Bob DeGroot has a dream. He dreams of a day when eastern cougars can travel unimpeded by development from the mountains of Pennsylvania into the Maryland hill country and across the spine of Appalachia into Virginia and West Virginia — all without leaving the protection of forest.

DeGroot, president of the Maryland Alliance for Greenway Improvement and Conservation (MAGIC), shares this dream with 75 conservationists who attended a conference in Bethesda, Md. in early April. The meeting was held to draw attention to a budding project to link protected wildlands across the central and southern Appalachians.

“What we’re really looking at is how to connect the (forested) areas in West Virginia, or the areas of Virginia, up through Maryland and into the protected areas in Pennsylvania,” DeGroot said. “This is a work in progress. How successful we are at it depends on whether there is enough money and political will to make it happen.”

One of the groups that shares DeGroot’s vision for an interconnected wildlands network is The Wildlands Project, a Tucson-based organization that is mapping ideas for conservation reserves across the country and working to make them a reality on the ground. The group’s eastern office in Virginia is drafting a proposal to protect wildlands throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed, including the central Appalachian region that is the Bay’s headwaters.

The Wildlands Project foresees the creation of large, strictly protected core reserves surrounded by buffer areas that allow human uses compatible with conservation.
These cores would be linked by corridors wide enough to allow the free exchange of genes between plant and animal populations within the cores. Designed properly, the corridors could also serve as greenways for human recreation, allowing hiking paths or canoe trails.

“This is not something we’re going to see come to fruition in five years,” said David Bynum, the Project’s eastern coordinator. “We’re going to see parts of it come to fruition soon, and other parts in five years, other parts in 10 years and maybe the cougar in 50 to 100 years, but we have to think long-term like that.”

Like DeGroot’s dream, the Project’s reserve designs are based on the science of conservation biology and the theory of island biogeography. Both disciplines are
based on a simple premise: small, isolated chunks of habitats — the result of fragmenting the natural landscape with roads and development — support only a fraction of the plant and animal species that larger, contiguous areas do.

“In unbroken forests, the ability (of wildlife) to move to new sites actually helps the dispersal of genetic material,” said Ed Perry, a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service biologist.
“Whereas in fragmented forests, wildlife can become stranded in open, unsuitable habitat.” He cited wood turtles as an example of a species that is suffering in
Pennsylvania from fragmentation. “Many of the wood turtle populations are reproductively dead, with only old, non-breeding adults walking around.”

Why should the public worry about the loss of wood turtles, or marbled salamanders, or cerulean warblers (all species suffering from fragmented habitat)? Perry said ecosystems are so complex that scientists are just beginning to understand how they work. “When a species becomes extirpated from an area, we may be eliminating a keystone species that has a ripple effect throughout an entire ecosystem. Ironically, it may be the inconsequential species that turn out to be the most important.”

The first animals to go when a landscape is fragmented are the top-line predators such as cougar, bear, and wolves. These animals generally have large home ranges and need the protection of spacious cores of habitat to retain viable populations and remain safe from humans. Dave Foreman, chairman of the The Wildlands Project, told the conference that roads and other motorized access usually spell doom for large carnivores.

“We’ve learned from the reintroduction of Mexican wolves in Arizona that because the first wolves were released in an area with many dirt roads, within months of their release, five of the wolves were shot alongside dirt roads and two were run over,” Foreman said. “Wolves in the Southwest don’t need wilderness ecologically, but they need wilderness from a security standpoint, to be safe from harassment and poaching.”

When large carnivores disappear from an area, small and mid-sized predators such as foxes, skunks, raccoons, opossums and domestic house cats explode in numbers. They, in turn, prey too heavily on songbirds, amphibians, reptiles, and even pollinators, forcing their numbers to dwindle. A dearth of predators also causes herbivores like deer to overbrowse many plant species.

“When we eliminate the top predators from an ecosystem, the whole ecosystem begins to unravel,” Foreman said. He cited a study of sea otters in California that found when the otters were trapped out, sea urchins (which otters eat) overpopulated and overgrazed the kelp beds that support myriad coastal species. When the otters returned, the balance was restored and the kelp beds returned.

By creating a network of wildlands large enough to support top-level carnivores, Foreman said, we can create an umbrella of protection for most species that exist within a given ecosystem. “Large core areas like wilderness areas, national parks and other areas with limited motorized access allow for more species, maintain natural disturbance regimes, ensure population viability, and they enhance wildness for all of us,” he said.

In the highly fragmented East, however, stitching the land back together is particularly challenging. A recent study by ecologist Chris Haney of the Nature Conservancy and several colleagues found that most protected wildlands within the southern Appalachians are too small to maintain basic ecological structure over the long term when subjected to natural disturbances such as fire or windstorms.

The study found only the largest reserves, such as the 500,000-acre Great Smoky Mountains National Park, were large enough to sustain the mix of old-growth and early succession habitat that would be expected in an unmanipulated forest ecosystem. The researchers also found that “single units of the wilderness system are apparently not sufficiently large enough to serve as effective repatriation sites for large species of extirpated carnivores,” as evidenced by the failure of the red wolf reintroduction in the Smokies.

But there is hope for the East, Foreman said. The Wilderness Society has identified an additional 797,243 acres of public land in the southern Appalachians that is roadless or otherwise could serve to boost the amount of protected acreage in the region. “I think there are a lot of the southern Appalachians where there are probably already some cougars and I think there are big enough landscapes in the East — and certainly places we can restore — that we can do it,” he said.

Cougars are definitely prowling the central and southern Appalachians, according to environmental writer Chris Boligiano, who also serves as vice-president of the Eastern Cougar Foundation. Bolgiano, whose book Mountain Lion traces the natural history of the American panther, told the conference that a cougar was even reported stalking around nearby Tyson’s Corner.

She showed a slide of a cougar kitten that was hit and killed by a car on a Kentucky highway in 1997, one of more than a dozen cases of confirmed evidence of cougars in the East the foundation has compiled. “It’s highly unlikely this guy was all alone in the wild,” she said. Yet so far the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service considers all cougars outside of Florida to be escaped pets, and therefore not worthy of protection under the Endangered Species Act. Bolgiano said it shouldn’t matter where they came from.

“Our position is if that a cougar can survive in the wild and reproduce, filling the ecological niche of cougars, that’s all that should matter,” she said. A 1999 study of cougar genetics by Dr. Melanie Culver backs up that view. Her analysis of DNA from the 32 subspecies of cougar known to science found that Florida panthers, Central American catamounts, and western American cougars are genetically identical. Thus, any eastern escapees that were bred north of Panama should be treated the same as the federally protected Florida panther.

“We are blessed to have this core of habitat in which cougars could live,” Bolgiano said, referring to the band of public land stretching from Virginia to Alabama. “The wilderness areas tend to be in the most remote areas of the southern Appalachians. Many have old-growth forests within them. Certainly this is a place in which cougars could live today.”

DeGroot acknowledged that in northwest Maryland, much of the remaining forest land that is desirable for protected cores and corridors is in private hands. “If we’re going to look at rewilding, we’re going to have to look at purchasing private lands and that’s going to take a lot of money,” he said.

Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening has asked the General Assembly to support a five-year, $145 million program to save the state’s most ecologically significant lands, part of an ambitious plan to protect 2 million acres of greenspace by buying up land from willing sellers. But that money would only go so far in meeting the state’s goals and some legislators are balking at the pricetag.

Foreman said there are opportunities to work with farmers and other large landowners, by purchasing conservation easements from them or by offering them financial incentives to protect wetlands and other wildlife habitat. Bynum added that the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund offers money to states for purchasing lands for recreation and wildlife protection. But the Southeast lags behind the Northeast in lobbying for such funds.

