A new leaf for Appalachia

I pulled up the route from Middletown, OH to Blacksburg VA to get to the statewide PowerShift conference at Virginia Tech. We would pass right through Charleston, West Virginia. 

We stopped in Charleston last fall and twice visited Kayford Mountain, an infamous mountain top removal mining site. Our first trip up the mountain came as part of teach in on the deleterious effects of Mountain Top Removal led by Judy and Lorella--two tough silver haired coal miners's daughters now working with Coal River Mountain Watch to stop destructive mining and build sustainable communities. Our second trip came in the back of a pick up truck as Jimmy, a retired rail road worker and new friend of BioTour took us in to the site through the back roads. Jimmy, who made his living as foreman in a coal train yard, and spent much of his life bow hunting deer and wild ginseng, gave voice to the paradox--"a man's got to have a job, ya see what I mean, but it's a shame what they done to these mountains". 

In some places coal production is viewed as a way of life, and seems like the only thing keeping some communities from complete destitution. A longer view of history reveals the role of the coal industry in keeping the communities of Appalachia in poverty. Even today as jobs in coal mining have declined significantly due to the less labor intensive mountain top removal strip mining.

Coal

also provides about half of the electricity in the United States. So for most people it is, just as the "Friends of Coal" billboards and bumper stickers say, coal that "keeps the lights on" (so change your light bulbs already (ps LED bulbs are available online). So maybe coal still makes sense for right now until we are able to make a smooth transition to renewable energy?

On the road up Kayford Mountain today we passed a sign that read "Warning: 

Trespassers will be arrested by any force necessary including deadly force. Vehicles and property will be seized indefinitely". 

A pick up truck pulled alongside us. I turned around and introduced myself. The man in the truck worked in seeding and "reclaiming" strip mines, and he explained with gregarious passion how strip mining was not as bad as people say, that there's a lot of lies being told about it. It's thoroughly regulated for one, it provides jobs, the valley fills actually filter the streams that they cover and the water comes out cleaner the other end, he said.  He even told me that the wildlife loved the strip mines. "You know in fact I have never seen a bobcat anywhere besides a strip mine, and you should see the way the deer take

 to that grass." He told me with a straight face, having convinced himself that the job that supported his kids was a good thing.

We continued on up the dirt road under the vibrant broad leafed forest and past the little campground--the last outpost of folks who refused to sell their property to the mine. Past the old family cemetary, and the little car trailers built into little house 

trailers with little wooden front porches, and finally up the last wooded slope;

we emerged from the trees and looked out over the gaping

 wound in the earth where a forested peak once stood.

 Explosions sent clouds of earth billowing from the hillside, and bulldozers scraped away the top soil i

nto piles of rubble. Like hobbitts reaching Mordor or Isengard 

we watched in shock and gloom.

The reality of destructive coal mining quickly dissolves the apolog

ies and excuses for the coal industry. For the communities around the mines, processing facilities and power plants throughout Appalachia the ecological crises does not wait in the imagined future, it is in their water that runs gray from the tap, in the air as children and the elderly struggle to breathe; hundreds of mountains have been destroyed, streams filled in, nearby homes destroyed by mudslides down treeless slopes, and slurry ponds of toxic waste pile up between the hills.

Mountain top removal mining must stop and no more public funds dedicated to new coal fired power plants, and no more tax breaks given to the coal industry. Those resources shoul be used to create healthy and sustainable communities in Appalachia. The land and the people of this region have fueled the economy of the United States for over a century and they deserve to share in the benefits.

Green jobs now. No New Coal. PowerVote

To learn more about Mountain Top Removal in Appalachia please visit Ilovemountains.org

Word.

Ok I should sleep because we just arrived at Virginia Tech a few hours ago, and in a few more hours we will be joined by hundreds of organizers and student activists from all over the state, and we have work to do.

Iowa to Chicago...without a bus

With my large pack strapped to my back and a laptop thrown across one shoulder, I stood in the breakdown lane of I-80 East with my thumb out, holding a sign that read ‘Chicago.’ And hour and a half passed, while I listened to cars whiz past me. I was surprised no one picked me up and reconsidered how I was going to get to Chicago from Pella, Iowa. As I began walking off the highway and truck cab without a trailer pulled over. My faith in humanity was bolstered, but I passed up the ride that was only going to Iowa City. I walked off the highway to a nearby hotel.

