Tag: nature

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Henry David Thoreau, a Man Who Took Simplicity to Heart

Henry David Thoreau, a poet, essayist, and philosopher, is best known for his book “Walden,” which is a reflection on living simply in nature. (Biba Kayewich for American Essence)

“The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree.” This living poetry was what led to Henry David Thoreau’s philosophy for life.

By most, Thoreau is considered one of America’s great 19th-century writers, but it would be nearly impossible to read his work without also thinking of him as one of its great 19th-century philosophers. Of his many works, none captures his philosophy as well as his “Walden; or, Life in the Woods.”

Thoreau didn’t simply espouse his philosophy. He lived it.

‘I Wished to Live Deliberately’

Thoreau lived in the northeast part of the country during the early to middle part of the 1800s. His home was in Concord, Massachusetts, but his abode was of his own making—at least, for a period of time. The writer and naturalist explained: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. … I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”

He believed there was only one way to accomplish this, and that was to venture far from the people of his town and live in Walden, among woodland hills that surrounded a large pond. Though beautiful, he noted that the scenery was of “a humble scale.” Interestingly, Walden, with its simultaneous beauty and humility, was a reflection of Thoreau’s philosophy. His idea was to live humbly within the beauty that nature presented: the wildlife, the change of seasons, the hardships, the solitude.

His philosophy was an exercise in self-reliance that focused on the three essential elements of food, water, and shelter. Fresh water was readily available to him with the pond’s deep well, except of course when the pond froze in the winter and required that he use his axe and pail and go in search of water. His food was either provided by nature or by his own efforts—gardening, fishing, picking wild berries, hunting small animals—and, as well, infrequent visits to town.

Interior of the replica of Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond. (Tom Stohlman (CC BY 2.0, CreativeCommons.org/ licenses/by/2.0))

His shelter took more time, but he was supplied with lumber from the woods. He began chopping down trees at the end of March 1845, and by July 4 he had occupied the “palace of his own”—furnished with table and chairs, flooring, and a fireplace all of his own making, and what he viewed as ever-changing transcendent artwork.

“When I see on the one side the inert bank—for the sun acts on one side first—and on the other this luxuriant foliage, the creation of an hour, I am affected as if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the Artist who made the world and me—had come to where he was still at work, sporting on this bank, and with excess of energy strewing his fresh designs about.”

Poverty as Wealth

There was little doubt that the naturalist writer was different. His transcendentalist views, a movement that originated in New England, caused him to stand out. More than that, however, Thoreau desired to be a man apart. Despite his beliefs about humanity and nature, he, much like most anyone, had questions that only a trial could answer. What could he endure? What were the necessities of life? What was poverty and what was wealth? What was true philosophy and what was true economy?

Thoreau wanted to live well, although not in an economic sense. His view of wealth was concentrated on necessity and simplicity, and even morality.

“Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth,” he boldly stated. “No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.”

He witnessed anxiety in his neighbor (neighbor being a relative term, as most people lived at least a mile from him) whose desire for luxury items, like butter, coffee, and tea, caused discontentment. To Thoreau, his neighbor’s cycle of work-spend-work was so labor-intensive that the results hardly seemed worth the effort.

“Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?” he asked. “We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.”

“Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.”

The Beat of a Different Drum

Thoreau believed that every man should be able to choose his own path, which was what he viewed as the makings of the “true America.” It bothered Thoreau that his neighbor had so little to show for his labor, while he himself labored little and showed nearly the same result. But it did not matter enough to him to force the issue. “Let everyone mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made,” he wrote.

Thoreau heard a drummer that many, if not most, could not hear. He noted that the problem was that people were listening to the same drummer, and it was the drummer of “public opinion.” And public opinion was often tied to what is new rather than what is valuable.

Thoreau’s reconstructed cabin in Walden Woods in Concord, Mass. (Alizada Studios/ Shutterstock)

“One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels,” he wrote, and then added, “Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.”

For Thoreau, espousing a philosophy meant more than empty words; it should be a guide for living. He was a philosopher who lived his philosophy, while some, he believed, simply philosophized. He felt there was something tragic about that, as it not only caused the philosopher to not truly live, but also caused harm to those who were taught such philosophies.

