UP ON TOXIC MOUNTAIN

Something is happening here on my mountain I find alarming, but nobody else does. The last few years I've seen butterflies diminish in number so much and so fast, I see we will not have butterflies next year. This year I've seen just a few butterflies. Years past, I saw multitudes of them around clusters of Joe Pye flowers. Last year just a few, this year mostly none, now and then one appears. The county's long-arm bush-hog used for trimming the sides of the roads of small trees and other growth, that makes ugly out of beautiful everywhere it goes, came through here a week or so ago. The driver of the tractor made it a point to go out of his way to make a special effort to mow down the stand of Joe Pyes behind my mailbox post. I was out picking up the mail next day and saw a lone butterfly flying around the mailbox looking for the Joe Pye. It was a sad moment for me to see a lone butterfly looking for the flowers that were there the day before. It's not stupidity on the driver's part, it's following orders, doing what he's told, policy. Years ago, I put a 6' long wrecking bar in the ground next to a Joe Pye to protect it. He mowed up to the bar, raised the mower over the bar and took out the Joe Pye the other side of it.

 

 

An acre of wildflowers in the donkey meadow was loaded with flowers all summer. Walking in the meadow through the wildflowers, I never saw one honeybee. Only saw a few bumble bees, very few, and them smaller than they used to be. Insects that also pollinate were absent. Saw very few bugs this summer. The jewelweed flowered far less this year than ever before. Between the house and where I park the car is a big patch of jewelweed. Few flowers this year and few seedpods.  I've not seen any hummingbirds among them this year. The Christmas tree growers have poisoned the water so the native trout have died out, as have the minnows and the snails. The water snakes that live on fish in the creeks are far less in number. My land is surrounded on three sides by Christmas tree fields. They have poisoned the entire mountain. Far fewer birds come to the bird feeders this year. This is the first year I've seen dramatic absence of life around here. Nobody says a word about it. I bring it up to somebody and I'm accused of being a conspiracy theorist, telling you I live among extremely right-wing republicans. Virginia Foxx, the parrot, is my so-called representative.

 

 

I've not seen any wasp nests this year. The exterior walls to the house are perfect for mud daubers to fix their clay tubes to. None this year. I've not seen hornets or yellow jackets. Just a few years ago, all these insects were abundant here. After about twenty years of Christmas trees on the mountain, life is nearly extinguished, the topsoil is ruined and the creeks poisoned. The County advises residents not to drink water from springs, rather to use wells for the deep underground water. Christmas trees are the money crop in the area. The growers make enough money to be a big chunk of the county's tax base, so much that they rule. Like the multi-national corporations have taken over national government, the Christmas tree growers have become our local government. Commissioners have become subservient to the Christmas tree growers who drive the new oxymoron, Cadillac pickups. County government does not encourage the growers to be less toxic or mindful of the statistic that this county has the highest rate of cancer in the state. Everybody knows it, it's understood. The County tells us not to drink the water. Too bad the ground water is poison, somebody is making money, the only part that matters.

 

 

 

It makes me feel weird to be the only one seeing what is happening, or not denying it. Plus, it's not on television. Television people don't notice things like butterflies and bees as anything but nuisance. Fake news tells them it isn't happening. If I were to mention to county authorities the Christmas tree growers have killed life on Air Bellows Mountain, I'd be told it's not really like that, I need to be less dramatic and get with the program. It's the same everywhere Christmas trees grow. The growers put out press that they are environmentally conscious and don't use chemicals much. But when they do, instead of spraying the trees individually like they used to, a grower in an enclosed tractor sprays the fields from the road at night with a vast sprayer putting out a fog that goes where the wind blows. They do it at night so residents won't see it. They fertilize by helicopter, spraying fertilizer pellets in the woods and creek when the copter turns around, sounding like hail on my roof. I don't want their oil-based fertilizer on my land. Too bad. The rain washes the fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides down the hill onto my land. The donkeys are, thereby, poisoned too. In forty years I've seen abundant, rich land, pristine creeks abundant with native trout, minnows, water snakes, poisoned to the extent the land and water have become poison. For money and television.

