The wild morning glories have finally spilled the top two stones from the wall along my driveway. I’d been watching them all spring, the slow, deliberate way their woody trunks thickened. They pushed a little more and a little harder until one summer day, after their purple blossoms unpuckered, a final nudge sent the stones clattering to the pavement. As if to say, I root here. Shove off.

I watch the morning glory drama from my porch. The birds around me are hard at work, too. I hear the whirring of loud wings as a nuthatch swoops in to hang upside down from a feeder, then flits away to a red oak and begins to hunt for insects wedged under shards of bark. Somewhere a fox squirrel crashes across a branch. Goldfinches argue in the forsythia; I wish I spoke better bird. A mourning dove trills the end of a coo and another answers. Cardinals claim each other while a downy woodpecker hammers a trunk. Field sparrows in the orchard flute down the scale and tufted titmice scold me from the chestnut tree. It’s loud out here, so loud that the backdrop almost goes unnoticed – a few ridges over, the smokestacks of Allegheny Energy’s plant at Fort Martin puff poison clouds skyward, darkening the blue like dirty cumuli.

Seven coal-fired power plants operate within 30 miles of this porch, these morning glories, the busy birds. According to the WV Department of Environmental Protection, the Fort Martin plant sends arsenic, formaldehyde, mercury and other chemicals into the air we breathe 24-hours a day, seven days a week. Mercury balls itself up in livers and kidneys, seeps out in saliva and sweat, causes arms and legs to tremble like twigs in a wind storm. What would it do to a chickadee?

An energy company from Massachusetts is seeking permission to build another power plant 1 mile from the existing plant at Fort Martin. From my porch I will be able to see smoke and steam from not one, but two coal-fired plants. The new plant’s stack will stand 550-feet high, and will be the tallest man-made structure in West Virginia. Rumor has it, the power generated will be sent up north to New England. But as the company’s website points out, "Regardless of where the power goes, some 1,200 construction jobs, 50 to 60 operations jobs and support industries jobs stay in the region."

Of course they will. This is what we do in West Virginia: We labor. We mine, we construct and we operate dangerous machinery. We give out-of-state companies tax breaks to flush chemicals into our rivers, belch poison into our skies and toss us miserable jobs. We have one of the highest childhood asthma rates in the nation. Our economy ranks dead last. And at the end of the day, we thank the coal industry for "making West Virginia great."

I take my lesson from the wild morning glories and write a letter protesting the proposed plant to the West Virginia Public Service Commission. I compose it here, on my porch, in the shadow of a white pine and a smoke stack. A gang of blue jays cheers me on from the oak trees, chanting, Thief! Thief! I end the letter, "Thank you for your time," but what I mean is, I root here. Shove off.

Originally published in the Spring 2005 issue of Appalachian Heritage.