Removing the Blinders
Seeing what the wildflowers are here to heal
In this week of American Thanksgiving, I find myself drawn once again to the land around me. Land that I am so grateful to draw deep sustenance from. Land that has endured so very much since our European ancestors first came.
My roots grow deep in Appalachia, in West Virginia. Seven generations of my mother’s ancestors have lived here. But it hasn’t always been easy to be part of this land that has always been in between. Between prosperity and hardship. In between north and south. In between the hills and the valleys. It has never been an easy land for anyone to live on for very long—yesterday or today. And until I opened my eyes to so much of what has transpired on these lands I am rooted in, I couldn’t be fully open to my heart. Blinders aren’t selective—turning a blind eye to my outside world always raises blinders to my inner world as well.
What had my ancestors experienced, what had they lived through? This land, now called West Virginia, has seen drastic changes in the last two hundred years. Being rich in natural resources of timber, salt, coal, oil, and natural gas has meant industries have been eager to come and take them away, leading to unbelievable abuses in the name of progress. The rugged ragtag nature of the mountains made traveling through them hard. For those seeking to be independent and left alone, the mountains became a natural refuge before the industry arrived. What drew my ancestors to make the hard trek over the mountains to be here? Did they come for opportunity? To retreat from a culture where they weren’t welcome? Were they given land for military service? Did they come with relatives through no choice of their own? Did this land remind them of home?
When I see a wildflower meadow, I often ask many of the same questions about them, since they are tenacious, stubborn, and independent, much like the people of Appalachia. What drew the wildflowers here? Are there opportunities on lands disturbed by industry that became freshly available real estate? Did they hitchhike with another being not knowing where they might end up? Were they brought with our ancestors when they immigrated from Europe? Are they looking to hide here, to be left alone? Have they come to love this land like I do—so much that they are devoted to it and want to help it heal?
If everyone everywhere could experience the marvel, the wonder, of walking through a meadow full of wildflowers in full bloom, devotion and reverence for our natural world would surely grow exponentially. One of my favorite meadows, gracing lands ravaged a hundred years ago for coal and timber, shows me what incredible healers the flowers are for the land—and for us.
Near the once-was town of Douglas, West Virginia, high in the mountains, the North Fork of the Blackwater River runs through a long meadow with a dirt road that lays along one side of it. On a hike there one summer, I felt like I had stumbled upon a party, one where everyone knew everyone else, where everybody was comfortable and had what they needed, so they could all reach for the sun.
First to greet me were tall common milkweed filling the air with their luscious, sweet scent, calling in the monarchs. Bright yellow circles of bird’s foot trefoil, blueweed and the cheery blue faces of chicory lined the edges of the dusty road as I walked. The bright yellow flowers of St. John’s wort were exploding everywhere as the purple tufted thistles were audaciously claiming their space. Black-eyed Susan’s were winking at me like long lost friends. Waving in the wind around the bright white daisies were tall yellow coneflowers, while the Queen Anne’s lace won the popularity contest, growing everywhere. Fuzzy leaves of mullein were reaching for the sky with their tall, yellow-flowered seed stalk, while pink and white yarrow behind them offered up their medicine. Tall joe pye weed with their huge flower heads covered in bees, watched over everyone from a regal height, while the bright faces of orange jewelweed offered to soothe me. I also saw pink morning glories, velvety maroon sumac, tall pink phlox, red clover, scarlet bee balm, and yellow goldenrod just beginning to open. Cattails stood as sentinels in particularly wet spots. The unbelievable diversity had me feeling like skipping, at least until I tried it and felt much less light-footed than when I was a young carefree girl in the flowering meadows of my memories.
This feral gathering moved particularly slowly. No one was in a hurry, as they built new connections on top of days and years and centuries of the ecosystems that had come before. They found their home, these flowers of today—where they belonged, where they could do their work. Such beautiful blossoms, reveling in their wisdom, knowing their medicine is strongest in large communities like this one, surrounded by their closest family, feeding each other, and protecting each other.
But there was an older story here. I felt time stretching out like a rubber band, first in decades, then centuries, then millennia. Sitting at the edge of a large high plateau, this land had once been covered with a dense forest of red spruce that were over 100 feet tall and so dense that only the ancient and gnarly rhododendron grew underneath. The climate was so harsh in winter, and vegetation so thick that nearby Iroquois tribes from lower elevations did not settle here and where not even known to hunt or travel into the area, although the Seneca Trail came near the western edge of the plateau through the lower hills below. There are simply no early signs of regular human activity in this area.