Unlike northwest Maryland, the southern Appalachian states of Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia and the Carolinas are blessed with more than 6 million acres of public land. Dave Muhly of the Sierra Club’s Southern Appalachian Ecoregion (SAHE) told the conference that the national forests of the region “represent our best chance to protect the wildlife, its habitat, and the clean waters that sustain them.”

Despite claims by the U.S. Forest Service that they have changed their ways, Muhly said that timber harvest on public lands continues to degrade important natural areas that should be the cornerstones of a wildlands reserve network. He cited a recent Forest Service disclosure that the agency lost $126 million operating its timber sale program in 1998. “Annually, this program goes into the red on a regular basis,” he said.

State forests also need protecting, according to Dr. Durland Shumway of Frostburg State University, especially old-growth forests. Shumway and his students have been studying a tract in Pennsylvania’s Savage River State Forest that contains perhaps 700 acres of uncut forest and another 300 acres of lightly cut forest. Some of the oaks there have been aged at 400 years.

Shumway has proposed to Maryland’s secretary of natural resources that the state establish an ecological research center at Savage River, putting the roughly 1,000 acres of old growth into a trust. Graduate and undergraduate students from Frostburg State could continue studying the old growth ecosystem there, making it a living laboratory.

“The fact is you can’t make a 400-year-old tree,” he said. “These old-growth forests represent a national imperative: either we preserve them or we don’t, but we can’t make them. We need somebody that is capable of taking care of them.” And it’s not just trees at stake, Shumway said. Savage River is home to several rare plant and mammal species, including climbing fumitory, black-fruited mountain rice, and the Allegheny woodrat.

By comparing the current forest makeup at Savage River with 1774 survey records of witness trees in the area, Shumway was able to get a rough picture of how the forest has changed since colonial times. He believes that fire suppression has allowed red maple and black birch to increase in dominance over oaks, which rely on periodic fire to reduce competition. By examining tree rings, Shumway found that cool ground fires burned through the oak forest at Savage River about every eight years until man started extinguishing them.

Shumway said the old growth at Savage River is precisely the kind of place that should be at the heart of a conservation reserve plan like the one proposed by MAGIC and the Wildlands Project. “We absolutely have to have core areas that are protected, to protect rare species and communities and to act as source populations for adjacent areas that have lost species,” he said.

At the end of the conference, participants were asked to comment on what they’d heard during the day and suggest ways for the vision articulated by speakers to move forward. One man pointed out that most of the areas identified for potential protection in Pennsylvania are ridgetop forests. “One of the most endangered, if not the most endangered, forest type in the Northeast is the riparian (bottomland) forest,” he said. “Even in town, preserving that riparian buffer, that’s valuable.” His comment brought rousing applause from the audience.

Steve Krichbaum, an activist from Virginia, said he strongly supports the efforts of those who are planning networks of interlinked wildlands in the Appalachians. But he urged conference participants not just to dream, but also to work to protect what’s there now. “You can’t just have a grand vision and hope that someone else is going to protect it in the meantime,” he said. “You’re going to have to get out there and fight with your last breath for these places!”

For more information about the Wildlands Project, visit www.twp.org. MAGIC’s website can be located at www.magicalliance.org. For more information about the
Chesapeake Bay Wildlands Network Design, which is currently being drafted, contact David Bynum at 919/477-1928.

Jesse Butcher nearly lost one of his hands before he discovered what artistry it could perform. In fact, anyone who saw the lanky Tennessean in a hospital emergency room that spring day in 1977 would have considered him lucky just to be alive.

“I was sawin’ locust poles for my neighbor, Earl Woods,” says Butcher, who lives on a 30-acre farm near the Knox County-Union County line in eastern Tennessee. “It happened on a hillside. One of the trees hung up in some ‘possum grape vines and I stretched out to cut it a’ loose. My feet flew out from under me. When I fell, the saw landed on my right wrist.”

What had started that morning as an act of neighborly assistance now became a race against death.The whirring teeth had ripped through Butcher’s arm, leaving his hand dangling from a bloody stub. Butcher had to walk a quarter-mile for help. He was rushed to St. Mary’s Medical Center in Knoxville, where he underwent surgery to reattach the hand.

Later, he was transferred to a hospital in Louisville, Kentucky that specializes in nerves and bone structure of the hand. Nerves were stripped from both ankles and transplanted into his right hand. And from that point on, the retired game warden and former car salesman committed himself to full recovery and use of his fingers.
“They had me a’squeezin’ dough up there in the hospital,” he says. “There ain’t much future in doin’ that.”

A New Passion

White oak baskets had always intrigued Butcher. While patrolling the hills, hollows and remote farmlands of Union County as an officer for the Tenn. Game and Fish Commission, he had seen many of these baskets, some still in working condition after nearly a century of use. Upon discharge from the Kentucky hospital, he enrolled in the Youngblood School of White Oak Baskets — taught at Tenn. Tech University through the Joe L. Evins Craft Center near Smithville — and bade farewell to his last lump of dough.

In some respects, “weaving” baskets is a misnomer. Part of the process does require a delicate, tedious, over-under lacing with thin oak splits. That’s usually reserved for craft fairs and shows. But as anyone who takes them from log stage to the kitchen shelf will agree, basketry begins long before the product takes shape.

Says Butcher: “First thing you’ve gotta do is find the right tree. You’re looking for a white oak. Not a red oak or a water oak or a chestnut oak. Not a hickory or a poplar, either. Some people will tell you the best place to look is on the north side of a mountain. Other people will tell you the south. Hell, they’re all wrong. You’ll find a white oak wherever it happens to be growin’.

“You want one about four inches in diameter. I like my trees to come from a brushy thicket, where they can shoot up fast and put on lost of growth wood. A white oak growin’ in the woods usually ain’t no good. It doesn’t get enough sunlight to grow fast enough.

“Lotta times, I gather wood with Ralph Chesney, from up at Luttrell. He’s as good a basket weaver as there is in this country. Him’n me, we argue about trees. I’ll find ones he don’t like, and he’ll find ones I don’t like. But after awhile, we’ll finally agree.”

The tree is felled by chain saw. “I spread my feet a lot farther apart these days,” Butcher says with a chuckle. “And I try not to go out alone anymore.” Even then, “accidents” can happen.

“I was high on Combs Ridge one day, nearly three-quarters to the top, and found a perfect tree,” he recalled. “Started to cut it down, and that’s when I noticed I’d put the dadblamed chain on backwards. Didn’t have the first tool on me. There wasn’t nothin’ to do but leave — I hung my hat on the tree so I could find it — and walk plumb back off that mountain to the truck.”

Butcher’s mouth widens into a broad grin. “I want you to know that now, I check my chain ever’ time before I go out!”

The truest wood with the straightest grain is the fillet Butcher seeks for basket splits. That’s the wood between the limbs. Ideally, it will run upwards of six feet in length — if he’s lucky enough to find a deluxe specimen. Forty to forty-four inches is more the norm. Once the sections are brought out of the woods, the next phase of basketry begins.

And what if Mother Nature supplies an overabundance of wood at once? No problem. “Just store it in the freezer,” he recommends. “It won’t warp or split on you that way.”

Back home, Butcher uses a maul to split the logs lengthwise. This produces “blocks,” which are split again with a froe and mallet. Over and over the process is repeated, each time resulting in a smaller section.

In Butcherese, it goes like this: “First, you halve it. Then you quarter it. Then you eighth it. Then you sixteenth it. And so forth. You wind up with a bunch of lengths that look like little sections of pie.”

The heartwood is removed next. It’s fine for splits, or “weavers,” but because of its dark color, Butcher uses it sparingly, mainly for contrast.The bulk of the basket will be made from the pearly white growth wood.