 

photos by tj worthington

 

 

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REBELLION IN AMERICA

natural man

Kathmandu fell apart, Everest avalanched, cops at war with young black people in Baltimore, Crips and Bloods united in Baltimore to protect black people from the cops. Al Sharpton is going to Baltimore, following the cameras again. At least he has a new hairdo. Follow the news and see shameless people of every variety. Put a camera in front of somebody's face and they'll say anything you want. Seems like it would be a more certain way to get information from detainees than torture. Just aim a camera at them and they'll tell it all. Maybe this only applies to Americans. I'm glad to see rebellion against police brutality by the people the cops are most brutal toward. No matter how much it's justified, American police kill more people than anywhere in the world such that it's beyond shameless. Executioners. Maybe they like this word better than murderers. It looks more every year, and escalating fast, like the American police are at war with the American people. It's been growing since Nixon times "law and order." Next, "war on drugs." I saw something about a cop demanding respect and laughed. Took me way back to childhood, daddy demanding respect. I'd think, show me something I can respect. Didn't dare say it. Saying I'm glad to see the rebellion, I don't mean I'm glad to see the cops rally to an opportunity to beat up and torment young black guys in the zoo. I'm glad to see years of unspoken racial tension come to the surface, racism come forward and be proud. Only on the surface can social or personal issues be settled. It looks like American racism is having its day. The white robes are back, though this time they're blue. 

dogwood

The nature of the police state is racist, so racism is the nature of the police state. White people who still believe we have a democracy are freaking out over the people-of-color population now being 50/50 with whites. From here on, people of color outnumber whites. Democracy was shut down in the South after emancipation; the black people outnumbered the whites. Now, False News buffoon, Ann Coulter, mummy of an old belief system, is calling for literacy tests again for voting. Like voting matters. I have a hard time taking any of it seriously. Manipulation by corporate propaganda through television, by corporate control through legislation and the courts, including the supreme court, is how we live in America now. The land where money has been worshipped from the beginning is now ruled by money for money's interest only. Citizens are now enemies of the state, especially the poor. Fema has empty concentration camps all over the country. They are waiting for social conflict the manipulators know will be created in the near future. The police state is characterized by a dismissive arrogance toward the people, as illustrated by the governors in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Texas, Arizona, Florida and Kansas, to name a few, the entire US Congress, Senate, and the White House. Mammon does not like democracy. Mammon likes police state. Fascists always destroy their own countries. The fall of America is wrapped inside its fascist takeover. Like the old apocaloptimist said, It's gonna get worse before it gets better. The rest of the world will roar with sighs of relief.

bag lady rest area

I cannot offer a solution to what I see, except the momentum must play itself out. It will play itself out and I will stay out of it the best I can. Can't stay out of the economic collapse and can't stay out of manipulated social attitudes. I can be aware, however, of the manipulation enough to recognize it and bypass its influence. My closest friends pay no attention to news, government or history. I applaud them and never encourage them to give current events any mind. The only thing I have to say to them that I feel valid is get out of debt as fast as rationally possible. I tell Justin when hard times are here, you will be all right--you're able to make it without a steady job, by taking whatever job comes up, like house painting, carpentry, auto repair, hunting and much else. You will be helping people who cannot help themselves, the people who have only money, devoid of inner resources. They'll be paying you. Your role, because you have inner resources, will be helping others. Just don't let discouragement take you over. Hard times have a way of ending. Even the Civil War came to an end, whether yankees believe it or not. Younger, I wanted to get involved in social movements, be a part of the change toward democracy, but learned in 1968 the press was complicit with the corporate coup of five years before. The manipulators own the television networks and the press. They rule. Best for me to stay home and not get beat up and tormented by cops or killed without recourse for nothing. Better to stay at home, read a biography of Van Gogh and listen to recordings of Tibetan monks singing.

