Quiet on the Mountain

“One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself,
What if I had never seen this before?
What if I knew I would never see it again?"
~Rachel Carson

"Muddlety"

The blue and white school bus slows and comes to a stop at the top of a hill, the gravel road beyond winding down and disappearing into the cool, white cloud surrounding us on this very foggy morning. After a week’s travels on the back roads of West Virginia, to the north, south, east and west of Opossum Creek, peering through steamy windows, as the passengers, birders, load and unload themselves at every stop, I could not tell you on this day, exactly where we were—
somewhere, though, wonderful.
A mountaintop I’ll remember as “Muddlety.”


Several days’ rain has left these woods thick and rich —
new spring green, strong shades in leaves bursting from buds along every branch. Mosses, luxuriously dense and soft, run up and over every still surface. Ferns, stems bent, heads rolled as they slowly lift layers of leaves from the ground, stand in clusters across the forest floor.

Dwarf Ginseng, Panax trifolius

Cranesbill, Geranium sp.

From the edge, where I watch, knee-deep in brilliant yellow blossoms, vines hang in tremendous tangles, brown ropes stitching tree to tree.
Steep hillsides step away from the gravel road,
rocky ledges tumble toward it.

Misted spiderweb and Golden Ragwort

And through the fog, there is bird song.
This mountain drips with life.


Barely more than black silhouettes against the white sky, small birds dart between the treetops overhead--fine forms, intent upon seeing who has come to these woods, in song, calling to them on this foggy morning. Our guide, again, calls into the mist, and one flits close with an answer. Singing proudly, long and sweet, from a branch just a few feet away--a Cerulean Warbler, sky blue strokes upon white.
Out of this mist, comes beauty.
The song that fills this space has wings.

Foamflower, Tiarella sp.

West Virginia White, Pieris virginiensis

Wrapped up in the magic of that West Virginia mountain,
I could have stayed there all morning, happy to sink into its rich bed of life, pull the cover over my head and rest--
imagine all I’d heard about destruction and lost habitat within the Appalachians, to be somewhere else.

Red Eft,
juvenile stage of Eastern Red-spotted Newt, Notophthalmus viridescens

Somewhere not as wonderful as this.
Somewhere I would never see.

land snail

Looking back from the valley, beyond the gravel road, the logging creeps up the slopes of Muddlety.
Once bare, the blasting will begin.
Her future promised to coal—
her life upturned, and left—
mountaintop removed, valley filled,
with more than waste rock and coal dust.
Filled with the quiet of a silent spring.

(click to enlarge)

“We stand now where two roads diverge.
But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair.
The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy,
a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster.
The other fork of the road, the one less traveled by,
offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth."
~Rachel Carson from Silent Spring

Read more information about Mountaintop Removal Mining here.
Get involved with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition here.

Capturing the Eft
photo by Julie Zickefoose

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