The woman at the hotel desk handed me a map of Des Moines with directions to the bus station, which was too far to walk. So, I called in a favor from a friend living in Des Moines who I had run into earlier in the day.

Christina pulled up in her car with a gift of three slices of Des Moines’ finest pizza, then dropped me off across town. I bought my one-way ticket to Chicago, sat down on a bench, opened my laptop and started typing my thoughts.

“Are you going to Chicago?” a man with a soft Indian accent asked.

“Yes. You?”

“Yes, I am flying home from Chicago after three years in the United States.”

“Where’s home?”

“Punjab.”

“Aman is my name.” We shook hands.

As we spoke, my computer screensaver activated and BioTour photos streamed across the screen.

“What’s that?” he inquired.

“That’s the bayou in Atchafalaya, Louisiana.”

I narrated a photo slideshow of the BioTour. The conversation went on. We shared stories, cigarettes, and pistachios. He told me about his two children, his homeland, and his friends. Before long, we were friends and he invited me to Punjab to stay with his family, even offering to buy my plane ticket.

The plan for Punjab is now forming. I slept all the way to Chicago.

Familiar Trails

The journey west feels familiar and new all at once--plowing down the Midwestern highways between walls of corn, peering into a vat of grease beneath a pink Nebraska sunrise, the truck stop denizens, their friendly questions, curious stares, and giant mugs of coffee. We have experienced this all before--traversing the arteries of America, but the new crew members refresh our wonder.

We emerge from the corn in Wyoming, black cattle jog past oil derricks atop the grassy hills, and we roll over the deep rolling swells of earth that mark the great plains.

In Rawlins, Wyoming we circle the wagons, or rather the buses, for dinner. Marisol took whatever was in our cupboard and put together a wonderful meal. We share pad thai on the rooftop and look out over the little motorist's oasis amid the dry mountains.

We climb up and over the Rockies, coast past Salt Lake City, across the great salt flats and into the Nevada desert.

I understand the ‘proud to be American’ sentiment of many of the truckers and bikers and others who roads and trails of this vast and beautiful swath of earth. Despite all the billboards and chain restaurants, the petroleum addiction and the government that spends more in a week on the military than it does in a year on public education, there is a land and culture that I love too.

We are atop the Sierras now and will reach San Francisco sometime before sunrise, spend a day gathering grease, food, water, and other supplies and then head back into the desert for Burning Man.

On the Road to San Francisco-- August

Only a couple days after leaving the farm, we found ourselves on the road just over the border in Utah. We stopped in a small town for grease and a stationary, cooked dinner. Marisol was making dinner—Chinese noodles with a homemade peanut sauce, mustard leaves, and whatever else we’ve got lying around—while the rest of us enjoyed the chance to get out of the bus for a bit. As he often does, Keith got out his bike wandered off….He came back with his face all lit up, smiling, no—smirking, saying “Look what I found!” He held up a sink. “There’s a giant pile of sinks!” he said. We needed two sinks, one for each bus, and haven’t really had a chance to think about where we might get them (not least, get them for free). We got the other bike down and Keith and I rode off to the sink treasure trove together (me standing up on the bike the whole time because I can’t reach the pedals from the seat—it’s currently at Ethan height). I followed Keith through several dirt parking lots in a fairly empty area and lo and behold—a pile of about 50 sinks, all the perfect size, all identical—perfect. We decided they were too heavy to bike back with, so we headed back to the bus with plans to eat and return on our way out with the bus.

Marisol was just finishing up cooking when we got back and we all started congregating on the roof of the new bus (where Ethan found his reading in solitude interrupted, though likely happily so). Dinner was well worth the wait, and we had a fun, happy, good spirited dinner together on the roof and listened to Nando and Ethan tell some good BioTour stories from the past.

I started driving out with Keith and Adam on board only to get a phone call from the other bus just minutes after having navigated a particularly windy detour to the highway—“Hey..Maggie…Can you come back? We just found a ton of grease.” I turned around and drove back to the other bus, and fell asleep in the process of greasing, so Alan took over driving for me. I woke up several hours later to the fiery light of the sun rising over the desert mountains in Utah, about half an hour west of Salt Lake City…Not bad. We stopped at a rest stop to transfer grease, and sat on the roof basking in the warm golden morning light as we waited for the barrel of grease to settle….