Further reducing the sections into pliable weavers can only be described as a labor of love. Or hate, as the case may be. It calls for long sessions with a shaving horse and draw knife. As the pieces become even thinner, less than one-sixteenth of an inch, Butcher puts them across his thigh, which is protected by a tattered piece of horsehide, and scrapes them further.

Bushels, Pecks & English Fans

Southern Appalachian white oak baskets come in a variety of shapes and designs, but the main ones are the egg basket (or aptly named “butt basket” because of its two “cheeks”), bushel, peck, English fan basket, and small egg gatherer. Whatever the size and shape, each has three integral parts — the hoop (or handle), and a network of lateral ribs, all of which are bound together by row after row of weavers.

“We used t’have t’whittle each rib with a knife, but then Frank Rucker, from over at Rutledge, came up with an idea to shape ‘em by pullin’ them through a hole in plate metal,” says Butcher. “Saves a lot of time, and makes a lot more uniform rib, too.”

Even then, an odd-shaped rib occasionally shows up. Butcher used to throw them into the fire. Then one day, while weaving at a crafts fair, Butcher’s hillbilly humor got the best of him, and a whole new market opened up. “This fellow walked up and asked what those reject ribs were for. I told them they was poot sticks.

“He says, ‘Poot sticks?’”

“Yeah,” I told him. “You know, for when your wife is cookin’ soup beans. Just have her stir em with one of these sticks and it’ll take all the poots out of ‘em.” Butcher winks. “I even wrote ‘poot stick’ on that thing and sold it to him for a dollar. I bet I’ve sold hundreds of them ever since.”

You don’t just pick any ol’ day for weaving. Like farming, chores must be matched to the weather. Sunny, windy days are a basket weaver’s worst enemy. Butcher does most of his work during damp, overcast periods when moisture in the air helps keep the split pliable. Even then, he must dampen them frequently until they can be threaded into place.”

Average elapsed time from log to completed basket? About 70 hours, Butcher estimates. Which translates to a lot of labor for a little bit of money.

“I was at a show one time and this feller said he wanted to buy one of my baskets. He gave me a $10 bill and waited for his change. I told him I needed 55 more dollars. He just stood there and blinked. He thought the price tag said $5! When it finally hit him, he said there’s no way he was gonna pay $65 for a basket. I told him I’d pay him $500 to make another one just like it — and I’d give him a month to do the job. He didn’t take me up on it.”

One chore Jesse doesn’t particularly enjoy is repairing old white oak baskets made by other craftsmen. “Don’t do it very often. Not unless it’s for a friend. You see, there’s a lot of individual history in a white oak basket. It reflects the person who made it. If I go over and put my touch on it, it’s been changed. I don’t like to mess with history.”

History is important to Jesse Butcher, with good reason. He is believed to be the last Tennessee son of a Civil War veteran. Son, mind you. Not grandson. His father, William Butcher, died in 1915, three months before Jesse was born. William Butcher’s enlistment and discharge papers are part of the impressive collection of Civil War memorabilia at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tn. The Butcher family contributed them in 1988.

Butcher’s baskets have won praise at a number of craft shows in and around the Tennessee Valley. He’s particularly proud of two best-of-shows he won during competition in Abingdon, Virginia. He’s not the only basket-making Butcher, either. His wife, Roxine, also is an accomplished weaver. One of her egg baskets is on permanent display at the Museum of Appalachia’s Hall of Fame in Norris, Tn. Jesse regularly demonstrates his craft during festivals at the museum and at the Foxfire school in Rabun Gap, Georgia.

And speaking of north Georgia, that’s where one particularly exquisite Butcher basket is on display. Except most people never get the opportunity to view it. Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter have it in their cabin retreat.

The former president is not the first person in high places Jesse Butcher has rubbed shoulders with. Back during his game warden days, Butcher was asked to serve as personal hunting and fishing guide for retired army general Mark Clark, a hero from World War II. It didn’t take Butcher long to realize the influence a five-star general exerts, even long into retirement.

“The general wanted to go trout fishin’ below Norris Dam, but the water was running awful high,” he recalled with a laugh. “I made a few calls and finally got the head man at TVA. When he realized who I had with me, he asked, ‘What time does the general want the water cut off?’

“I didn’t know much about trout fishin’, but I got hold of Eddy George, who was a sporting goods dealer in Knoxville back then. A real good trout fisherman. Eddy drove up to the river and brought some hip boots for General Clark. Turned out Eddy’d gotten him two right feet! I’ll never forget what he said to the general: ‘Hell, wear ‘em. That’s what they used to say to me when I was in the army!’ And that’s just what General Clark did. Wore ‘em all afternoon. Caught a limit of trout, too — although I’m still not sure Eddy didn’t help him along.”

Butcher was among the first group of full-time conservation officers hired by the state after the 1949 model game and fish management act was passed. Prior to that time, game wardens were little more than fee-grabbers whose pay was based on the number of arrests they made.

“I’d worked for TVA before and after the war,” he remembered. “Did everything from clear the dam sites to work on the drillin’ team to servin’ on the security force. But when the game warden job opened, I was glad to take it. I always wanted a job where I could be outdoors all the time.”

His wish was granted in spades. Over the next seven years, Butcher chased illegal hunters and fishermen through the winding roads, dark hollows, and narrow rivers of Union County. Looking back, he says it was some of the most rewarding work he’d ever done.

“People were all the time catchin’ fish in traps. No tellin’ how many of ‘em I dynamited out of these rivers. I was always finding illegal nets, too. It was pretty easy to figure out who was netting. See, in those days, the ol’ boys would tar their nets to keep ‘em from rottin’. I’d float down the river ‘till I found me a boat with tar streaks across the bow where they’d hauled in the net. That was a good giveaway. If there was leaves in the boat, I had ‘em for sure.”

Leaves?

“Sure. You dump fish out on the bare floor of an old wooden boat and they’ll go to thrashin’ all around. You put down a carpet of leaves, though, and they won’t hardly make any commotion at all. Anyhow, once I found a boat they were using. I’d just look around and find the nearest bend of the river. Fish are just like people going around a curve. They’ll take the inside bend. That’s where I always found the nets.”

Today’s conservation officers use sonar and other sophisticated gear to pinpoint the site of illegal underwater operations. But in Butcher’s days, it was a matter of dragging for contraband. He hollowed out a baseball bat, filled the center with lead, and attached it to a stout cord. After driving dozens of finishing nails partway into the bat, he had a fine grappling hook.

“I could take that thing and throw it into the bend of a river and in four or five passes would find the net,” Butcher said. “Then I’d pile all the net on the bank beside the boat and burn it. All I did was slow ‘em down, though,” he chuckled. “In those days, a good net maker could weave a new one in 24 hours.”

Excerpted from Mountain Hands: A Portrait of Southern Appalachia by Sam Venable, photographs by Paul Efird (University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville: 2000). To purchase the book, visit your local bookseller or by visiting www.utk.edu/press.

Childbirth is no longer the mystifying, women-only topic it used to be. Nowadays, fathers are allowed in the delivery room, and sometimes even “catch” the baby. That is, if the hospital allows it, and if the hospital allows men in there at all. And only if there is a baby to catch, rather than a baby that is pulled out surgically by the obstetrician.

To avoid all these “ifs,” many families are choosing to work with a midwife who will help them deliver their baby in the comfort and security of their own home. It used to be so in day’s past and today’s high standard of hygienic care, nutrition and available information make the homebirth option safer and more appealing than ever.

There are several different types of midwife. The nurse midwife (CN and CNM) require college degrees and/or a nursing degree. These nurse midwives are required to have a working relationship with a practicing doctor. They are trained in the medical model of health-care and are not familiar with natural childbirth. They seldom participate in homebirths because it is difficult to get doctor back-up. The CPM, or certified practicing midwife, is a direct entry midwife who has completed training in midwifery school or through midwife curricula, and who has had ample experience attending normal deliveries.