Leaving Walden, and a Challenge

On September 6, 1847, Thoreau left Walden, having spent more than two years living out his philosophy “to live deliberately.” He endured the harsh New England winters and enjoyed its beautiful springs. He discovered what wealth truly was, at least for him. He realized what he could endure and he embraced the peace of solitude. For a transcendentalist, “Walden” was his magnum opus, connecting his spiritual beliefs, his love of nature, and his personal philosophy. It is hard to miss the connection when he recollects his walks through the “laboratory of the Artist.”

Sometimes I rambled to pine groves, standing like temples … so soft and green and shady that the Druids would have forsaken their oaks to worship in them; or to the cedar wood … where the trees … spiring higher and higher, are fit to stand before Valhalla, … and make the beholder forget his home with their beauty, and he is dazzled and tempted by nameless other wild forbidden fruits, too fair for mortal taste.

The work of “Walden; or, Life in the Woods” calls into question our own philosophies. What are they, and do we believe them? And if we believe them, do we live them? The Roman poet Horace famously wrote, “Carpe diem” (“seize the day”); Thoreau’s call is an echo of that. It is a call “to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,” no matter the situation.

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names,” Thoreau wrote in the final pages of his great work. “Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours.”

From January Issue, Volume 3

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Features

Cooking Close to the Heart

(Photo by Jamie Robbins)

To chef Jake Wood, who began his career cooking at top restaurants in Raleigh, North Carolina, his grandmother remains the best chef ever. Growing up down the street from his grandparents’ house in rural North Carolina, Wood remembers many family meals featuring his grandma’s “country soul cooking.”

“In my memories as a kid, those times with all of our family, and just all of us coming together over food, was something that was always special,” Wood said in a recent interview. Today, at his Durham, N.C. restaurant, called Lawrence Barbecue, those flavors and memories inform the menu.

(Photo by Tennet Rich)

For example, his grandma’s favorite snack is hominy with pork cracklings. Jake’s restaurant does a version of that dish with buttered hominy. His family also cooked a whole hog over open fire coals every Thanksgiving Eve. Wood draws on those recollections to serve up North Carolina-style pulled pork, alongside some Texas-style brisket, at Lawrence Barbecue.

Even the dishes that he didn’t enjoy as a child, he now recalls with fondness. Some things that Jake would kind of turn his nose up at were, for example, “when she cooked turnip greens. That would stink the whole house up. But now it’s like that smell is reminiscent of my childhood. It brings back memories.”

Soul Cooking

After years of working in the fine dining industry, Wood wanted to be cooking something familiar and approachable at his own restaurant. “Southern cooking is close to my soul, my roots, and my family’s roots,” he explained. “So, it feels good to be in a position to have a shop where we’re serving food that’s close to my soul, with my family’s name on it.” Things have just come full circle, he noted. “This is where I wanted my hard work to pay off.”

(Photo by Tennet Rich)

He is grateful that he can still visit his grandmother’s house regularly, and draw inspiration from the meals she cooks, asking about her recipes and how she has perfected them or retained their traditional renditions. Many of the daily specials that Lawrence Barbecue serves come from those cherished conversations with his grandmother, Wood said.

Meanwhile, the restaurant is named after his late grandfather, Allen Lee Lawrence, who inspired the base sauce for pulled pork. Before he passed away, he was developing a sauce along with Wood, incorporating vinegar and the cayenne peppers he grew in his garden. He called it “Peak of the Heat.” When Wood’s son was born in July 2019, Jake and his wife decided to name him Lawrence, also after Wood’s grandfather. The restaurant’s logo is a small baby in a diaper, straddling a smiling pig.

Wood also noted that many of the techniques treasured in Southern fine dining today, such as pickling, canning, and smoking, are actually ways of cooking that rural communities have long adopted. Through talking to his grandparents, he realized their cooking philosophy was: “You live off the land to not only feed your family, but to make a living as well,” meaning that what they ate often depended on what they had growing and what they had on the farm and had access to, by way of their own farm or neighbors who lived on the land close by. One neighbor had cattle or hogs, he explained, “or a cousin or an uncle would bring fish back from the coast in coolers.”

