We like to stay in cabins at state parks. The fees are reasonable, the accommodations are comfortable. Normally, they build constricted groups of cabins in old forests. Small clots of little buildings nestled in ancient places, surrounded by wilderness. Trees that have seen so many things, trees that have seen generations of humanity, from ancient Asians who climbed over the top of the world and marched south, trees that watched later settlers who came across the Atlantic in their fragile wooden ships. Trees share soil, and as far as anyone knows they share memories, passed down from one generation to the next.
Woodlands develop an identity, a personality. It varies from place to place. In West Virginia, and Southeastern Ohio you can feel the sadness, the heartache. It resonates through the soil and infects the people. The years have drained the spirit. Years filled with preventable disasters.
The Hawks Nest Tunnel disaster, where thousands of unemployed men, mostly African American were enlisted to dig a tunnel to divert water from the New River to a hydroelectric plant that would power a Union Carbide plant in Alloy. Since it was licensed as a civil engineering project even the most basic personal safety procedures were ignored. Of the 5,000 men who clawed and scratched their way through the mountain 2900 became infected by silicosis (a lung disease caused by the silica dust released in the excavation) and 764 of them died. There were no acceptable cemeteries for black men in the area, and they had to be buried in a nearby field. Many of the graves had been excavated and moved when they built a highway through the area.
There were countless men infected by Black Lung disease from hauling coal up from the depths. I worked with a woman whose husband was dying a slow, terrifying death from a lung disease from being a coal miner. She felt alone, neglected, just watching him die. You could see the daily toll it took on her. Mining disasters claimed many more. West Virginia is state that understands sorrow. When you travel through West Virginia, the small towns villages, and talk to the servers at cafes and cashiers at grocery stores you can feel the weight of tragic history. It is as palpable as their pride, people have a sense of place, belonging. They may not be happy, but they’re happy to be there. It is a weight they carry with silent dignity. It’s a sorrow shared with the forests, into the valleys, you can see it in the ghostly mist that constantly climbs the silent hills.
Kentucky has different trees. Forests in Kentucky don’t grow, not like most woodlands I’ve seen, they march. If you sit, quietly, at a firepit by a cabin in the woods of Kentucky, you can hear them (the trees) creeping closer, in the morning the trees hang a little lower over the road, they’re a few inches closer to the cabin. Sometimes you can hear them whispering, feel them looking at you. Walking among them it isn’t shade, it’s darkness.
It might have something to do with man’s inhumanity to man, the Long Run Massacre wasn’t the first, and it certainly wasn’t the last time native Americans fought to defend their sacred home. It was one more example of pointless destruction. Of course, it was followed by the ultimate revenge, soldiers slaughtering indigenous peoples to clear the way for the mass movement west. Hate intensified by ignorance and greed.
It might have been the battles of the Civil War. Kentucky was the scene of several intense, horrific battles. Brother against brother, neighbors hunting down neighbors, hate magnified by familiarity.
Humans battling each other, death, and barbarity, a history, still unfolding. Mankind is constantly at war with the trees, too. Wood chips from trees, ground and shredded by huge machines, litter the side of the highway. It’s a constant battle. The trees are patient, they’ve been here for a long time, longer than we have still be here.
Kentucky seems to be mostly stone. They blast huge sections of ancient rock to build roadways. The trees dig their roots into rock. A hard scrabble existence, plants fighting for existence against desperate odds. The irresistible force facing the immovable object, and somehow, they both win. It makes the trees stronger, roots shoot deep into the shale, binding the rocks, similar to rebar reinforcing concrete.
Of course, the trees aren’t without enemies. There is an imported threat, a vine from Asia. Kudzu, it climbs up the sides of trees, buildings, power poles, everything. It blocks the sun needed for photosynthesis. Kudzu (Pueraria montana) was thought to be the answer to erosion. Soon, it was a mean, untrammeled natural carpet, covering everything. Depending on who you believe it is a nuisance or a disaster. Either way it provides trees with one more example of the awful behavior of man. One more reason to hate.
Every day, while staying in Kentucky, I expected the trees to have grabbed onto our car, wrapping branches around axles, picking up lawn chairs and picnic tables. Long, brown, green tendrils around the frail vestiges of a dying culture. So much kindling for the next revolution.
If we, humanity as a species, can perfect an apparatus to destroy ourselves, and we are getting closer all the time, the trees will still be there. I’m not sure when the first trees rose up and towered above the soil, but it was probably before we started experimenting with crawling out of the muck, the family of man, “a thousand slimy things lived on, and so did I.”[1] Trees were probably there, watching as we climbed up, and took over, smash and grab, slash and burn, all the way to the top of the food chain. They probably remember a time when they were free to grow anywhere. Now, they probably see the end coming for the pesky little humans and their internal combustion engines, chain saws, chippers and shredders. Trees been around for a long time. I wonder if they will take any pleasure in the knowledge we’ve arranged for our own extinction.
[1] “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