Midwifery Saves $

As many families know, the cost of delivering a baby in the hospital can be very high. The average cost of a midwife-attended birth in the U.S. is $1,500, compared to up to $4,200 for a physician-attended vaginal birth. The midwives’ lower rates do not reflect lower quality of care or standards of births. In fact, they clearly represent the opposite. Educating a direct-entry midwife typically costs between $300 and $15,000, compared to $150,000 to $200,000 to educate one obstectrician-gynecologist. This high cost of obtaining a medical education often requires an Ob/Gyn to serve a great many patients and charge high fees to pay back his or her debt.

The majority of a midwife’s training is assisting and attending normal births, whereas an obstetrician may never have seen a normal delivery. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that “the curricula for the education of all health professionals should reflect the role of the midwife as primary caregiver in maternity care.”

What about the savings? Midwifery care is financially rewarding. Our nation could save a great sum of money — not thousands, not millions, but billions of dollars — by implementing the midwifery model of care. According to Dr. Frank A Oski, director of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, from $13 billion to $20 billion a year could be saved in health care costs by developing midwifery care, de-medicalizing childbirth, and encouraging breastfeeding. Oski estimated the health care cost savings obtainable by utilizing midwifery care for 75% of pregnancies in the US at $8.5 billion per year.

Despite these financial rewards, relatively few midwives practice in the U.S.. Only 6 percent of U.S. births are attended principally by midwives compared to 75 percent of births in European nations. As of several years ago, only between 2,000 and 3,000 direct entry midwives were recorded as practicing midwifery in the United States, and only 3,000 certified nurse-midwives. The U.S. lags behind other countries in its level of midwifery care; for instance, to meet European numbers of midwives, the U.S. will need to increase its current level by 125,000. These numbers are especially revealing when we recognize that 100% of those countries that provide universal prenatal care have lower infant mortality rates than the United States.

The World Health Organization says that the preferred location for most births is outside the hospital, either at home or in a birthing center, and that the out-of-hospital birth should be implemented and maintained as the basic standard for all midwifery education and training programs. But sufficient services must be available for women to be able to choose homebirth. In many rural areas this is not the case. According to the official directory of board certified Ob/Gyns, in 1998 only 25 of the 100 counties in North Carolina had practicing obstetricians. That left 75 percent of the state’s counties without direct access to obstetrical-and thus prenatal-care. Certified Professional Midwives helped to fill in this gap, but without legal support, their effort is limited.

Creating Options

Money, of course, is often the basis of a family’s decisions. But childbirth involves so many facets that a family must consider other aspects, such as emotional well-being, comfort, distance from caregivers, religion, maternal and fetal health, privacy, and independence. Carolyn Weaver, CPM, a practicing midwife in northeastern Tennessee (where midwifery is neither regulated nor illegal), promotes the option of homebirth for families.

“Midwife attended births are as safe or safer than hospital births,” she says, citing many European statistics and pointing to the incredibly low infant mortality rate in countries where midwifery is the norm. “Homebirth should be safe and accessible to all women, though so many women don’t even think of it as an option. Families need more education.

“People don’t know what happens in a hospital birth,” she says. “The epidural rate is around 90% in the United States. With an epidural, a woman often spikes a fever. If this happens, hospital staff treat the newborn baby as a sick baby, they separate him or her from the mother, they give ‘routine’ antibiotics ‘just to be safe’, and they interrupt the bonding process. Women don’t realize this. They’re not informed.”

Many people are confused as to how a midwife’s care differs from obstetrical care. Even though nurse midwives might be present in a hospital, Weaver emphasizes that this is still very different from an out-of-hospital experience. The midwifery model of care typically consists of lengthy prenatal visits (averaging 45-60 minutes versus 10-15 minutes with Ob/Gyns), emphasis on nutrition, out-of-hospital birth options, practitioners trained in normal birth, and continuity of care (one caregiver who sees a woman prenatally, who is a continuous presence during labor and birth, and who visits after her birth to help with breastfeeding and the transition into parenthood).

The religious right movement is responsible for a huge amount of homebirths today. Midwifery is one area in which the religious right and the radical left come around to meet in the middle — they agree on the issue of homebirth.

“This is not just a women’s issue,” says Weaver. “It’s a family issue. A global issue. When women give birth in a safe environment with minimal drug and medical intervention, our communities reap the rewards with smarter babies, healthier children and lower health costs (less asthma, ear infections, allergies), less autism, a higher incidence of breastfeeding, less ADD and ADHD. Homebirth, breastfeeding and bonding save money.

“There is also the ecology point of view,” she adds. “Homebirth generates minimal waste, while hospitals are pro-waste and use a great deal of ‘disposable’ materials. It’s an artificial environment, the family is cut off from nature. In a hospital, things are done TO you, not with you.”

Finally, says Weaver, it’s important that doctors utilize equipment and machinery only when it is necessary, “not just because it’s a bright idea or a routine.” This is called evidence-based practice. She cites as an example the overuse of Electronic Fetal Monitoring (EFM) during labor.

“EFMs do not improve outcomes and they actually increase Cesareans,” she says. “Their use increases a doctor’s interventions in what might otherwise be a normal delivery; EFMs are really used for litigation purposes.” Studies published in the last few years in such prestigious journals as The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet have shown that, in the absence of specific indications for its use, Electronic Fetal Monitoring not only has no demonstrated benefits in reducing childhood disabilities, but may even be dangerous.

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s Oski estimates health care cost savings obtainable by eliminating the routine use of continuous Electronic Fetal Monitoring at $675 million per year. This may have a dramatic effect on reducing North Carolina’ current Cesarean section rate, which is 23%. “Commercialism and consumerism are propelling forward the surgical, medical, intervening, demoralizing model of hospital births,” says Weaver, “even for completely normal pregnancies.”

Jeannie Lucas, a Democratic Senator for North Carolina, is promoting a bill to legalize midwifery (CPM) in the state. Legality is state-by-state, which makes it difficult to gain national recognition and support. Weaver says there have been backhanded ways of stifling midwifery in the past. For instance, in a particular state midwifery may be “legal,” but the state stops issuing permits while still requiring midwives to have a permit to practice. To support the bill to legalize midwifery in North Carolina, email, call or write your congressmen, representatives and senators.

To find out your reps, go to www.ncga.org and use your zip+4; to find out your zip+4, go to usps.gov. Two worthwhile organizations to contact are The North Carolina Friends of Midwives at ncfom@aol.com or (252) 747-7785, and the North Carolina Midwives Alliance (NCMA) at nkoeb@aol.com.

Collecting sassafras sprays to feed the hungry cecropia caterpillars I was raising a couple of summers ago, I found a contingent of tiny caterpillars clustered on the underside of a leaf. They weren’t cecropias, or any other sassafras-eating caterpillar I knew. What struck me was the way they had arranged themselves: flank to flank, like pencils in a box, heads at the margin of the leaf, nibbling away.

I brought them home, put them in a container and kept them supplied with fresh leaves. As they passed through successive molts, they came to resemble the illustration of the caterpillar of the Io moth in my field guide. Adult Ios are stunningly beautiful: yellow or light brown, with midnight blue eye-spots on the hind wing, which they flash when startled, a defensive mechanism. The caterpillars were handsome too, their green bodies ornamented with lateral pink and cream stripes, backs bristling with clusters of branching spines.

“Watch out when you handle them,” my naturalist friend Harry Ellis warned me. “Those spines can give you a nasty sting.”

I heeded his warning, remembering an earlier experience with stinging caterpillars. Harvesting corn one year, I reached through the foliage and felt a jolt of pain, sharp as a wasp’s sting. I saw no wasps, but kept getting stung.