An undisturbed ecosystem of forest had evolved here for millions of years, then had been shattered and broken in a relative instant. It was truly a wild wilderness unaltered by human endeavors until the late nineteenth century, less than one hundred and fifty years ago. It would heal, the flowers were telling me, but the question was, how long would it take? They have the strength, tenacity, and determination to move in and roll up their sleeves and put down their roots, able to make a home with very little to feed on, as they help restore the land.
At the edge of this glorious meadow there are dozens of abandoned coke ovens marked with historical plaques by the side of the road, that tell the story of this once-was mining and lumber town of Douglas. While standing in front of the large mouth-like openings of the beehive shaped coke ovens, the heaviness of these industries descended upon me. They blasted through here from the 1880’s until the last mine closed in 1954 with an insatiably ferocity. The open mouths of the ovens still convey the ravenous appetites that consumed the timber and heart of the mountains surrounding them.
This land that had been a pristine wilderness was stripped bare practically overnight when a railroad was built in 1884. It was considered an engineering marvel because of the steep grade required to reach the area. Looking at the pictures on the plaques of how the area looked after the industry came, the only words I could think of were ravaged, abused, and raped. For years after the last mine closed, this land lay bare like a wounded body on the battlefield, still bleeding, uncared for, until the 1970’s when reclamation work began. The surface scars began to heal then, but the deep trauma to the land is still ongoing.
At the height of production, nine hundred souls lived in this small area that looked so different than today. The hillsides were bare, with roads going back and forth across their faces, buildings everywhere, and the stream lay naked, no longer surrounded by its beloved rhododendrons. The trees had all been logged by 1912, and twelve mine openings were cut into the hillsides. One-hundred-seventy-five coke ovens lined the railroad tracks, and at night the burning ovens lit up the whole valley. The smoke seeped into everything day and night until they were shut down after the technology changed in 1915. It sounds like the very vision of what the fire and brimstone preachers railed against—hell. A hell created in the name of progress. The clear cutting of the forest resulted in flooding all the way to Pittsburgh and was so severe that it spurred the creation of the Monongahela National Forest in 1915, a federal forest restoration project.
Yet, a lot of immigrants found work and community here and were able to support their families. The market for trees and coal brought people who built a town and community in Douglas, WV, as well as the neighboring towns of Thomas and Davis, all connected to the rest of the world only by the railroad. Churches and schools were built. In 1919 Douglas even had a champion baseball team. Diversity was the norm, with Russians, Austrians, Germans, Polish, Irish, African Americans, English, Italians, Hungarians, Lithuanians, Serbians, and Mexicans all hired by the coal company. These diverse people sharing life amidst the ecological ruin clung to each other the best ways they knew how, in a land that was stripped of any resources to help them, and without the eons of the wisdom of the wildflowers that would follow them.
I wondered if the people of the community were a salve, a blessing for the land, amidst all its wounds. Did the families raised here give these hills hope during those years? Did they plant seeds they brought with them? Did their joys and sorrows seep into the cracks opened by the mines and intertwine with the Earth, in ways we can barely understand? Today only a few old houses still dot the hillside surrounded by wildflowers. It is the wildflowers turn to thrive, to create a new community growing from the dirt, and to do the healing.
The wildflowers are literally actively remediating this land, better than we humans can. It takes lifetimes, though. Their deep roots increase the capacity to store and clean the water, improve soil health by pulling up heavy metals and digesting them for us, and by preventing erosion. They willingly grow in poor soils and naturally remediate the contaminated soil, potentially paving the way for hardwood trees to grow in the future. Their millions of years of evolution have taught them how to handle the intricate balance of the ecological needs that we only barely understand.
It took me decades to completely remove my blinders and allow myself to see the full extent of these travesties without partially justifying them in the name of progress. Seeing the depth of devastation to the natural world and to ourselves meant having to see the cracks in the religion of economic growth, job creation, the industrial age and civilization itself that I had been indoctrinated with.
Beautiful piece, Mary. I am reminded of my home state, Texas, particularly West Texas, where the oil and gas industry has devastated the desert. To an outsider this land looks like a flat, desolate stretch of desert, but before the fracking and explosives were used to extract oil and gas, it was a pristine land, sitting under a huge blanket of a sky and unremitting sun. I often wonder what it will take to restore the desert. I have the feeling the land has many stories in several parts of the country to tell about the devastation that came from progress.
Thank you, Mary, for this heart felt essay. It has changed my view of wildflowers and their power to heal. Also, knowing the history of a place, though sometimes a harsh reality, brings us closer to healing that which we have avoided seeing/knowing. Praise for your work!