Environmental Learning Tour to Appalachia: Summer 2007

by Patti Marcum

It was a warm, sunny day, when we began our Environmental Learning Tour to Appalachia.  Twelve folks from Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church (Jane Larsen-Wigger, Mary Love, Jack Marcum, Patti Marcum, Marian McClure, Sally Pendleton, Phil Rich, Carol Roderick, Leslie Scanlon, Christy Shadle, Leslie Townsend, and Andrea Trautwein) boarded two vans in the church parking lot at 1:00 pm on Thursday, June 7, bound for Whitesburg, Kentucky.

With only one brief wrong turn near our destination, we arrived at 6:00 pm to meet our guides, Duane Beachey and Sharman Chapman-Crane, workers for Mennonite Central Committee Appalachia.  At Las Pena, a local Mexican restaurant in Whitesburg, we enjoyed a delicious dinner, shared stories, and laughed lots.

After dinner, we drove to Blackey, Kentucky, where we would sleep in the dormitory of the Stuart Robinson School.  The Reverend Dr. Edward Guerrant, a graduate of Centre College, arrived in Blackey in 1913 and began raising money for a school.  The Stuart Robinson School (named for Guerrant’s teacher, a Presbyterian minister in Louisville) opened in 1914 with 114 students.  The dormitory where we stayed is now run by the alumni of the school.  Each room is comfortably furnished by alumni. 

After choosing our rooms and settling our stuff, we met with Rachel Reynolds (who lives on-site at the Stuart Robinson School with her husband, Jamie) who told us some of the history of the Stuart Robinson School and her hopes for the future.  Sharman and Duane provided an overview of our tour. 

After breakfast on Friday, June 8, we stopped at the Letcher County Visitor’s Bureau where we viewed a video about Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and met Patty Tarquino, who told us about the organization.  Kentuckians for the Commonwealth seeks justice and a better quality of life for all Kentuckians.  It is a citizens’ social justice group using direct-action organizing to improve the quality of life for all people.  Direct-action organizing means that Kentuckians for the Commonwealth believes in working as a group, democratically and nonviolently, to confront head-on the root causes of injustices in our community and state.  It uses direct action to challenge—and change—unfair political, economic, and social systems and accomplish the following goals: foster democratic values, change unjust institutions, empower individuals, overcome racism and other discrimination, communicate a message of what is possible, help people participate, build the organization, win issues that affect the common welfare, and have fun. (Facts about Kentuckians for the Commonwealth are from the brochure, Kentuckians For the Commonwealth, September 2006.)

Then we were off to hike to Bad Branch Falls, a 60-foot waterfall in the 2,600-acre Bad Branch State Nature Preserve, one of the most bio-diverse rain forests in North America, located in Letcher County.

We visited the Valley of the Winds Art Gallery, owned by Sharmon and Jeff Chapman-Crane, in Eolia, Kentucky.  Most impressive was Jeff’s sculpture, “The Agony of Gaia,”  which depicts the wounds of mountain-top removal mining on the earth.  We ate our sack lunches on the lawn, then were joined by a group from Yale University.  Sam Gilbert shared information about his struggle with a coal company.  It was during discussion that we learned that the water at Sharmon and Jeff’s house is not safe for cooking or drinking.  They must use bottled water.

We then drove across the state line to the site of mountain-top removal mining in Virginia.  The contrast between the lushness of forested mountain and the devastation from mountain-top removal mining was beyond words.  In the pursuit of cheap energy, God’s creation is destroyed forever.

We enjoyed a dinner of chili, salad, and cookies, prepared by Jeff Chapman-Crane, at the church Steve Peake pastors.  (Steve is mentioned in Lost Mountain.) 

After dinner, we traveled to the Hemphill Community Center to enjoy bluegrass music and dancing.   We were greeted with hospitality (and invitations to dance.)  Our hope was to blend in with the crowd at the center.  (There are strong differences in the community over the benefits and consequences of mountain-top removal mining.)  However, our new faces and dancing and raffle win made blending in difficult. 

On Saturday, we hiked in the Lilley Cornett Woods.  Lilley Cornett Woods is one of the largest protected tracts of old-growth forest in Kentucky. It is located on KY 1103 at Skyline in Letcher county, between Whitesburg and Hazard. A national natural landmark and state wildlife refuge, Lilley Cornett Woods covers 554 acres, with 252 acres of old-growth forest. The tracts that make up the Woods were purchased by Lilley Cornett during the middle part of the twentieth century and sold to the Commonwealth of Kentucky by his heirs in 1969. The purchase was made possible by a combination of state, federal, and private Nature Conservancy money. Lilley Cornett Woods is managed by Eastern Kentucky University and is open to the public by guided tours only. 