Finally, I noticed a few chocolate-brown caterpillars with conspicuous lime-green abdominal saddles and tufts of bristling spines. Nursing my hand, I retreated to the house to look the caterpillars up. “Sting intense and of considerable duration,” one guide noted of the saddleback caterpillar, the larval form of an inconspicuous brown moth.

Many caterpillars are hairy. Some have horns or spines that look dangerous but aren’t. But a few species — saddlebacks among them — have “sharp, fragile hairs that break off in the skin of an attacker and release a venom that stings like a nettle,” entomologist Gilbert Waldbauer writes in Millions of Monarchs, Bunches of Beetles.
“Under high magnification, a Io’s spines are really impressive,” monarch researcher Lincoln Brower told me. “They look like hypodermic needles.”

Knowing from experience the pain of a caterpillar’s sting, did I set the Ios back out in the wild? No. Why? Because Ios have an offsetting characteristic. In their larval stages, they’re social insects. Which meant that, when I was exchanging new sassafras sprigs for old in their cage, I needed only to find one caterpillar to locate the others. I raised the whole brood successfully and never once was stung.

Social Insects

When it comes to social insects, we automatically think of ants, bees, wasps and termites. These insect groups have long occupied the social-insect limelight by virtue of their “near-ubiquity, remarkable division of labor, sophisticated behavioral interactions and impact on human society,” writes Western Carolina University biology professor Jim Costa in a 1997 issue of American Scientist.

But there are other insects out there (Io caterpillars among them) that exhibit lesser degrees of sociality. “Ios stick together in early instars (stages between molts), and probably communicate chemically, but they haven’t been studied much,” Costa says.

Insects “who have something to say to each other” fascinate Costa. Introduced to social caterpillars as an undergraduate, he’s studied them ever since. Though he’s done some work with a Costa Rican relative of the Io, most of his research has involved Eastern tent caterpillars and sawflies (a large group of insects related to the bees, wasps and ants, but whose larval forms resemble the caterpillars of butterflies and moths).

Say it With Pheromones

The Eastern tent caterpillar is the most socially complex and best known of all social caterpillars “but its remarkable behavior is unlikely to be unique,” Costa thinks. As more social caterpillars are studied, the trail-marking behavior it exhibits may prove to be common. Still, tent caterpillars who build and expand their communal tent, bask in the sun, and feed together have taken trail marking to a high art.

Foraging caterpillars don’t follow one another as they leave the tent, but fan out, seeking tender foliage at twig tips. As they move along, they lay down silken strands, marking them with pheromones (chemical substances). A caterpillar who finds an abundance of food eats for awhile, then returns to the tent, re-marking its trail with a second “recruitment pheromone.”

Caterpillars who have been unsuccessful in finding food return periodically to the tent in search of one of these double-marked trails to follow. “In this way, the tent functions as a predictable information center — the essence of recruitment communication,” Costa says.

There are quite a few other social caterpillars in the southern Appalachians as well. The Baltimore checkerspot and some of its nymphalid (brush-footed butterflies) relatives “travel in little herds in their early instars,” he says.

Among the moths, the Eastern tent caterpillars and fall webworms are our most conspicuous social caterpillars. The two are easily differentiated by their web sites (at the ends of branches for webworms; in the crotches of trees for tent caterpillars), and the seasons in which they appear (spring for tent caterpillars; fall for webworms).

But the poplar tentmaker and red-marked tentmaker, the Datanas and several species of oakworms are also gregarious as caterpillars. Of the latter, the orange-striped and the pink-striped oakworms are especially common in our region.

Social behavior isn’t limited to caterpillars. “There is no question that thereís a whole range of insects and spiders that exist beyond the accepted definition of social, who live within family or larger groups,” Costa says. “They include representatives from the beetles, thrips, aphids, true bugs and sawflies.”

“From a biological point of view, these groups are as interesting as the more complex societies,” Waldbauer writes. “Group living at any level is important in the ecological scheme of things, because it enhances survival.”

Who Can Afford A Social Life?

Because of their lowly position on the food chain, insects have developed many strategies to keep from becoming someone else’s dinner. Cryptic coloration (blending into the scenery) helps some escape notice. Others — like early instar caterpillars of many swallowtail species, who are colored to look like bird droppings — mimic something unpalatable.

Some insects are armored with hard plates, spines, tubercles and hairs. Some, including sawflies, engage in simultaneous displays, lifting their heads and/or posteriors in unison and wave them back and forth to threaten predators or ward off parasitic flies and wasps. Others rely on chemical defenses to keep predators at bay, advertising their noxiousness through conspicuous coloration, distinctive odors or sounds. A species (insect or otherwise) who uses such warning signals is known as aposematic.

“There is ample evidence that these warning signals are heeded by predators and often save the lives of insects,” Waldbauer notes. “Coming together in groups can amplify and thus enhance the effectiveness of such warning signals.”

That’s because teaching predators a lesson “requires the sacrifice of individuals,” Brower says. “Avoidance is a conditioned response. If you’re an unpalatable insect, you’re safer in a group than on your own. If monarchs weren’t toxic (their bodies contain cardiac glycosides from the milkweeds they ate as caterpillars) they couldn’t afford to do what they do in Mexico, clustering by the millions in a few locations. They’re full of lipids (fats); they’d be a banquet for predators. If they were distributed all over Mexico instead of aggregating, birds would learn not to eat them more slowly, and more individuals would be killed.”

Contrasting patterns — orange and black, red and black, black and white, yellow and black — serve notice to enemies of bees, bald-faced hornets, monarchs, milkweed bugs and ladybugs, all of whom aggregate at least part of the time, and all of whom “mean what they say” (are toxic or equipped with stingers). Some palatable insects have evolved to resemble noxious species, gaining a measure of protection they wouldn’t otherwise enjoy.

But sociality can be costly, even for insects that are armed and dangerous. Living in close proximity can increase the incidence of disease, parasitism and predation. Two bird species — the black-headed grosbeak and the black-backed oriole — feast on overwintering monarchs in Mexico, to no ill effect. Nor are Eastern tent caterpillars — whose gut enzymes detoxify the toxins in cherry trees and produce hydrogen cyanide, a powerful poison — invulnerable to attack. Yellow- and black-billed cuckoos eat them with gusto.

“Cuckoos have a preference for hairy caterpillars that lots of other birds avoid,” Costa says. “Titmice are also known to eat, but not banquet, on tent caterpillars. But their most serious predators are fellow insects. Paper wasps and their relatives are fierce caterpillar predators and will repeatedly attack them. And there’s a species of stinkbug that will ravage them, sometimes even inside their tents.”

An ongoing, escalating “evolutionary arms race” is being waged by plants (that produce chemicals to repel attack), the insects that eat them, and the predatory species that eat toxic insects, Waldbauer says.

Hanging Out With The Crowd

There are other reasons besides defense against predators for insects to aggregate. Scientists try to distinguish between truly social insects (those who communicate) and those who come together “but aren’t paying attention to each other,” Costa says. Because they haven’t been studied extensively, many species “fall into a gray area between the two.”

Some insects appear in groups because they feed on a single plant species that isn’t very common. “That’s aggregating for resources,” he says.

Others aggregate to facilitate mating. This behavior is particularly important to short-lived species like mayflies, whose adult lives last a matter of hours, or to periodical cicadas, who only appear in adult form every 13 or 17 years. Male periodical cicadas form singing choruses to recruit females. (Non-periodical cicadas also sing, but not in choruses.) Interestingly, the sheer volume may afford the highly palatable periodical cicadas some protection against birds, both because it’s painfully loud and because it interferes with the birds’ songs and calls.

