Berry spent much of the weekend taking calls of well-wishers on the phone, reading Shakespeare’s The Tempest, writing and storytelling. Mickey McCoy, a retired teacher from Inez, was heard talking to his wife by cell phone, telling her: “This is another fine mess Wendell Berry’s gotten me into.”

Others blogged and reported news of coverage on such sites as the Huffington Post, took calls from Argentina and Germany. Pizzas were delivered by a local restaurant which had taken the order from Tampa, Fla. They made jokes about the need for a shower, about the choice of pajamas of some of their fellow protestors. They had so much food donated they had to re-donate it to a Frankfort domestic violence shelter.

They even rose early Monday morning to clean up the office area where they’d camped out for three nights. Mike Haydon, Beshear’s Chief of Staff, delved into the box of pastries the protestors had ordered to show their appreciation for the way they’d been treated.

“These people are really nice people,” said Beshear receptionist Debi Gall. “They were a lot of fun.”

RONNIE ELLIS writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. Reach him at rellis@cnhi.com. Follow CNHI News Service stories on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cnhifrankfort.