bridge and shadow

I'll give carrots to donkeys, hold my cat friend, Caterpillar, give sunflower seeds to birds, be a communal food kitchen for my near neighbors. If they eat anything in the christmas tree fields two-thirds of the way around the house and donkey meadow, they die. I suppose that if I give them plenty of what they like, they won't need to explore into the christmas tree fields for something to eat. Keep them close to the woods across the road where they live, away from the bugs coated with herbicides etc that have already killed everything that lives in the water. The world I live in is physical, emotional, mental and spiritual poison. I have no choice but live in it, but I don't have to be of it. Like in childhood under arational control, I'd think, You can control my body, but you can't do shit with my mind. My mind is my own. Of course, quite a lot of warping of the mind occurred that I've spent the rest of my life recovering from and reparenting. My search for innermost self, who I really am, is my spiritual path. I found an affordable (then) little hermitage on a back road to walk my path. I'm here for my own spiritual reasons, none of them social. I like to contribute to my community, though only in meaningful ways with purpose, not the frivolous. Justin told me recently when he was in high school he told his buddies to stay away from that old man on the mountain--he'll shoot your ass--he don't care. He said he did it because he knew them and wanted them to leave me alone. I treat others right, don't draw attention to self. A few days ago I was buying a pack of white paper for the printer at a new corporate store in town, the only place it's available. At the counter I was asked if I had my card. If so, I don't know. Was told to punch my phone number into a key pad. I asked, Why? To see if you have a card. I said, "I don't care. I just want to buy this." She looked at me like she couldn't believe somebody would refuse a three cent discount, if any. I said, "I am not of this world." It actually flowed out of my mouth without thought. There it was. She let it go and rang up the sale.

rock face

photos by tj worthington

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AT HOME IN THE MOUNTAINS

Big adventure today. Snow. Big snow. I'm hearing ten inches in Ennice, Pine Swamp and Stratford. Here at my home at Air Bellows I have six inches. I'm told that because I'm at higher elevation I should have more than ten inches. But it didn't work out that way. Looking at the way the snow is mounded on objects doesn't look like ten inches to me. I took yard stick out to measure and it came up six inches everywhere I put it down. Wet snow that transitioned from three days and nights of rain to freezing rain, sleet, ice, snow, then snow and more snow. I put out extra seeds for the birds before the snow started, thinking they'll need a little extra to get through the long cold night. They'll be looking for something to eat first thing in the morning. It's a beautiful world outside with the light on the rhododendron completely covered in snow. The snow stuck to everything. Wet, sticky snow. My friend Justin said he had to cut up a tree that fell across Pine Swamp Road. The weight of the ice in the tree pulled it up by the roots that were in soggy ground after the soaking rain.

Justin was on his way here to pick me up. His friend Chad was with him in Chad's pickup. Chad had his daughter with him, and we were going to go riding around in the snow. Both of them with four wheel drive and neither one could make it up the mountain. My phone was busy because I'd had a telemarketing call earlier, clicked the off button while it was ringing, didn't know it but that somehow kept the phone on so it gave out a busy signal. I'll have to look at my phone bill next time and see if I've been charged a three hour phone call to some telemarketing center anyplace USA or India. I saw on facebook Justin's wife reported they'd lost power. She didn't have any candles, flashlights or anything. They have a wood stove for heat, so it's not really a problem except for freezer and refrigerator. I was disappointed the snow is so bad. It's all ice on the bottom. And the ground is soggy too. I was looking forward to riding around in the snow with two guys who know how to drive in it, who do this every winter for fun. They take two trucks in case one gets stuck. They carry a chain and a chainsaw and shovel. I think I remember Justin saying Chad's truck slid off Pine Swamp Road today and had to be pulled back onto the road.

I'm glad there is no power outage here. If there were, I'd take a flashlight and walk to next door neighbor's house 1/3 mile down the road, where they have wood heat. I had to give up wood heat when the heart turned delicate. Carrying wood into the house is where I learned I had an issue with the heart. It's been kerosene heat ever since. I cut firewood and burned it for twenty years. That's enough. There comes a time when it's just too physical an activity hauling wood into the house three and four times a day. It's not objectionable, but at a certain time in life it's not what somebody wants to do. I prefer wood heat to any other, but only when it's practical. I only used trees that had already died, so it wasn't like I was doing anything but cleaning up. I was very particular about the wooded places where I cut the trees. When I cut a trail through a section of woods for the truck to drive through to load the wood, I never made a straight line. I used the lines of least trees and rhododendron, mountain laurel and mountain azalea. Actually, you couldn't even see one of my roads through the woods because it never went in a straight line and it went between trees instead of through them. Some guys I know cut a line straight into the woods about twice the width of their trucks, taking out anything in the way.

