Removing the Blinders, Part 2
The wildflowers will never be contained, domesticated, or wear blinders.
This is the more personal, painful part of my journey of removing my blinders. I like to think of myself as having always been deeply passionate about nature, and I was, but the truth is, I wore blinders to the worst of the damage for far too long.
Part One of this series can be read HERE
One of my great-grandfathers on my dad’s side was a lumberman who came from out of state to cut timber here in West Virginia. It’s funny how the mind works, ostensibly to protect us. I had heard all my life how he was a good businessman and lumberman who moved here from Pennsylvania to cut timber. And I also was taught how our state had been a top provider of timber for the industrial engines at the turn of the century. Yet, I never fully understood until I was over fifty how devastating that timbering was, how the whole state was clearcut in only forty years’ time, denuded of all its trees, and how horrific the resulting flooding was.
I am embarrassed to admit, it took another decade before my mind allowed me to put two and two together and realize my own great-grandfather’s company had been one of those who cut the trees—he was one of those creating the devastation. Was he a “good man,” taking care of his employees, trying to “make a living” and doing the best he knew how, caught up in a wave of industry? Or was he greedy—another industrialist who took all he could from the land? I suspect the truth is somewhere in between, like most stories. And none of it excuses the raping of the land, treating it as an inanimate resource for our taking.
My own dad was a businessman too, an insurance agency owner. I was raised hearing of the economic benefits of jobs created and how small businesses are the engine of our country that help families support themselves, and how that makes things better for everyone. This was my father’s gospel; people need jobs, they need to earn a decent wage, and this is how the economy grows. And while that is certainly true from one perspective, it is never the whole story. The end never justifies the means.
Then one day the devastation hit closer to home. A local water crisis was my wake-up call.
When I was a child, on some days depending on the wind direction, we would wake up in the morning to an awful chemical smell. It was just “normal.” The nickname for our area was Chemical Valley because there were several industrial chemical plants in our valley, built to take advantage of the nearby natural resources to make their products. After the Bhopal disaster in India in 1984, a new alarm system was built for the leaks and for decades we would have alarm sirens go off every so often, and many areas of the valley would have to shelter in place. Everyone acted like it was normal and I asked few questions because no one else did. I did not let myself feel and see the deepest issues of the harm being done, including likely to my own health as I was “sickly” as a child from age three to eight. It was way too big for me to do anything about and so I shoved it behind the blinders, ignored it and mostly dismissed it.
Gradually over the years, the alarms became a rare occurrence, and I was lulled into thinking we no longer had pollution issues in our valley, that the chemical plants had been cleaned up, that most of them had moved to Houston, and that our water was clean now. A few years ago, I read about a horrible chemical spill somewhere else, and my first reaction was, “Oh wow, how awful. Glad I didn’t grow up somewhere like that.” And then I realized—I had. A vague memory of a Superfund site in our valley came back to me that I had forgotten about, that no one talks about it any longer.
Then, I realized another spill had had huge ramifications directly on my own life. In January of 2014, West Virginia made national news because of a chemical spill that happened one and one-half miles upstream from the water intake for our water supply that supplies nine counties of 300,000 people. And there was no backup intake. A bizarre nasty licorice smelling odor came through the water pipes. We were instantly in the middle of a water crisis and had to use bottled water for drinking and bathing for months. The chemical was technically “non-hazardous”, as it didn’t kill fish, but several dozen people got sick, many more got rashes, and no one wanted to drink the nasty smelling water or be a guinea pig. We learned a lot about how little testing is done to determine if a chemical is “non-hazardous.”
For me, it was even more personal. I was at the time the sole owner of our family insurance agency, and the owner of the tank farm that leaked was my client. Even though I wasn’t responsible for making sure their tanks were safe, I still felt somehow guilty, like I was a bad person for insuring them and having them as a client. In addition, their coverage amount was a drop in the bucket of the actual damages, and I was afraid I would be drawn in legally, and potentially lose our business, or that the news outlets would find out I was the agent and drag me into the news. I did have to testify in court. It was all too much, and it was the final straw in my decision to sell part of the family insurance business later that year.
This water crisis was a pivotal turning point for me. Not only did it start the process of selling the family business that was no longer viable for several reasons, but I see now, it was also the point in time where I started allowing myself to fully see the depth of the environmental harm created by so many industries, rather than only seeing the economic benefits. This chemical spill allowed me to start seeing what was really being shoved under the rug. I started consciously opening my eyes and asking questions. I could finally see the longer story of the land, and all the beings whose lives depend on the land, including ours. The water crisis was a gift of new eyes for me, to see our Earth as a gift we must revere and care for so the Earth can care for us in return.
