The Appalachian Voice
Barefoot hiking
Two shoe salesmen, the old anecdote goes, were scouting for business on a tropical island. The first sent back a message to the home office that went something like this: “No use, boss. Everyone goes barefoot here.” But the second fellow had a different perspective entirely: “Everyone is barefoot — sales potential unlimited!” In early…
Read MoreRestoring the Brook Trout
images/voice_uploads/PICT0075%5B1%5Dtrout.gif At the dawn of American Civilization, the brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) could be found virtually anywhere in the Appalachians where cold water flowed. The brook trout is the most fragile of the East’s gamefish and it serves as an indicator species for a watershed. Deforestation caused by logging and chestnut blight in the late…
Read MoreAppalachia’s Ten Best Bike Trails
Not so long ago, when the region’s first “rails to trails” projects began, state park rangers were often confronted by angry landowners who feared their property would become worthless. Today, bike trails have become a hallmark of progressive communities like Knoxville, TN, Asheville and Boone NC, and the New River Valley of Virginia. They greatly…
Read MoreMarching to Washington for the Kids at Marsh Fork
images/voice_uploads/wiley.gif Ed Wiley is one determined man. On August 2nd, he embarked on a 455 mile walk from Charleston, WV to Washington D.C. to dramatize concerns about the safety of a school located next to a major coal mine. The school, Marsh Fork Elementary, is about 400 yards from a 2.8 billion gallon coal slurry…
Read MoreDuke’s Bad Energy Idea
This month the Charlotte metro area saw its first Code Red ozone alert of the year. On Code Red days, the simple act of breathing outside puts even healthy adults at risk of damaging their lungs. This red alert presents an opportunity to reflect on how our quality of life depends on decisions made by…
Read MoreWhy I am for Wind Power
We can dismantle wind turbines when better technology comes along, but we can never put back the tops of our mountains, or uncover the streams that have been covered, or unpoison our babies. As far as I know, wind turbines don’t poison unborn children with mercury the way coal does. The air that comes out…
Read MoreDiscovering Crayfish
You get a line and I’ll get a pole; We’ll all go down to the crawdad hole, Ho-ney, ba-by, mine. “The Crawdad Song,” southern American folk song Growing up in western North Carolina, I have two distinct memories related to crawdads- The Crawdad Song, a popular children’s tune sung by family members; and the fun…
Read MoreNational Trust lists Blair Mountain Among Most Endangered Places
This April, the National Trust for Historic Preservation listed Blair mountain, the West Virginia site of a 1921 labor confrontation, as one of the country’s most threatened historic places. “Past preservation efforts have failed because of fierce opposition from the coal companies that own or lease most of the ridge,” said the National Trust for…
Read MoreLost Mountain
Riverhead Books. New York. 2006 250 pages. $24.95 The removal of entire mountain tops merely to extract coal is such a staggering idea that it’s often presented in religious metaphors – to move a mountain, after all, is an act most often associated with religious texts. The environmental devastation wreaked by mountaintop removal is so…
Read MoreMountian Justice Summer
images/voice_uploads/2_circle.GrannyD.gif Documentary cameras rolled as heart-wrenching stories met a steely resolve to organize and stop mountaintop removal mining. Several hundred participants met at this year’s Healing Mountains conference in West Virginia, organized by the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, Heartwood, the Coal River Mountain Watch, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and dozens of other organizations. Keynote speakers…
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