When we hiked up the mountain,
I was thinking how beautiful
it was out there.
Everything looked peaceful
and stress-free.
Then we got up to see the
mountaintop removal
and all the peace and beauty went away.
I couldn’t imagine at first
what it looked like
but now I don’t think I’ll ever forget
how devastated and destroyed the once
magnificent mountains looked.
We have definitely awakened
Mother Earth.
Paul Stanley, age 11
He has been hiking the mountains of Appalachia since before he was even born, enjoying the warm comfort and singsong sway of my belly as I labored up their steep slopes. My dear friend, Jim Minick, believes that the mountains become one with you as you walk them, their rise and fall burning into your very muscle. Similarly, I believe my older son, Paul, was infected with the mountains as he developed in my womb. The mountains’ soul and spirit coursed through his growing body as I traversed their trails and skipped across their streams.
When he was but a month old, I gathered him in the snug safety of a baby carrier slung across the front of my body. We’d explore Jefferson National Forest—Iron Mountain and Henley Hollow two of our favorite destinations—with our dog, Roxy, leading the way. The smell of rhododendron, creek water, and decaying leaves mingled and filled our noses with the fragrance of Appalachia. As Paul grew, able to hold his neck erect, I transferred his little body to a backpack where he enjoyed his perch above my head. There, he could view vast mountain vistas, touch prickly pine needles, and taste cool autumn breezes.
Perhaps Paul was genetically predisposed to identify with the mountains and claim them in an ancestral way. After all, I feasted on their flora and fauna from an early age, and their contours shaped my own growth as a young woman born and bred in East Tennessee. The weathered mountain chain offered adventure, an invitation to explore treasure troves bursting with beetles and salamanders, crawdads and katydids, moss, lichen, and mushrooms.
Early weekend mornings, my best friend, Cooper, and I would meet in my backyard, adolescents transformed into great explorers embarking on grand expeditions. Our trailblazing exploits ignited our curiosity and the verdant forests gave life to our imaginations, just as they spawned maples and pines. I nestled easily into Appalachia’s mountains, was cradled and nurtured as a loving mother would her young. And this umbilical connection has sustained me throughout my 42 years of life, no matter where I’ve lived.
Tragically, not everyone feels such an instinctual bond with the mountains or values their ancient beauty and rich diversity. These folks have allowed excessive money and greed to serve as surrogate, which in turn ushers in a sense of entitlement to exploit and denigrate the mountains. I witnessed the result of such a destructive relationship on March 13 when my friend and former union miner, Wess Harris, led a group from Radford University to Kayford Mountain in West Virginia. My 11-year-old, Paul, accompanied us.
Before making our way to Kayford, Wess introduced us to other former UMWA miners fighting mountaintop removal but seeking just and fair employment for union men and women. While we stood beside the Paint Creek gravesite of Cisco Estep, a UMWA miner shot and killed in 1913 by coal company gun thugs on the Bull Moose Special train, a loud explosion echoed off the mountainsides. “That’s the dynamite from where they’re blasting about three miles from here,” UMWA member Dwight Siemiaczko informed us, though the blast’s intensity belied its distance. It was a warning cry of what we were to view close up within the hour.
While on our way to Kayford and driving through Cabin Creek, another crucial site for labor history in West Virginia, Wess, who led the auto caravan, waved us over onto the shoulder of the road above the infamous creek. There he educated our group about some of the present-day actions of the coal companies. Because Shaulk Coal Company owns the land upon which resident-owned homes sit along Cabin Creek, those residents are gagged, in essence, from speaking out against mountaintop removal, for at any time, the company could “reclaim” its land and demand the homeowners to move their homes from company property. Though the residents own the structure in which they live, they rent the property where it was built. Upon hearing such an absurdity, I was forced to acknowledge that not much had changed from the early 20th century when Cisco Estep was murdered for advocating for the union and its efforts to protect miners from all forms of company abuse.
Such unscrupulous practices brought to mind the broad form deed, a type of government-sanctioned larceny, perpetrated during the 20th century by coalmine owners who illegally and immorally claimed mineral rights while leaving the surface rights to the Appalachian residents living on the land. Implied in the ownership of mineral rights was the coal companies’ access to those minerals by whatever means necessary to extract them. A quick Internet search on Widow Combs and her protest against such unethical customs will provide readers an example of Appalachians’ bravery in the face of such blatant exploitation. It is interesting to note that the Kentucky Supreme Court did not rule the broad form deed unconstitutional in that state until 1987.
After leaving Cabin Creek, our caravan snaked its way up a long, circuitous gravel road far removed from the main thoroughfares. This is typical of mountaintop removal mining, for the owners attempt to “hide” the evidence. Even when sites are adjacent to highways, the companies leave the façade of the mountain in tact, as if it were a Hollywood set intended to fool the audience. As we climbed higher, we viewed so-called “reclaimed” mountains off to our left. These are sites where the tops have been blasted off, the leftovers have been dumped into valley fills where thousands of miles of streams have been destroyed, and a type of scrub grass has been sprayed onto the remaining surface. Because the nutrient-rich topsoil no longer exists, any attempt to grow plants is futile and the result is a bald wasteland. Flash flooding becomes a constant threat to residents who live in the valleys below for the mountains have been stripped of their ability to retain the rainwater. Erosion is inevitable. And despite the federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA), mountaintops are not and cannot be reclaimed. Even with the law’s existence, it is rarely enforced.
Once we reached the summit and parked our cars, Wess gathered the group to caution us about straying too close to the edge, where loose soil and rock give way easily because the company does not compact the remnants. He also warned us of a gaping hole along the path caused by the dynamite and that led down to an old, abandoned deep mine. Were someone to slip, the person could fall thousands of feet to his or her death. These warnings and dangers did not compare to Wess’s final admonition to the group: “Brace yourselves for what you’re going to see.”
Though I had viewed pictures of mountaintop removal online and in books, had read and learned about the logistics and far-reaching consequences of the practice, such images and knowledge had not prepared me for what I witnessed firsthand that day. As I attempted to take in the massive destruction, I was consumed with despondency. Paul’s poem represents his visceral reaction to the site. And perhaps what unites both of us in our emotional response to the vast desecration of life we witnessed is not only our biological connection as mother and son, but also our spiritual connection to our Mother Earth. It was as though we looked on helplessly as our Mother lay exposed, stripped of dignity. The image haunts me now.
And I am left to wonder the fate of mothers today, and the children forming within them, who hike the mountains of our region. Even if the women avoid specifically targeted areas of mountaintop removal, the trauma transcends boundaries, for every peak and valley is connected and suffers the devastation of its kin. As coal companies annihilate the mountains of our birth, so they demonstrate a complete disregard for our distinct Appalachian identity. After all, a strong sense of place and irrevocable tie to and connection with the land characterize so much of who we are, with the majesty of the mountains providing us with agency. What’s to become of us as our place continues to be destroyed? Will the trauma of the mountains be passed down to future generations of Appalachians? I do not wish it so. And that’s why I continue in my efforts to end mountaintop removal. And that’s why I encourage you to do the same. Mother Earth is counting on us.
Theresa L. Burriss is an Assistant Professor of English and Appalachian Studies at Radford University.
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