Something's Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal (9 page)

Charleston, West Virginia, October 24, 2007

Little Acts of Greatness

Did you really think that God got it wrong
when he put that mountain right there?
Do you believe Mother Nature had no clue
when she populated it so fair?
And what was the crime of Father Time
who set it all in slow, slow motion?
Still, you know best, don't you, little man?
Now where'd you get that notion?

    —Kate Larken, “We All Live Downstream”

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the world.

     —John Muir

Bev May moves up the steep mountain much like she must have as a little girl growing up here on Wilson Creek, Kentucky. Her trusty dog, Rufus, a mixed breed with a noble profile, is barely able to stay ahead, although he seems intent on doing so. May's climbing is steady, her steps wide, and she never stops talking, eager to introduce us to the place she loves so much, the place she is terrified of losing.

Like that young girl, May is conscious of everything. She points out deer tracks, a single red leaf decorating the otherwise summer ground of the woods, a blue jay feather that has drifted down and come to rest on a rotting log. She runs her hand over the broad trunk of an oak, glances up at the sky, and comments on its deep, aching blue.

In an unfamiliar patch of the woods May gasps aloud and runs forefinger and thumb over a bluish-green teardrop-shaped leaf. “Why, it's a mulberry tree!” she says, laughing with joy. “I didn't know we had a mulberry tree up here. I
love
mulberries.”

Bev May, Floyd County, Kentucky. Photo by Silas house.

She is also very conscious of others, always holding the stinging limbs she passes through at the front of the pack so they won't fly back and hit whoever is hiking behind her, pointing to low clots of briars that might grab at our socks.

This woman is one with this mountain. They know and respect each other. This is apparent not only in the way May talks about the mountain, but in the way she moves up it with ease and grace, stepping lightly so as to disturb the least amount of earth as possible.

Even though she often says, “I can't get up here as fast as I used to,” this is hard to believe. She reports that on Easter weekend she climbed this trail (which takes at least an hour) three times in two days. May is a woman who is used to being in motion; she is a medical professional, an old-time fiddler, and an activist. She moves with determination, her arms pushing at the air, her legs intent on their purpose, her feet on a mission. Today she is on her way to the High Rocks, her favorite place in the world, and although she wants to take her time and enjoy the walk up, she is also eager to reach the ridgetop, where she will once again encounter this natural castle of rocks, a secret world that only the inhabitants of this holler know, one they've been frequenting since the early 1800s.

When she does finally take a break, May sits on a scattering of small rocks on a steep bluff halfway to her destination, where she can see the tops of the opposite mountains, a blue haze through the trees. May is quickly joined by Rufus, who back-tracks to zoom in behind her and nudges his head into the crook of her arm. She took Rufus in after someone put him out in the nearby community of Maytown and her nephew found him. “He became sort of the living football of Maytown,” she says, rubbing Rufus's head so that he turns to face her. She looks him in the eye. “And we can't have that, now, can we, buddy?”

May points to a mess of dead pine trees, most of them leaning
or already fallen, victims of the recent beetle infestation that took most of Eastern Kentucky's shortleaf pine trees.

“You see them?” she asks. “My daddy planted them back in the sixties, after they broad-formed our land. They came in here and auger-mined this mountain, and those pines are standing there where they cut a road for the auger.”

May is referring to a time when mining companies could come in on anyone's land as long as they could produce a broad-form deed, which was basically a document that gave the company possession of mineral rights. Often these deeds had been sold more than fifty years before by previous owners of the land, or shady family members, or people who had been told that their land would not be much disturbed.

“They left it a mess,” continues May, “so Daddy planted the pines to keep the soil from eroding so bad. I hated it so bad when the beetles took the pines out, because he had planted them when I was little. I can remember it,” she says, her eyes set on the land as if she can see a movie from her past playing there. “But then, once the pines fell I noticed that those little oak saplings just sprouted right up. So then I realized that the pines had done exactly what they had been meant to do: keep the topsoil from washing off, stabilize the mountainside, allow other trees to inhabit. And the pines dying just made way for the oaks to get more sunlight. So his work wasn't in vain at all.”

Rufus has decided that it's time to forge on up the mountainside and has left us behind, so May stands and dusts off her hands. “Well, Rufus has determined we should go, so I guess we will,” she laughs, and all at once she is a woman on a mission again.

In fact, May's mission is not only to take us to the High Rocks, but to
save
the High Rocks. They, like most of the land May has known all of her life, are in grave danger.

It all started one morning in November 2006 at the Graceway Methodist Church, when a neighbor bragged after the service that May Brothers Mining Company (very distant cousins to May) had approached him about buying his land to start mining
in the head of Wilson Creek. This neighbor also claimed that three other families had already sold to the company.

Turned out the neighbor was misinformed; no one on Wilson Creek has sold anything yet. But the coal company is breathing down their necks, and as of this writing it seems certain that the company is intent on mining in and around Wilson Creek, including the long ridge that stands between that holler and Stephen's Branch, which runs parallel to it. And Bev May is not certain that her neighbors won't sell. “Money talks, especially when you need it,” she says. “No doubt about it.”

May, fearing that if only one neighbor sold out a domino effect might result, went straight into action. With help from KFTC, she secured space at a community center in Maytown and went door to door, inviting people to come to a meeting to organize and fight the coal company that seemed intent on invading their world.

