Reverential Reflections on Mountaintop Removal in WV

by Rev. Mary Ramsay, Stratford, Conn.

For a kid growing up in the midst of about 12 million people, the (wooded) "vacant lot" two doors down was a wonder. I used to retreat to a special place of my own there, and watch the sunlight filter through the green leaves. We even had salamanders in the "brook" that ran out of a big cement pipe from under the roadway.

I never knew what country-dark was until I visited New Hampshire at the age of 17. But even that did not prepare me for the sense of mystery and wonder that I discovered under the stars in West Virginia. The mountains around me seemed to be quietly breathing in the silence of the night, dreaming their own endless and holy dream. The only sounds were the stirrings of other living creatures. Not the drone of sodium lights, not the buzz of florescence, not the whooshing moan of a highway with its high scream of semis nothing. Just a peace I had never before known. To someone from the most densely populated county in the United States, the mountains of West Virginia were like a homecoming so deeply longed-for, but never visualized. They were like a miracle.

When I first heard about and then saw pictures of mountaintop removal, I felt it like a fist slamming into the pit of my stomach. Every nerve in my body was in revolt: it was so wrong, so obscene in its destructiveness. All over the earth, past human civilizations have reached their peak as they cut down the last of their forests and then those societies begin to slide into the shadows of history. And they at least cut down their trees for wood! From the long-gone "cedars of Lebanon" to the ancient forests that once covered Europe, they are all gone, and the center of power moved westward as the great forests fell westward to the United States.

I am sickened by the way we are treating our childrens future. What kind of nation destroys its own lands, making them uninhabitable, the water undrinkable, the precious topsoil thrown away? Have we as a nation gone insane? As human numbers climb and every future water source is as precious as gold, what in the name of all that is most vital do the decision-makers in these mining companies think?

I believe that the evil being done to the mountains of Appalachia will go down in history as a crime almost as great as genocide. For it takes the water of life out of the mouths of future generations. And beyond the lives of human beings, the death of mountain ranges matters. The deaths of countless birds, animals whole landscapes matters. The end of old communities matters. The tears and prayers, songs and hopes of the people matter. The water without which none of us can live, matters.

Come up north and see: it takes a lot of water to quench the thirst of 14 million people . . . or the billions of human beings yet to be born in our grandchildrens lifetime. We must fight the destruction with every kind of wit, skill and imagination that weve been given.

Under the stars in the pregnant silence, heaven is hanging in the balance.