“Until recently we had a place in Hayesville, in Clay County, North Carolina. We sold it and moved to Sylva. There are virtually no rules there, either. They’re cutting on steep slopes just over the ridge in back of me. At least there’s a lot of argument about it these days: whether to do it, does it make sense, isn’t there a better way to harvest this timber on a more sustainable basis?

“I have worked over the years in what is called growth management, what I call “how to grow smart instead of dumb.” It’s difficult to convince people in the mountains that any restriction on land use could do anything other than drive them further into poverty - a bunch of Piedmont people trying to take jobs away.

“Ironically, unless they change their approach, they’re destined to gradually let a bunch of rape-ruin-and-run developers mess things up, and it won’t end up helping them .... A lot of (mountain people) are awfully good people. They understand to some extent that polluting the water and messing up the land isn’t a good thing, but they can’t bring themselves to make the leap from that to getting together to figure out how to do something about it.”

- John M. DeGrove, director of the Florida Atlantic University/Florida International University Joint Center for Environmental and Urban Problems

The truth hurts, doesn’t it? When I read the above interview in Steve Nash’s Blue Ridge 2020: An Owner’s Manual, I immediately thought of the devastation in Sylva across from Harris Regional Hospital. Can anyone seriously - and intelligently - tell me that is progress?

The interview also reminds me of a recent public meeting I attended at the Qualla Community Center regarding a proposed asphalt plant. Many Jackson County residents opposed the plant for fear of pollution, but not until the end of the meeting did anyone mention land-use planning.

It’s likely that anyone reading Nash’s book will find local incidents to apply to the environmental problems he describes, and some might be intimately familiar with specific issues and locations. Here they are, all the conservation and pollution problems that we have read about in newspapers, including this one.

But something about reading it from a strictly scientific view sends chills down the spine.

Before you read this book, you need to understand what it isn’t. This is not a history of how the Appalachians got in this mess, nor is it the story of environmental activism in the region. It is not an anthology of the view of locals, environmentalists, industries, philosophers or historians. Instead this is a book about the research, perspectives and projections of scientists written in non-technical terms. The author puts a human face on science.

Nash, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Richmond, has reported on environmental issues in several national publications. His reporting skills have enabled him to make sense of scientific evidence, statistics and explanations and explain them clearly for the reader.

It’s a refreshing and highly interesting method, but one open to skepticism, a reality that Nash readily addresses: “Scientific research can, of course be controversial, and criticism of government experts is commonplace from all points on the political spectrum .... So no source is above criticism, but the academic and government research and opinion I have relied on at least has the virtue of relative indepedance of outside financing and control.”

Perhaps some readers might find the emphasis on scientific voices a weakness, but Nash’s book serves as the perfect primer for those who want to understand poor visibility, timber management and mismanagement, vanishing wildlife populations, mountain road building and ridgetop developments.

Nash uses an ecosystems approach that connects different problems. For example, he brings a much-overlooked problem into his chapter on roads. He considers the classic southern phenomenon of roadkill, quoting Barry Lopez: “Who are these animals, their lights gone out? What journeys have fallen apart here?”

The fusion of roads and housing developments and their relationship to vanishing plant and animal species make for disturbing reading, particularly the story of the Cherohala Skyway connecting Tellico Plains, Tenn., and Robbinsville. The final section of road opened in 1996 over the objections of zoologists, environmentalists and the Tennessee Fish and Game Commission, which predicted “severe long-term effects on the mountain ecosystem.” A 1977 environmental impact statement prepared by the Federal Highway Administration concluded that the Cherohala would cause “minor disturbances” to animals because the area had been logged in the past and “the animals and plants have become adjusted to the activities of man.” Congress had requested that the U.S. Forest Service evaluate the nearby Snowbird Creek watershed for wilderness, but the area’s potential for wilderness status vanished because of its proximity to the Cherohala.

The author also casts a particularly critical eye on housing developments for seasonal residents, and he singles out “the highly visible new houses moored like barges on nearly every ridge facing Whiteside Mountain near Highlands, North Carolina.” He points out that such developments are often invisible in the census numbers, which do not include most seasonal residents and therefore mask “the real face of human presence in the Blue Ridge.” Mountain development, Nash argues, reflects “our aspirations, as well as our numbers. We seek the serenity and the beauty of natural areas so avidly that, soon, it’s gone, loved to death.”

Nash does not let the words of experts drag down his own writing. For example, he opens the chapter, “Anyplace, U.S.A.,” with a vivid description of Mt. Oglethorpe, the southermost peak of the Blue Ridge and the original southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail:

It tops out at 3,290 feet in a radar installaton, a grove of scrub oaks strewn with beer bottles and a cracked, graffitioed monument to colonial Georgia’s founding father, James Oglethorpe.
The view south is over a field of stumps. One of them, at least when I was there, wore an inverted pair of men’s boxer shorts ablazewith hearts and the legend, HOT STUFF.

Other signs of the vigor of the human influx abound. Get-away-from-it-all vacation homes ascend the ridges, bringing a generous portion of “it” with them. Bare eroding soil heralds dozens of new building sites on steep slopes nearby. “The North Georgia Mountains have been waiting for you since the beginnng of time,” one sales brochure explains.

It might seem inappropriate to call any writing on our regional environmental problems “entertaining,” but some of the most interesting material appears in a series of 21 “solutions” spread throughout the book. Each solution highlights a problem and presents conclusions. Topics include “The Future of Sprawl,” “Planning for Growth in Mountain Communities,” “Disappearing Songbirds” and “Sawmill and Clear Cuts.”

Nash argues that it “may seem presumptuous, if not preposterous, to say what could occur in the Blue Ridge even in the near future.” He seems content to agree with the late economist Kenneth Boulding, who opens Nash’s book with the quote, “We can expect to be surprised by the future. But we don’t have to be utterly dumbfounded.”

That reminds me. Have you seen George W. Bush’s energy policy yet?

(Rohr teaches history at Western Carolina University. He can be reached at rohr@wcu.edu)

 

Back to Top

The Smoky Mountain News