(Photo by Tennet Rich)

Though Wood cut his teeth on elaborate plating and complex chef techniques, he now hopes to have a restaurant with a familial, homey atmosphere.  He said they “just worry about the food being as delicious as possible and being here ready with a smile on our face every time somebody comes to our window. We’re always going to make that the base of what we do.”

A Community Comes Together

The restaurant opened in June, after a long delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But Wood called the change of plans “a blessing in disguise.” In 2020, pandemic-related restrictions devastated the hospitality industry. Wood was able to operate a ghost kitchen out of his restaurant space, with patrons picking up food orders from the premises. With the proceeds earned during the beginning of the pandemic lockdown, Wood served 500 free meals to people in the industry who were furloughed from their jobs. He said they just wanted to do their part “to provide any help that we could to some of our friends and fellow business-owners in the industry,” Wood said. Back in 2018, the local community had similarly rallied together in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, which wreaked havoc on the Carolinas. Wood, along with top chefs in the South, took part in a culinary event that helped raise over a half million dollars for small businesses to rebuild or recoup their losses.

(Photo by Jamie Robbins)

Later in 2020, Wood partnered with a local pub to serve his menu offerings as the restaurant space was being finalized; and he also did pop-ups, catering, and other collaborations with restaurants in the South. Through these events, the word was getting out there about Wood’s future restaurant. He realized that the tight-knit hospitality industry in the Raleigh-Durham area looks out for one another.

Wood is also very thankful that patrons continue to support Lawrence Barbecue. He said: “We know that people have a choice when they support a local business and when they go out to eat. And people put that trust in our hands every single time they come to us. It’s your money with us. And it’s our job to create memories for them and make sure that we’re doing our best every time. Because without them, we’re not here.”

Categories
Features Small Farms

Back to Our Roots

The Conley family at their orchard in Athol, Idaho. (Ben Norwood)

The fundamentals of life at Athol Orchards are simple: a tight-knit family, a love for all things apple, and a deep appreciation for mountain air and American soil.

Located in the northern reaches of Idaho, Athol Orchards is owned and operated by the Conley family: Erreck, Nikki, daughters Mackenzie (13) and Madelyn (10), and Nikki’s mother Carole. While it is most known to the public for its historical apple varieties, delectable apple cider syrup, and Idaho-harvested maple syrup, the Conley family looks at the orchard as a token of the American dream: strong family foundations, plenty of hard work (oftentimes backbreaking, as Nikki said), and the traditional, family-owned farm life.

In the beginning, many told Nikki and Erreck they’d bitten off more than they could chew. But since moving to Idaho from the West Coast in January of 2016, the family has been chipping away at their vision, little by little; just six years ago, Nikki was a professional graphic designer working in a Northern California metropolis, parked in front of a computer day in and day out, while memories of the quiet Californian mountain town where she spent her childhood bloomed in her mind.

Nikki with her husband, Erreck, and two daughters, Mackenzie and Madelyn. (Ben Norwood)

“When I was 3 years old, my family wanted to seek a quieter life for me and my siblings, so we moved to the eastern foothills of central California in a little town called Springfield. It was the ideal small town,” said Nikki. “The Sequoia National Forest was pretty much our backyard, and we had a lot of these multi-generational, commercial apple orchards that were being grown in high-elevation mountains there.”

Crisp apples and fresh mountain air are braided into Nikki’s childhood, so much so that she often asked her father if they could become apple farmers. The glow of a computer screen became a headache as the mother of two pictured the quality of life she wanted for her daughters.

Building an Orchard From Scratch

Nikki and Erreck didn’t have a lick of agricultural experience of their own—Nikki herself had cycled through graphic design, teaching, and the medical field, trying to find her lifelong career—but while the orchard dream was still far removed from reality, it remained within arms’ reach.

“We wanted to seek a quiet life for our kids. A slower life, away from the big population densities in California where we were. I don’t know if this happens to all parents, but our minds really started changing in the ways we thought about the world, after watching how things have changed and the world got so fast, unpredictable, scary.”