Insects sometimes aggregate to fight a plant’s defenses. The pine bark beetles currently decimating pine stands in the southern Appalachians are an example. The trees secrete resin that would drown the beetles in their tunnels under the bark, so the beetles launch a two-pronged attack. They release aggregation pheromones to recruit additional beetles, and inoculate the trees with fungal spores that further weaken the trees’ defenses.

Others feed cooperatively, among them milkweed bugs, who pierce the milkweeds’ thick seed pods to suck juices from the seeds. To break the seeds’ contents down, they inject them with saliva. Because a single bug can’t secrete enough saliva to break down the contents of a large dry seed, several bugs pool their salivary secretions and feed together on a single seed.

Insects also aggregate to protect themselves from the elements, and for climate control. Tent caterpillars emerge from their egg masses just as the first cherry leaves do and are vulnerable to frost. Temperatures inside the tent are higher than the ambient air, and the caterpillars orient tents so their broadest walls face the southeast, catching the morning sun. Basking on outer walls, they “can raise their body temperatures by about 30 degrees Celsius, greatly facilitating metabolism and growth,” Costa says.

Monarchs derive a measure of protection by overwintering in dense clusters. “They can survive sub-freezing temperatures if they don’t get wet,” Brower says. Studies he and associates conducted showed that the butterflies clinging to the trunks of the largest trees had the highest survival rates after winter storms. “Those trees are like hot water bottles. They’re warmer than the surrounding air. Their stored heat radiates through the butterflies’ bodies” — a tiny boost that may spell the difference between life and death.

Insects also aggregate to conserve moisture. That’s probably what those ladybugs are doing, packed tightly together in our attics all winter. They’re not eating (they live off stored fats and don’t have to feed), or mating. They may be keeping warm. But Waldbauer suggests that they’re protecting themselves from desiccation. Daddy longlegs, an eight-legged insect relative, conserve body moisture by packing together in huge, dense clusters, bodies together, legs out, until they resemble “a thickly-haired pelt.”

It’s Not All In The Family

“Funny you should call about tent caterpillars today,” Costa said, when I telephoned him in late March. “I just saw my first caterpillar tent on campus, and my students and I are about to set up an experiment.” He sounded happy, a rare reaction to the appearance of tent caterpillars.

Female tent caterpillars lay all their eggs in a single egg mass. So when researchers noticed that egg masses are often located in close proximity to one another, sometimes on the same twig, they knew that unrelated tent caterpillars were mixing together in tent colonies. “Usually, cooperation evolves in family groups,” Costs says. “So when we find non-relatives cooperating, as we do with tent caterpillars, it’s interesting.”

His current experiments involve collecting egg masses and creating colonies of 100 caterpillars each in the lab, using pairs of egg masses, then planting the colonies in the field. Each colony contains 100 caterpillars: one with all the caterpillars from one egg mass; one with all caterpillars from the other; and one with 50 caterpillars from each egg mass.

“We’re controlling for colony size, comparing single and mixed families, then watching them in the field to see whether mixing non-relative caterpillars has any effect on growth rate or survivorship. This is the second year of this experiment. We got some interesting results last year. It looked as though mixed family groups outperformed single family groups,” he says.

“The last couple of years have been exciting, a whole new range of experiments,” he says.

An early spring visit to the Roaring Run area of the Newcastle Ranger District in Virginia’s George Washington-Jefferson National Forest lifts off the winter blahs. Leaf buds are swelling on some of the trees, and yellow fringe trims witch hazel branches.

On the soft, moist forest floor, perennial plants are beginning their regrowth for the new season. Delicate bluets are making an appearance, along with bloodroot and windflower. Glossy leaves of galax and partridge berry leaves poke out of last fall’s leaves and bright green moss sport tiny fruiting bodies on hair-like stems.

It hasn’t always been so lovely here. Just past the entrance to the hiking trails to the falls and Hoop Hole is Roaring Run Furnace, built in 1838. It’s a hulking stone pyramid that reflects a little-known facet of Virginia history.

The United States’ iron industry began in 1609, when the Jamestown colonists first mined iron ore. Between 1619 and 1622, Virginia settlers built the first iron furnace in the colonies, a charcoal furnace near the James River just south of what is now Richmond.

An Indian raid soon destroyed that furnace, and it wasn’t until 1714 that iron production was reestablished with the building of a furnace near the Rappahannock River. The enterprise continued to spread westward, crossing the Blue Ridge in the latter part of the 18th century.

Forest Service Archaeologist Mike Barber says Virginia was a major producer of iron in the 19th century, with most of the state’s 75 iron furnaces located across the Ridge and Valley province. Most of the stone furnaces are still standing, and 10 of those are within the George Washington-Jefferson National Forest. They are listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register, and will eventually be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Iron was needed for cooking pots, barrel hoops, horseshoes, nails, tools, plows, rifles, and cannonballs. Barber says that most of the Virginia furnaces shut down in the 1840s, when richer sources of ore were found in states to the north and west. They were fired up again during the Civil War years, however, because iron from northern furnaces was unavailable to the southern states. After the war, most shut down for good, but a few continued to operate until the early 1900s.

The furnace structures varied — rounded or square pyramids with two to four side openings — but each was constructed of huge limestone blocks, mined at local quarries, with fire brick lining the chimney. The furnace was usually built on the side of a hill, with a wooden bridge house running from the hill to the top of the stack, so that the charcoal, limestone, and iron ore could be carried through the bridge house and dumped into the furnace. A stream normally provided the power to turn a turn a water wheel, which drove the bellows.

Barber says a furnace was surrounded by the facilities — barracks, kitchens, storehouses, barns — needed to support up to 100 workers (in the days before and during the Civil War, half of those were slaves), and 100 animals.

For the cold-blast process, the furnace was first filled with charcoal and lit from the top. Over several days, the fire burned down to the openings, and the furnace was refilled with charcoal. Then the fire was allowed to burn back up to the top, and a blast of cold air from the bellows brought the temperature up to the ore-smelting temperature of 2300-2500ºF.

As the charcoal settled, the furnace was continuously filled with layers of charcoal, ore, and limestone. As the iron or and limestone melted, the limestone served as a flux, cleaning impurities from the ore and forming slag, which floated to the surface of the molten iron.

During blast, the furnaces operated day and night in 12-hour shifts for three or four months, stopping only for maintenance and repairs. The iron and slag were usually tapped twice daily. The molten iron flowed into a casting bed made of sand. A main trench (the sow) in the sand allowed the iron to flow into numerous smaller side trenches (the pigs), hence the name “pig iron.”

In one 24-hour period of operation, a furnace could consume an average of 750 bushels of charcoal, 12 tons of iron ore, and many tons of limestone to produce five tons of iron. To produce the 750 bushels of charcoal needed for 24 hours of blast required 19 cords of wood, which means that about an acre of forest was cleared for each day of furnace operation. Many furnaces were in blast for nine or ten months a year.

In her book The Appalachian Forest, Chris Bolgiano describes the impacts of the iron industry on the mountain environment: “It was common for furnaces to go out of business when all the trees within convenient hauling distance were cut. By the early 1800s, tens of thousands of acres had been cleared, crisscrossed with hauling roads, and pocked with mining pits and charcoal hearths.”

The forests of the James River Ranger District, located in Botetourt and Alleghany counties, are young. District Ranger Annie Downing says that by 1900, the forests were completely gone: cut, split and made into charcoal to feed the region’s iron furnaces. Many areas have probably been cut a couple of times since then to feed Westvaco’s chip mill and paper mill in Covington, at the edge of the national forest.

Callie Furnace, built in 1873 is on the side of Rich Patch Mountain, about four miles from the town of Glen Wilton. The largest furnace in the area, its unique features are a rust-colored iron smoke stack sticking out of the chimney, and a large stone-lined cistern sunk in the ground just uphill from the furnace. The small hills around the site are slag piles.