At a rest stop in Utah just past sunrise…

I sit on the hood, listening to the carefree anecdotal chatter between KB and Dubs

bouncing down from the roof as the sun sifts

through the dusty golden air with its rays,

while long shadowed humans trek back and forth

to the restrooms in the sandy brick building.

The rest stop parking lot is full of the dramatic elongated lines

of sign and light post shadows climbing

over the orange extension cord that does its part

to help pump our grease.

Our three shadows reach out and plant themselves on the whiteness

of the truck parked alongside

I look across from where I’m sitting to see, pasted onto the cab of the truck,

an American flag and

“Love It or Leave It…”

The truck rolls away, barreling back onto the freeway and

for a moment, its shadow flattens us into darkness.

But the dark cloud passes

and we’re left to bask in the soft morning light again,

With an empty space

where the roots of our shadows had been settled.

(8/22/08)

Back on the road in Utah, I fell asleep again, cuddled up in the back bunk. I woke up a couple hours later in a rest stop on the side of blindingly white salt flats. Gorgeous.

I’m feeling so grateful to be seeing all these different landscapes. And overwhelmed. And wishing we could slow down. Wishing we could stop and find out where all these tiny little roads lead that meander off the highway into the desert. But San Francisco and the real beginning of our journey await us…

Camp Ettrick

We drove the 41-foot yellow school bus down the winding country road between rows of corn and soy, searching for the dirt driveway that leads to Marv and Janice’s farm. Three dogs greeted us with barks and wagging tails. I shut down the engine beside Zinatala To (“Bluebird” in Lakota), the old blue bus that has carried us across the continent for the past year and half.

I stepped off the bus. Alan and Taavi were wrenching bolts and pulling hoses from a water-damaged fuel injection pump. After a brief greeting the conversation shifted to the task at hand.

“Welcome. We are removing this pump,” Taavi said.

“It disconnects here,” I said pointing to two plates where the gears from the from the engine belt link with gears on the fuel pump.

“We shouldn’t underestimate how much easier a task is when doing it for the second time. You wanna remove the pump?” Taavi asked, knowing I had replaced the pump once before.

“I should say hi to Marv and Janice first,” I replied.

“Yes, of course, go say hello, then take this pump out, and we’ll take it to Madison for repair.”

Tiny needles tickled my scalp as I ducked underneath the low hanging limbs of the big old spruce trees that greet entrants just before the house. There, Marv and Janice waited with their unending smiles. I couldn’t think of a more pleasant place to build another BioTour bus than the on this farm. So I thanked Marv and Janice and walked back to remove the fuel pump.

We chipped away at a long list of tasks. Maggie grabbed a paint roller and took to the rhythm of the music coming from speakers connected to Alan's Ipod while she covered pale brown walls and ceilings with light blue paint. Maggie and Alan later tossed our belongings out the back doorin order to clear workspace to rebuild the interior of Zintala To. With the deliberate steps of a Buddhist monk, Jeremy took his time designing and building the interior of the new bus. He then took on wiring the AC electrical system.

I gave Keith a hand welding storage barrels underneath the rear of the bus that would soon hold recycled vegetable oil. My first interactions with Keith were uneasy. I mistook Keith’s sardonic questions and comments as complaining. I soon learned that with a simple joke, his expression fades into a smile and work went smoothly. After we finished installing the storage barrels, Keith turned the old bus seats into shelves along the walls of both buses.

Nando divided his time between computer work and bus construction. He decided to give metal work a try. Cutting, welding, fastening, he built the new roof rack. As he cut a piece of steel, I commented on how lucky we were to find cheap Mexican labor (we are all volunteers). He smiled and swore at me in Spanish.

I was bouncing around directing the building process, shopping for parts, and lending a hand where needed while waiting for a few key components for the vegetable oil conversion to arrive.

Work days have been long, but at sunset we walk past the faded red barn to the gently rolling hills of freshly harvested hay. From the summit of the first hill we gaze into coulees below where deer graze. While other crewmembers sleep inside the bus, each night Maggie and I pull mattresses, pillows, and sleeping bags into the roof of the bus. Our ceiling is the night sky, the thick bright stripe of the Milky Way and the August shooting stars. Coyotes howl. Deer cry. Tomorrow morning we will wake, our sleeping bags wet with dew, fresh for another long day.