Northern Idaho checked all of Nikki’s boxes for climate, environment, safety. She, her high school sweetheart, and their kids headed east. And with the town of Athol nearly rhyming with the word apple, it just felt a universal sign to Nikki that it was time to make her childhood dream come true.

Crucial to this was her husband’s willingness to change his own career path, move states, and walk alongside his wife in her new endeavor; while apples alone may not have been a convincing-enough argument, Nikki finding her true calling surely would. Erreck is a 23-year Air Force veteran who remained in government work until joining Nikki in the full-time orchard venture. Carole lives on the orchard and assists in the operation as well, helping with gardening, watering, and tending the berry patches.

The apples and their byproducts are just a delicious bonus. “I’m the dreamer and Erreck is very much the doer. Everything we’ve done, we’ve done together right alongside our girls,” Nikki said.

Nikki Conley chose a small town in Idaho to start her orchard, after years of toiling in front of a computer as a graphic designer. (Ben Norwood)

What to most people is just a household kitchen staple is to Nikki a fruit with a rich, intricate history, which has fascinated her for years. There are multi-volume book series, historians, and national conventions dedicated to the apple, and the varieties grown at Athol are unlike those found on grocery store shelves. Some varieties were lost and found again when abandoned American homesteads, dating back to the 18th century, were rediscovered and explored—the ancient apple trees found on those homesteads were “gifts from our ancestors,” Nikki said.

“I learned about all of these lost, old, historical varieties that really tied in with my love of American history. All the pieces started to fall into place for me.” Nikki now delights in sharing her knowledge through her orchard, which she said also functions as a living history farm.

Back to Nature

Preserving history and providing agricultural education are important, Nikki explained. Agricultural exposure in public school is minimal, and, with the threshold to enter the commercial farming industry so high, she wants impressionable young children to learn the vital role that agriculture—not just commercial farming—can play for a person, a community, and America as a whole. “We want to change the way kids see agriculture, whether it be becoming beekeepers, having their own orchard, or raising Nigerian goats for cheese and raw milk. Public education doesn’t have the time to touch on agriculture anymore, and that’s why we need to hold on to the family farms in our country,” she said.

Nikki does not aspire to run a commercial apple farm. She sees herself as a curator of apples, and her farm a preservation orchard, with its 1.5 acres and 120 trees, holding space in the present for apple varieties that held so much significance in the past. She has plans to plant more trees on an additional 16 acres next spring.

(Ben Norwood)

Athol Orchards is perhaps most known for its signature apple cider syrup. A lover of natural and holistic ingredients harvested straight from the earth, Nikki didn’t like the thought of her family using artificial syrups, so she set out to create a syrup product from her apples. She did not expect that she would soon be selling out of the product at farmers markets—where customers gushed that the syrup was happiness in a bottle or like Christmas for the tastebuds—and shipping to all 50 states and internationally.

Nikki took a similar approach with maple syrup, the supermarket varieties of which can be loaded with additives, after a visit to New England where maple farms thrive. “The whole idea and tradition of maple syrup stuck in my heart just as fast as the apples did,” she said.

A Rewarding Dream

So, what is it like living in the shadow of the Rockies, where your nearest neighbors are apple trees? It is an “amazing silence,” Nikki said, free of the traffic, construction, and general cacophony that steals the quiet away from urban places. The morning of her American Essence interview, she rose early to find wild turkeys foraging the orchard for fallen apples while her Nigerian dwarf goats brayed to hail the morning; in the mountains, the nighttime often leaves a milky fog behind that casts the forest surrounding the orchard into haziness. Elk may emerge to try to sneak a few apples off the trees, and while the Conley family has not yet experienced any firsthand, moose, wolves, and cougars loom in this very much still wild and untamed land.

Metro California, choked and uncomfortable like a person pulling at a turtleneck, seemed a distant memory.

“The forest is quiet, and the atmosphere is cool. The earth is damp, you can smell the soil under the grass. We are a forest-edge environment, which means we let the native grass and wildflowers grow in the springtime,” Nikki said.