There are also lots of mines; most are surface mines, but some are tunnels and vertical holes. “They hunted and picked all over these ridges,” Downing says. She’s fascinated by the furnaces, and plans to improve the sites in her district to make them more attractive and educational for visitors. The most visible of the local furnaces, Clifton Forge, isn’t on federal land, but sits just off Highway 220, between the towns of Clifton Forge and Iron Gate.

There are 10 iron furnaces within the George Washington-Jefferson, including Catawba Furnace, Catherine Furnace in Page County; Elizabeth Furnace in Shenandoah County; and Raven Cliff Furnace in Wythe County.

To find out about how you can visit them, contact the Forest Service at 888-265-0019 or visit www.fs.fed.us/gwnf.

Monongahela NF Increases Cut

Conservationists in West Virginia are urging the public to oppose a U.S. Forest Service amendment to the Monongahela National Forest’s management plan for threatened and endangered species. The plan outlines an increase in logging to 10 million board feet (almost double what it is now) and 100 acres of herbiciding a year. The amended plan also calls for 68 new gas well sites with 19 miles of new roads and 82 miles of new gas pipelines in the next 10 years. According to conservationists, this plan weakens protection for threatened and endangered species to allow for an increase in logging and gas extraction. For more info, visit www.wvhighlands.org. To comment on the amendment, e-mail darling@fs.fed.us

Rare Woodpeckers To Be Moved

In the latest sad chapter of Kentucky’s endangered red-cockaded woodpecker recovery, biologists are planning to capture the 15 remaining birds and relocate them to wildlife refuges in South Carolina and Arkansas, reports the Lexington Herald-Leader. The move is a desperate attempt to save the birds after a “record outbreak of southern pine beetles” destroyed much of their remaining old-growth pine habitat. Forest protection group Heartwood says that the USFS set the stage “for the bird’s demise in KY because it allowed to much logging.” The USFWS hopes to bring the woodpeckers back to the Daniel Boone National Forest in 50 years after the forests have “recovered” from the infestation (the beetles are KY natives.)

Va. Activists Storm Staples Stores

On March 28, Virginia forest activists targeted Staples stores across the state in a campaign to convince the giant chain to stop selling virgin fiber. In Richmond, Blue Ridge Earth First! activists dropped a huge banner from the roof of Staples reading, “Stumps, We Got That!” About 30 activists turned out for the demo and delivered a truck load of stumps to the Staples Store. In Charlottesville, the Shenandoah Ecosystems Defense Group brought about 40 community members to protest at their local Staples store using political theatre: a gigantic stapler chased trees around the parking lots while Mother Earth intervened on their behalf. Staples protests also occurred in Williamsburg and Harrisonburg.

A new report by the environmental group American Rivers highlights the impact that energy production has on our nation’s rivers. Nearly half of the 13 waters on the group’s 2001 “Most Endangered Rivers” list are in trouble from the effects of hydropower dams, mining, coal burning, and contamination from producing parts of the nation’s energy grid.

Three of the 13 most endangered rivers are right here in southern Appalachia: Paine Run, a stream in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park that suffers from acid rain; the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River on the Kentucky/West Virginia border, which is still reeling from a huge coal sludge spill last year; and the heavily developed watershed of the Catawba River in North and South Carolina.

The report says further damage to rivers across the country could be reduced or avoided by increasing energy efficiency, producing conventional energy more responsibly, and expanding the supply of clean, renewable energy sources like wind and solar. But consumers must take some of the responsibility by reducing their use of electricity and fossil fuels, it said.

“The rivers on this year’s list demonstrate how damming, drilling, digging and burning to produce energy pollute drinking water, deny the public recreational opportunities, and drive river wildlife to extinction,” said Rebecca Wodder, president of American Rivers. “The administration and some members of Congress have proposed stopgap measures to increase domestic energy production which will exacerbate these problems without resulting in long-term solutions.”

The Top 5 most endangered rivers were: the Missouri River, which fluctuates wildly to serve the barging industry; the Canning River in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, threatened with oil drilling by the Bush administration; California’s Eel River, which loses 90% of its flow to water diversions for hydropower and agriculture; New York’s Hudson River, contaminated by toxic PCBs from electrical transformer production; and the Powder River in Wyoming and Montana, which is imperiled by coal bed methane mining.

The Tug Fork of the Big Sandy led the list of endangered rivers in our region, coming in at # 7. Last October, a mine shaft beneath a slurry impoundment owned by Martin County Coal Company collapsed, releasing a wave of coal sludge into the Tug Fork. The spill contaminated domestic and industrial water supplies and suffocated aquatic life under an oozing blanket of slurry (a mixture of water, mud, and coal waste.)

The Environmental Protection Agency called the spill one of the worst environmental disasters ever in the Southeast. Though Martin County Coal began removing sludge in the upper tributaries, the Tug Fork still hasn’t been cleaned up. American Rivers and other groups are urging KY legislators to place a moratorium on new slurry impoundments until government agencies can review coal slurry disposal methods.

“Slurry impoundments at the top of mountains riddled with underground mines are disasters waiting to happen,” said Judy Peterson, executive director of the Kentucky Waterways Alliance.

Paine Run came in #11 on the “Most Endangered” list. The stream and its neighbors in Shenandoah National Park are known nationwide as some of the finest native brook trout habitat in the country, drawing anglers from around the U.S. But the park is the second most polluted in the U.S., because it is downwind from numerous coal-fired power plants in the Ohio and Tennessee river valleys (many of which are old facilities that were exempted from the 1990 Clean Air Act.)

These plants emit tremendous amounts of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, which are transformed into acids in the atmosphere and return to the surface as acid rain, snow, mist, or fog. Paine Run once held as many as eight different fish species, but now is home to just three. A recent study by the University of Virginia found that 6% of 304 trout streams are now too acidic to host reproducing populations of brook trout; by 2041, that number will jump to 22% if sulfur dioxide emissions are not cut by 70% from 1991 levels.

“Despite the fact that they are miles away from any major pollution source, mountain streams in the East are getting pounded by high doses of acid rain,” said Leon Szeptycki, eastern conservation director for Trout Unlimited. “Paine Run is representative of all eastern streams affected by acid rain.”

Explosive urban growth threatens to overwhelm the Catawba River’s capacity to provide drinking water, assimilate sewage, support wildlife, and serve recreational needs. Reservoirs along the Catawba provide drinking water for much of North Carolina, but cities and industries hold permits to discharge more than 175 milion gallons of treated sewage into the watershed daily — that number is expected to double in the next 10 years. Sprawl is eating up land at the rate of 40 acres per day, dumping polluted runoff into the river.

“Hopefully, this listing will serve as a wake-up call to North and South Carolina to take steps to protect the river for the next generation,” said Donna Lisenby, Catawba Riverkeeper. She and other conservationists are particularly concerned about plans by Charlotte-area business interests to install large sewer lines along a 20-mile stretch of the Catawba.

The American Rivers report offers a host of solutions, calling on legislators to rewrite provisions in the Clean Air Act that grandfather old power plants, promote investments in wind and solar power generation through tax breaks and updated building codes, make new coal slurry impoundment permits go through a public notice and comment period, and adopt streamside buffer zones to protect rivers in developed areas.To see the whole report, go to www.americanrivers.org.

Walking has been called the exercise that needs no gym, the weight control without a diet, the tranquilizer without a pill, and the fountain of youth that is no legend. It’s a revitalizer, an aid to clear and creative thought, and a preventive for cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes, and other diseases.

Plus, it makes for a great vacation. Inn-to-inn hiking gives you the best of the outdoors combined with the pampering of civilization. This article is for those who like rambling along in nature, but think plodding up mountains with a substitute home packed on their backs is work. It’s also for backpackers on holiday from big packs.