I felt like it was important to keep the integrity of the forest, not considering it won't be long after I'm gone the woods I took my firewood from will be bulldozed down for a subdivision. I forget that the future is a big house on an acre or two of lawn. In one case here on the mountain, a high school principal retired from Florida came up here, cleared a big patch of woods, because he "didn't like snakes," had a lawn, took out a lot of beautiful rhododendron and mountain azaleas, so the lawn would be pretty. Then painted the house red. Then the man died. I thought at the time I really do hope my last years on earth are not about destroying the portion of the earth I have dominion over. I did not come to the mountains to destroy the mountains. I love the mountains. I don't want to be a factor in their deforestation, but have to remind myself that when the ocean rises very soon, a few more years of hurricanes wiping out coastal cities, the people of the coast will go to the mountains. Not half way to the mountains. All the way to the mountains. When the ocean has risen as far as it's going to, these mountains may be like the Japanese islands, packed with people, pavement, houses. The mountains will be stripped down to rock like the Greek islands denuded by shipbuilding in their great age of wars. Haiti was deforested and it never came back.

I think about doing something positive for the "environment" and see around me thousands of abuses and indifferent destruction. I can't help it, though. Before the  Christmas tree plague at Air Bellows, I liked to watch the native trout swim in the creek. I'd sit on a rock beside the creek in the woods. Sit still for an hour and then the fish come out and live their lives. It was one of the most wonderful days of my life, certainly unforgettable. And the day a water snake curled up beside me on a rock I was sitting on beside the stream. It was the snake's sunning rock and I had taken it. I didn't realize what I'd done until it was too late, when I finally got it that the snake wanted the rock. It was sunning time of day. I finally left, but too late for the snake's satisfaction. Now the native trout are gone, the minnows are gone, the water snakes are gone, and now the creeks have that unnatural green moss growing on the rocks from too much fertilizer in the water, runoff from the Christmas tree fields and from the way they spread the fertilizer all over the whole area by helicopter. It's a shame for me to see a mountain stream die at its source. Then I remind myself the stream will never come back to life. After the Christmas trees have destroyed the topsoil a subdivision will come in and make it into rolling lawns with fertilizer runoff. Who knows, they may pave the whole area for the Air Bellows Walmart parking lot.

My early years in the mountains I was conscientious about not destroying the natural world around me. It's what I came here for. I wanted to be a benefit to the mountain. I was even over-conscientious in that any application of conscientious is overdone in American reality. I look back and laugh a my inability to see the future, to see how things will change when my time of calling the shots on a small plot of land is up. A guy I let hunt on my land hates crows. He shoots crows for practice. I feed the crows. I don't see a problem. Nearly all the hunters shoot crows for practice. It's a tradition that goes all the way back, based in medieval superstition about the devil or whatever. They're black, they're bigger birds and were menaces to farmers in the past. I think the crows are maginificent birds. Now farming uses poison seeds. And we eat what the poison seed grows. I am happy I saw and drank from mountain springs before they became poison from the Christmas tree pesticides, herbicides, this cide and that cide, killing everything living in the streams and poisoning the people of the region with cancer. This is the highest cancer part of the state, the Christmas tree growing parts of the mountains. It's ok. County government doesn't have a problem. The Christmas tree growers pay more taxes than the people that get the cancer. It's the American way. Even to mention it is not ok. They're making money. They're sacred. However, a Christmas tree patch in deep snow is an amazing spectacle. White cones all the same size in rows.