(from www.uky.edu/KentuckyAtlas/ky-lilley-cornett-woods.html)

We were joined on our hike by Clifford Cornett, grandson of the man who originally owned these woods.  Our guide, Richard, along with Clifford and his wife (who now live in southern Illinois), were able to identify many trees and plants for us.  Clifford shared memories of growing up here—noting with fondness the blessings of being from this place.

After goodbyes to Richard and Clifford and his wife, we ate our sack lunches at the visitor center picnic shelter.  We climbed back in the van and continued, after a delay caused by a train on railroad tracks, on our tour to the Mennonite Montessori School in Whitesburg to view the video, “Sludge.”

Shortly after midnight on October 11, 2000, a coal sludge impoundment in Martin County, Kentucky, broke through an underground mine below, propelling 306 million gallons of sludge down two tributaries of the Tug Fork River.  By morning, Wolf Creek was oozing with the black waste; on Coldwater Fork, a ten-foot wide stream became a 100-yeard expanse of thick sludge.  The spill polluted hundreds of miles of waterways, contaminated the water supply for over 27,000 residents, and killed all aquatic life in Coldwater Fork and Wolf Creek.  The spill was 30 times larger than the Exxon Valdez and one of the worst environmental disasters ever in the southeastern United States, according to the EPA.

For over four years, Appalshop filmmaker Robert Salyer has chronicled the continuing story of the Martin County disaster, the resulting federal investigation, and the looming threat of coal sludge ponds throughout the coalfield region.  In the United States today, coal is the largest single source of fuel for energy production.  Annually, the country mines over a billion tons of coal.  Coal waste is a consequence of this insatiable consumption.  The Mine Safety and health Administration has estimated that there are over 235 sludge ponds throughout the region with the potential to break into an underground mine, as the Martin County pond did in 2000.

Sludge is a story of the residents and communities in the coalfields, but it is also a look behind the curtain: as story of the overseers and regulators responsible for health and safety and the agencies and departments that house them.

Sludge reveals the hidden cost of America’s coal production and the penalty exacted upon the people of the Appalachian mountains in exchange for cheap electricity.

(from www.appalshop.org/sludge/about.html)

After discussion, we planted some plants at the entrance to the Montessori school.  We then walked across the street where we were treated to a feast of creamed chicken, homemade biscuits, salad, and watermelon milk shakes prepared by Duane Beachey. 

We ended the evening with a winding trek up the mountain to the Carcassonne Community Center in Carcassone.  Since 1967, the Carcassonne Community Center has hosted monthly square dances.   Master square dance caller Charlie Whitaker has called dances at Carcassonne for years. (He has performed his calling at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, as well as the Kentucky Folklife Festival.)  Charlie and veteran square dancers were generous in teaching those of us inexperienced in square dancing.  Hearing  legendary clawhammer-style banjoist Lee Sexton was an unforgettable experience. 

(from http://www.e-archives.ky.gov/pubs/arts_council/065.htm)

On Sunday morning, we ate breakfast, debriefed, packed the vans, and traveled to Isom where we joined Duane and Sharmon in worship at the Isom Presbyterian Church before returning home to Louisville.

Other Observations:

God’s handiwork is evident in the beauty of the Appalachian mountains.

We were blessed by the hospitality of those who live in the mountains.

There is an inseparable connection to the region even by those who have moved away.

Mountain-top removal mining is destructive to God’s creation.

Mountain-top removal mining is destructive to the homes and communities and lives of those who live in the region.

Greed appears to be behind the actions of some coal companies.

Many residents feel that they are expendable so that everyone else can have cheap energy (coal).

There is complexity in the divisions in communities where mountain-top mining is done.

In spite of seemingly overwhelming odds favoring big coal companies, one individual can make a difference, especially when joined with others seeking justice

We learn a lot about each other when we travel together for two days in a van.

Laughter is a gift from God and a gift to each other.

There aren’t many situations that can’t be improved with a good snack.

Train whistles sound louder in the middle of the night.

We are forever changed by the contact with and the stories of brothers and sisters in eastern Kentucky.