After three years of researching hiking trails and the lodging within walking distance, I’ve written a book, The Inn to Inn Walking Guide to the Virginias, published by Menasha Ridge Press. This article describes one of my favorite hikes from the book: the Appalachian and Wheezer trails near Pearisburg, Va.

The climb to Angel’s Rest above Pearisburg is notorious among southbound Appalachian Trail hikers for its punishing incline. Yes, you must endure a 1.5-mile, 1,650-ft. climb before you can sprawl over a boulder enjoying Giles County from a heavenly perspective. For the next seven miles of the hike, you enjoy ridgetop while hiking level ground or descending to cascading Mill Creek.

The ascent to Angel’s Rest has its own rewards. Noise and heat fall away as you zigzag up the slope, moving from thick poplar and oaks to laurel and rhododendron.
The spring you thought was finished revives in azaleas, fire pinks, and lady slippers at 3,770 ft. And fall starts creeping over the summit in mid-September with the first red woodbine and yellow nut trees.

Angel’s Rest looms over Pearisburg. From almost anywhere in town, it’s easy to determine whether a patch of clouds is resting on the tip of Pearis Mountain. When it is, natives say, “The angel is in.”

To reach Angel’s Rest and the Appalachian Trail, take Wenonah St. (US 460 Business) to Pearisburg’s Main Street at the courthouse. Turn right, go three blocks, and turn left on Johnson Avenue. Take the first right (Morris Avenue) and go about .6 mile until you see a tree bearing the white AT blaze and a path entering the forest on the left.

The sense of escape is immediate. You enter into a tight, close bower of greenery and branches; the sky is not visible again until near the summit. Don’t examine the vegetation bordering the trail too closely; the shiny, three-leafed vine is poison ivy. The herb with jagged leaves is stinging nettle — reputedly great in potions, but its prickers give your legs a rash.

The well-worn trail leads into a spring-fed ravine and briefly along an old logging road before settling into a consistent, thrashing course of switchbacks. The path crosses over two ancient rockslides. Watch the feet; a spring seeps under one, making the rocks slippery.

Gradually, the thriving hardwood forest of the lowlands gives way to stunted oaks and shrubs. When you reach the boulders at the top, detour a few hundred feet to the right on a blue-blazed trail for a view of Pearisburg and the twisting New River. The AT continues to the crest of Angel’s Rest and follows along a rock ledge overhanging Wilburn Valley for more spectacular views.

Now you’re coasting. The trail is flat, and only downhills lie ahead. After about 1.5 miles along the ridge through ferns and heath shrubs, the landscape opens up under a power line with good views of Wilburn Valley. From here, the AT descends about 200 feet and turns left. At this juncture, turn right to follow an as-yet unblazed forest service road known as the Wheezer among mountain bikers. If you were coming from Narrows, you’d know why.

Wheezer is a grassy double-track, bordered by mountain laurel and flame azaleas at its higher elevations. As its downward slope increases, you’ll see what local mountain bikers describe as “babyheads,” treacherous loose stones along its eight-switchback descent. You plunge about 1,100 feet in the last half mile to Mill Creek.
Forty miles of unmarked trails fan out through Jefferson National Forest from the Mill Creek area. Several take off from Wheezer on the way down Pearis Mountain. Continue down the double-track Wheezer and veer right when another double track comes in from the left. At Mill Creek, you will reach the pond that was once Narrows’ town reservoir.

However, if you’d like an intimate, half-mile alternative to the double track, look for a small path exiting on the left side of the sixth or seventh switchback. Follow this trail on an overgrown logging road to a cobbled path along Mill Creek’s waterfalls and pools of native trout. This path, Catwalk, is a super technical, rocky, crazy descent for a biker, but only mildly pulse-quickening for a hiker.

Someone started a tradition of creating rock cairns along Catwalk, and now its course is marked with carefully balanced Buddhist shrines. Ralph Robertson, a local outdoorsman and guide, makes a habit of stacking a new rock on one of the towers each time he passes through. “A cairn represents life,” he says. “Very tippy, but every now and then someone adds a new piece to it.”

Hemlocks, beech, hickories, and oak shelter the trail, and trillium, jack-in-the pulpits, ferns, and ramps — the garlicky spring tonic of the southern Appalachians — grow in profusion from the dark earth. Robertson has seen bear farther up the creek, and, when he searches under rocks, rattlesnakes.

Catwalk and Wheezer converge at the pond that was once Narrows’ town reservoir. Town employees and visiting college students have been working to build a path along the left side of Mill Creek, but no bridge has been completed as of winter 2001, so take the forest road downhill a quarter-mile to the completed bridge on the left. Cross there and make a quick right. In spring, you’ll see at least a dozen species of wildflowers, from the first hepatica and colts foot blossoms in March to Bowman’s root and mayapple in late spring.

The path leads to Poplar Street Bridge. Step right over the bridge and make an immediate left onto Northview Street, which goes about a mile to Main Street. Turn left on Main Street and you’ll see the New River Inn on the right in a quarter-mile. A good dinner spot is Anna’s Restaurant, a block west at the end of Main Street.

Linda Lorraine’s Bed and Breakfast
1409 Cabot Dr., Pearisburg, VA
540/921-2069
www.lindalorraines.com

From Linda Lorraine’s porch, her dining room, and most of the guest rooms in her 1908 Georgian-style house, you can eyeball Angel’s Rest — that great heap of mountain you must climb on this hike. Linda Lorraine Jametsky can no longer see well enough to make out Angel’s Rest, but she knows her way around her kitchen well enough to cook up a breakfast that’s a worthy send-off.

Although she’s an expert in concocting low-fat, sugar-free items, she has enough Southern blood to do justice to biscuits and gravy with eggs. Her husband, Ron, makes French toast angelica for the Angel’s Rest bound. And if that’s not enough, anything in the guest refrigerator is up for grabs.

Unlike most other bed and breakfasts, Linda Lorraine’s welcomes children and outdoor dogs. Two of the spacious bedrooms have two queen beds to accommodate families. The four upstairs bedrooms are served by large shared bathrooms, one for men and one for women.

New River Inn and Bookstore
307 Main St., Narrows, VA
540/726-2770
www.abebooks.com

The New River Inn and Bookstore got its start three years ago when Narrows newcomer Diana Fields decided she wouldn’t commute to work. Shortly after she made that decision, the house next door to her went up for sale during the week when Fields found an opportunity to buy 5,000 books for $250. The bookstore and bed and breakfast were born.

The New River Inn consists of three upstairs bedrooms and one down — comfortable, unpretentious rooms with pretty bedspreads and antique furniture. A clawfoot tub in the shared bathroom invites long soaks, perhaps accompanied by a cup of the inn’s apricot ginger or Egyptian licorice tea. Guests have their choice of 10,000 books for night reading.

Fields loves catering to hikers and other ecotourists. Her latest move has been to open a canoe and tubing livery.

Innkeepers will help you shuttle your car before your hike or take you back to your car the next morning, but you need to make your request with your reservation. To reach Linda Lorraine’s, take the Pearisburg/Ripplemead exit off U.S. 460 and follow U.S. 460 (Wenonah Street) toward Pearisburg. After entering Pearisburg, take a right on Horsley Drive. As you crest the hill, you’ll see Linda Lorraine’s directly before you.

For the New River Inn, take U.S. 460 to the Narrows exit, turn left on Rt. 61 over the bridge to downtown Narrows, where you will turn left on Rt. 100, the main street. The inn is on the left, just after the post office.

Clauson-Wicker’s The Inn-to-Inn Walking Guide for the Virginias was published by Menasha Ridge Press in April 2001.