Several months before this summertime jaunt up the mountain, May is presiding over the second meeting of residents from Wilson Creek and Stephen's Branch on a cold night in December. Concerned citizens are gathered in the Maytown Community Center, which was once the lunchroom for the Maytown Elementary School. Maytown is made up of about 200 souls, well-kept houses, an abandoned school, and four or five streets. An old camper serves as the community store, where cigarettes, pop, and candy are advertised in spray-painted handwriting on the exterior walls. The little town sits in a bowl near the railroad tracks, the mountains encircling it like gray, jagged arms. This night a thin snow falls like tiny feathers and the cold makes the night, void of a moon, seem even blacker.

The community center is freezing, but the furnace has been fired up and rumbles as everyone files in, brushing the snowflakes from their hair. The group is gathered close in a circle, not only to hear but to gain one another's heat. May sits on a couch that seems to want to swallow her up, silently watching for more people
to arrive; the others are all caught up in various states of conversation. Their talking is punctuated by laughter and heads that shake with frustration.

“I guess we ought to get started,” May says, so quietly that it is surprising when everyone stops talking at once and turns to face her. However, everything about May—her face, her carriage, the way she uses her hands to illustrate what she is saying—suggests kindness and intelligence. It's no wonder that people listen when she speaks: instead of demanding attention she simply respects everyone else's thoughts enough for them to pay extra attention to hers. Plus, she's a medical professional, and people in the mountains respect doctors. May is quick to point out that she is not the only college graduate in the group, however, and she's not even the only college graduate in her holler, despite stereotypes that would suggest otherwise. After the meeting, May also downplays her role as organizer of the group. “Oh, what happens is I tend to be the one that passes around the notices about meetings and calls people and tries to let them know what's going on. That's about it,” she says modestly.

May launches into the meeting, intent on getting business done, but not aggressively. She wants to include everyone, to make sure all those gathered have a chance to say their piece. She goes around the room, allows everyone to introduce themselves, gives all those present the time to make their announcements. Many of the residents are here because they absolutely do not want the coal company to come into their holler. Others are here because they still haven't figured everything out and want all the information they can get. Some have already been lied to by the coal companies and are here to warn their neighbors. Others don't know what to believe. There are all kinds of rumors already.

Like many of the social movements in Appalachia, the rising chorus of Wilson Creek is largely made up of women. There are two elegant older ladies in crisp dress pants and sweaters, an earnest young woman who is new to the group and is taking into account everything around her, a vivacious woman in her sixties
who is wrapped up in her husband's puffy coat and gives off a wonderful air of not giving a damn what anyone thinks of her. She is loudly relating how she told off one of the men who came to her house to try to talk her into selling. The circle around her collapses in laughter when she delivers her blunt reply to the man's encouragement. Several other women are there to represent their families, who promise to fight to the very end before they'll ever sell out to a coal company known for bullying people into signing away their rights. These are strong Appalachian women: tough as coal trucks, clever as foxes, as spirited as the music of these mountains.

A few men have turned out, too. One is from a neighboring county, and he has come to talk about the rich geologic formations—including the High Rocks—that stand on the ridges along Wilson Creek. He is a self-taught geologist, a man who reads books on rocks and minerals for fun, and he wants to offer any help he can. There are two teenagers who are concerned about their hunting grounds being destroyed, and a young man who is from the holler but is now enrolled at Morehead State University. He says he wants to study geology so he can someday serve as an expert witness in trials to prosecute coal mining companies. Ricky Handshoe, from nearby Hueysville, has come to tell everyone of his experiences fighting the coal company mining the land above his home. He is joined by Lowell Shepherd, who says he gave a coal company a lease on his land only to quickly discover that they weren't going to live up to any of their promises. He says that constant blasting
¹
—much of it higher than the legal limit—has caused his house's floor to be so hilly that his grandchildren beg to roller-skate on it because it looks like it would be so much fun.

One of the young women is concerned about what will happen to her two asthmatic children if coal trucks start running up and down their road. “There'll be so much dust off that road,” she says, looking around the room so that her eyes meet those of everyone else. She twists her wedding band around on her finger
while she talks. Her hands are hard-working and chapped, hands that have known scalding dishwater and mopwater, hands that have scrubbed counters and carried plates, grabbed hold of hot skillet handles. This woman is worn out from just trying to get by, and now she has another aggravation, a threat to her children. Finally her hands become still in her lap. She looks down at them briefly, as if this manner of talk has worn her out, and then lifts her head to address everyone again. “If we let this company come in here, I just don't know what I'll do. 'Cause my children'll not be able to stand it.”

“We'll just have to make sure they
don't
come in here, then,” May says in her reassuring way, and many of the women nod, a gathering of strong forces, determined to fight back. May offers a reassuring smile, and some of the frustration falls out of the woman's stiff shoulders.

Over the next few months, the group works together to figure out ways they can fight the coal company before people start selling and before permits are filed. “It's pretty much been the case that if a permit gets filed, then you're already too late,” May explains. “So we want to act before that permit ever gets on file.” They stick together, and their strength in numbers has begun to work in their favor.

The group manages to persuade their newly elected state representative, Brandon Spencer (D-Floyd County), to attend one of their assemblies, and although he makes no commitments, he is impressed by their determination.

May brings in Kentuckians for the Commonwealth organizer Kevin Pentz, who works within the Canary Project, KFTC's arm that deals with coal issues. Pentz and May are all business at the meetings, but are actually old friends; May recently played fiddle at his wedding.