Resilient

~ This article first appeared in The Leader-Vindicator newspaper. ~

Read an account of nature and you’ll discover the benchmark for pristine environments.  Authors tell of untouched terrain, pure and free and wild.  This, they say, is the good stuff.

Of course, if you’re reading about the good stuff in a book, then the unspoken message is that wherever you reside is not good.  That’s a major bummer for everyone who isn’t an author of nature.

I admit that with my education I adopted the mindset of environmental inferiority.  We live in a pocket of mining spoils and clay in hill country; certainly out my front door is a prime example of Nature, crippled.  Whatever outdoor adventures I enjoyed as a child were a mere fraction of the wonders I could’ve experienced had, decades before, mine workers decided to continue on instead of making camp.  Yes, we’ll make due here, but I’d often sit and wish I knew what it was like to live somewhere untouched, clean, and fertile, like I imagined I was living in as a child, and, later, read and dreamed about as an adult.

Several years ago I was walking an abandoned strip cut with an environmental official.  “So,” I questioned knowingly, “this is a spot you’d reclaim, right?”  We stopped at the top of a high spoil pile and he turned 360 to take in the view. 

“No, it’s too good.  We’d just set the whole thing back,” came the unexpected response.

I had a first-rate laugh at that one.  I told my dad about the incompetence of the environmental business.  Too good?  Haven’t they read what I’ve read?  There is somewhere out there that’s lush and healthy and fecund, and this dude is saying old shale heaps are good??  Fool!  This is a mess!

Time and circumstances marched on, but I didn’t forget the conversation.  The lens of ecological defeatism remained my viewing portal.  Not until very recently did a different perspective creep into my periphery with the intent of catching my attention.

Perhaps the guy atop the shale heap is correct.  Perhaps nature is dutifully righting the wrongs and doesn’t need advice from a bunch of know-it-alls who really know very little indeed.

To lament the rather uninhibited past that scratched every outcrop and tunneled every deep vein in search of clay and coal is a waste.  It happened.  It won’t un-happen.  We have what we have.  Where are we?  Let’s look with a different perspective.

My adventures as a youngster weren’t imaginary.  I spent an extraordinary amount of time outside wandering, and during those expeditions I noticed only nature, not degradation.  My friend Jake and I knew to find teaberries along the ridges of highwalls, blackberries in the scrub, and minty birch twigs for chewing atop clay piles long forgotten.  We knew where pines quieted the wind in the winter, making a calm spot to sit after sledding; where the hickory trees dropped their mast, providing a snack after wandering; and where to get a drink without entering the house and risking notice by an adult with a chore in mind.  We knew swampy bogs that promised peep frogs and skunk cabbage in the spring; we knew the tallest, straightest trees to cut for the construction of a cabin; we knew where the best grape vines for swinging grew.  Most of all, we knew the game trails that linked all of these spots together.  In summary, we experienced rich natural abundance in all seasons, and this from terrain thoroughly thrashed decades prior to our visit on Earth.

The same natural goodness where we played still exists today.  We simply grew up and learned that it is insufficient.

And here we arrive at my lesson.  The good stuff, from the perspective of an outsider, is an illusion.  Often the inner workings of some attraction are far more humble than the presentation that created the attraction.  Wine, for example, is a drink for sporty, slim, attractive people with a zeal for the classiness associated with viniculture.  To grow grapes and make wine from them is tedious, backbreaking, mentally gripping work that would immediately flatten most wine consumers should they burst through the illusion and enter the reality that is their drink preference.  Do the drinkers, then, even know what it is they enjoy?  No.

Land is no different.  I suspect that the most famous locations frequently praised prove a disappointment to people who travel to see them.  Pristine terrain can be, and often is, bland because it’s pierced with roads and invaded as a spectacle for everyone to see.  Bad land can be, and often is, rich because somebody knows it intimately and understands the complicated workings.  I am sure I have had a more wholesome experience in our mine spoils than I have in various national parks, strolling on paths amid a stream of gawkers.  Yet, someone who comes to visit our farm will probably balk at what they find here.  They won’t see at a glance what I see after a lifetime.

Nature is extremely resilient. It can put oaks and pines where once a stale hole was the only feature. Landowners need to observe this regeneration and then learn to encourage it. Doing so may reveal a whole national park, free of guests, where only moments before crouched a wasteland. After we look, we can tell stories of interesting terrain, bursting with life and providing a good spot to live…