The river that runs through my town—the Kanawha River—bore these chemical spills. This river has seeped into my soul over all the years of my life, embedding its story in my cells. A river that once was wild, with wildflowers and trees lining its banks, singing and dancing its way down from the mountains as it had for millions of years. Salt had long bubbled up from an ancient ocean far below the riverbed into salt marshes that drew wildlife to its shores and made this valley a sacred hunting ground for the native people. Only in the last two hundred years has the river been made to carry its beloved dance partners away, sending them to oblivion, as it was dammed, dredged, and lined with riprap on its banks. First it was the salt, pumped up from the sea below and barreled; then the trees, razed from the beloved hills that hugged its banks; and finally, the coal, cut from the stone of the mountains themselves and floated away on barges the river is made to bear.
And still the river flows, carrying the petals and seeds of those wildflowers from upstream. Wildflowers that are healing the land. Wildflowers that will never be contained, domesticated, or wear blinders. Wildflowers that have always seen exactly what is happening in the long story of our planet. Wildflowers that are putting down roots in my heart and strengthening my voice. With my blinders removed, would the wildflowers help me heal, like they help the land to heal?
These wildflowers say to me, “We are Wild, the ones you cannot contain. We have no interest in being in your cultivated gardens. Rather, we eat the sun and cultivate each other, drawing on the life force energy of the dirt. Some years we flourish, creating abundance, and some years we almost fade away. These ever-returning cycles of life generating life are the way of the Wild.”
This feels like growing up in the 70s and 80s. This stuff was on the news more it felt like. I've lived near rivers my whole life; the Detroit, the Grand, the Kalamazoo, and now the Hudson. When my daughter was little she would yell "HUDSON RIVER!" whenever we crossed it. We also live by the Mohawk so sometimes she'd yell "HUDSON RIVER!" We'd say, "That's the Mohawk, Juni."
She rows on the Hudson now and the club has an 'adopted' pair of bald eagles that nest along their training route. The Hudson is one of the most legally protected rivers in the world, but there is still sludge from GE buried deep in the riverbed even after years of dredging. There bomb trains parked a few hundred yards from the river, and my house is in the evac zones if they go boom.
Maybe that would make the news.
Nicely done. :-)
Thank you, Mary, for bringing the wildflowers to our hearts and minds. Just after reading your post, I received this poem in my inbox from another substack I follow (Words That Fly from Stephanie Carney) - thought you might enjoy the synchronicity.
At the River Clarion by Mary Oliver
I don’t know who God is exactly.
But I’ll tell you this.
I was sitting in the river named Clarion, on a water splashed stone
and all afternoon I listened to the voices of the river talking.
Whenever the water struck a stone it had something to say,
and the water itself, and even the mosses trailing under the water.
And slowly, very slowly, it became clear to me what they were saying.
Said the river I am part of holiness.
And I too, said the stone. And I too, whispered the moss beneath the water.
I’d been to the river before, a few times.
Don’t blame the river that nothing happened quickly.
You don’t hear such voices in an hour or a day.
You don’t hear them at all if selfhood has stuffed your ears.
And it’s difficult to hear anything anyway, through all the traffic, the ambition.
2.
If God exists he isn’t just butter and good luck.
He’s also the tick that killed my wonderful dog Luke.
Said the river: imagine everything you can imagine, then keep on going.
Imagine how the lily (who may also be a part of God) would sing to you if it could sing,
if you would pause to hear it.
And how are you so certain anyway that it doesn’t sing?
If God exists he isn’t just churches and mathematics.
He’s the forest, He’s the desert.
He’s the ice caps, that are dying.
He’s the ghetto and the Museum of Fine Arts.
He’s van Gogh and Allen Ginsberg and Robert Motherwell.
He’s the many desperate hands, cleaning and preparing their weapons.
He’s every one of us, potentially.
The leaf of grass, the genius, the politician, the poet.
And if this is true, isn’t it something very important?
Yes, it could be that I am a tiny piece of God, and each of you too, or at least
of his intention and his hope.
Which is a delight beyond measure.
I don’t know how you get to suspect such an idea.
I only know that the river kept singing.
It wasn’t a persuasion, it was all the river’s own constant joy
which was better by far than a lecture, which was comfortable, exciting, unforgettable.
3.
Of course for each of us, there is the daily life.
Let us live it, gesture by gesture.
When we cut the ripe melon, should we not give it thanks?
And should we not thank the knife also?
We do not live in a simple world.
4.
There was someone I loved who grew old and ill
One by one I watched the fires go out.
There was nothing I could do
except to remember
that we receive
then we give back.
5.
My dog Luke lies in a grave in the forest, she is given back.
But the river Clarion still flows from wherever it comes from
to where it has been told to go.
I pray for the desperate earth.
I pray for the desperate world.
I do the little each person can do, it isn’t much.
Sometimes the river murmurs, sometimes it raves.
6.
Along its shores were, may I say, very intense cardinal flowers.
And trees, and birds that have wings to uphold them, for heaven’s sakes–
the lucky ones: they have such deep natures,
they are so happily obedient.
While I sit here in a house filled with books,
ideas, doubts, hesitations.
7.
And still, pressed deep into my mind, the river
keeps coming, touching me, passing by on its
long journey, its pale, infallible voice
singing.