I value the time I had with the creek when it was alive, the same as I value my time in Charleston, South Carolina, at the tail end of the Old South, seeing the Old South while it was still living, albeit wobbly in its late 90s. In the mountains I've seen the old-time ways die out with the old people, a culture, a way of life that was valuable, way more valuable than the culture and way of life that replaced it. I'm happy that I had some time in these mountains with the people who are derisively called hillbillies, people I call hillbillies with respect, because I know what hillbilly really means. I have to say I look way up to hillbillies. It's not because I was naturally disposed to. It was because hillbillies taught me by knowing so many and living among them. The latter half of my life lived among hillbillies has been the very best span of years of my life. The best came when I learned half my blood is hillbilly. My grandmother who kept me whole throughout my childhood was a hillbilly, I just didn't know it then. First thing I noticed in the mountains was that everybody talked like my grandmother, the same sayings, same phrases, same emphatic accents. I felt at home in the arms of love from the beginning here in these emerald mountains.


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AIR SPRAY

out the window

Sitting here at the computer with this view out the window to my right, the Christmas tree patch around the house I'm kind of the hole in the donut in the middle of. They go 2/3 of the way around the house. The forest across the road is like a 1/3 chunk bit out of the donut, though it was there before the donut, like the hole. It's a 60 degree day. Good day to keep all windows and doors closed. The sprayer is out on a fairly windy day. It's odorless; therefore, probably deadly. The spray for thousands of trees to the west has already passed through the house earlier, though the western side of the house is pretty well sealed. On the eastern side, the excess taken by the air goes into the woods.

Throughout my adult life I've been pulling for the earth, looking to the day collective humanity will develop a new attitude, one toward people and earth living together. It's like now that our government is owned and operated by corporations and corporate hierarchical mind, it has turned on we the people, the consumers. When we're no longer able to consume because the corporate collaboration called our government has bled us into impotent poverty, we won't be able to support them any more. Maybe this is why the CEOs have been upping their take over the last 30 years, seeing it all comes to an end when the working people have given all their blood and there's nothing left. Then they bale out to the Cayman Islands, Thailand, this place and that place where they have their sweatshops, taking it with them.

There was a time Jr was thinking about selling 18 acres around the house to have some money for old age expenses. One of his friends wanted to buy it, but could only pay to a certain point. Christmas tree growers offered him half again as much. Jr thought about it for 2 years. He chose to sell it to his friend for raising cattle. His reasoning for not selling it to growers at a much higher price was, "I couldn't do that to my neighbors."

I've resigned to it. Not many people think like that, which is why I find someone of Jr's character so rare, and particular to these mountains. That's not to say there's nobody like this outside these mountains. When it comes down to what's Christian, there it is, consideration for neighbors. One day in my store, a man and woman came in and we talked for quite awhile. They asked if I'm a Christian. I told them Christian has become a political party and I'm not a member. Of course, that isn't what they meant. They meant saved. I knew it, just had to say that to let it be known I don't like the subject for conversation. I walk my own path. It is one person wide. There are so many people shouting about being Christians that make me double-take, I'm shy about being around them, like I'm shy about being around people who hang at bars. I don't understand them is all I mean. It's foreign territory.

I'm not one to identify with groups. Every group has its own doctrine and I don't care about doctrines. This is the reason I can't join a church any more. I can't sign myself over to a doctrine, whatever it is. I believe the core of what everyone in the church believes, but not all of what I'm supposed to believe to belong. A lot of it I don't know about, and can't ally myself to that which I don't understand. I will continue to drink liquor, because I like it and can't join a club that won't allow it, the same as I couldn't join a club that required it. I don't abuse it, but if I want to, I will.

Everybody who works someplace now has to go outside to smoke. It's common to see office workers standing outside having a smoke. It's bad fer ya. It's bad. Living in the middle of a Christmas tree patch getting sprayed by everything they spray is good fer ya. It's good. Even the county government thinks it's good fer ya. Lotsa tax dollars they have to get from some place. They're not getting enough from me to pump the water from the river to the subdivision atop Twin Oaks Mountain. They're not getting enough from me to buy the county a new lawnmower. Another hierarchy in which I turn up at the bottom. Home sweet home.