The most rewarding of it all has been watching her family slow down—not only watching her dream of apples and syrups blossom, but her dream of true, unadulterated happiness find its way into her daughters’ hearts.

“It’s been a very fulfilling thing for my kids to watch us develop this business. They’ve now realized that they can be entrepreneurs themselves, and they don’t have to work for somebody else, or work for the system. They can build a life for themselves and have a life that they want. They’ll be able to provide for their own families and not have to work on somebody else’s clock and somebody else’s dime,” Nikki said.

The local community has welcomed the orchard and the Conley family with open arms, their message of a more purposeful, slower life included. Nikki recently experienced an accident that left her injured, and the community swooped in to help with farm operations. “People are tired and weary of this fast-paced world. They’re losing connection to humans,” Nikki said. “Our farm has become this place where people can come, and they don’t take out their cell phones, and there’s this kindness and this camaraderie that takes place here.”

Athol Orchards has provided so much more to Nikki than apple pie and maple syrup. She and her family love this land from mountain peak to soil, growing their roots deeper than those of their apple trees. And while Nikki’s father—who played such an important role in taking her to orchards and hearing her childhood dreams of becoming an apple farmer—passed on long before the orchard came to fruition, Nikki looks out over her work and knows he’d be proud, perhaps even smiling down.

Savannah Howe is a freelance magazine journalist currently calling the cornfields of the Upper Midwest home. When she is not telling America’s stories, she can be found on the hunt for the best sushi or coffee out there. 
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Features

Why Wildlife Is Returning to Eastern Kentucky

The wilds are returning to Eastern Kentucky in what could be called a triumphal environmental story. Sportsmen license fees and private funding have been the backbone of conservation and restoration efforts, and even cultural awareness is increasing. (Chris Musgrave)

The past 20-plus years of mass media reporting on the environment has been dominated by predictions of cataclysmic catastrophe and mayhem, although during my life, I’ve seen a very different story.

Growing up in Eastern Kentucky, deer were few, with no bear, coyotes, turkeys, mountain lions, bald eagles, and certainly no elk. Today, all of these species are present again. Positive things are happening. Wildlife is naturally returning and many species are rebounding with streams cleaner than they’ve been in decades.

Elk enjoying a reclaimed surface coal mine in Martin County, Ky., on Aug. 20, 2015. (Chris Musgrave)

How can this be? For years, doomsayers have warned about the end of nature if we didn’t turn the American way of life on its head; they may find it ironic that capitalism funds the successful environmental protections that we do have.

Recently, I took my family to the Salato Wildlife Center in Frankfort, Kentucky. Throughout that gem, you can find the answers of how this can be.

Blight and Restoration

How did the dearth of nature come to be in the first place?

At the turn of the century, the chestnut blight in the eastern part of the country—where strong, rot-resistant chestnut trees that grew since time immemorial fell in mere decades—along with irresponsible clear-cut logging led to ancient forest floors in the mountains to be washed out. The ecology, flora and fauna, and economies tied to chestnuts were devastated. The old-growth forests are now lost except for small pockets such as in Blanton Forest in Harlan County.

(Daniel Ulrich)
(Daniel Ulrich)

At the same time, many wildlife populations crashed due to overhunting and habitat loss. The Great Depression caused remaining species such as deer, rabbits, and squirrels to be hunted for food, with no regard for conservation as people struggled to survive and feed their families. As the Depression ended and most places prospered, much of Appalachia remained impoverished.

Hunting and fishing licenses are the backbone of conservation and restoration efforts. Hunters funded the successful reestablishment of elk, to the point that we now have regular seasons for hunting.

An active coal temple in Pike County, Ky., on Aug. 10, 2011. (Chris Musgrave)
The reclaimed mine of Bell County, Ky., an Appalachian Wildlife Foundation location, on July 22, 2014. (Chris Musgrave)

Bad actors of the past made the Surface Mine Reclamation Act necessary. If you’re unfamiliar with the industry, you may be surprised to learn that reclaiming is part of the regular process, and typically leaves the land better than before it was mined. Why? Because that original land would have washed out about 100 years ago when the chestnut blight ravaged the forest (the restoration of the American chestnut is a subject for another story).

Elk enjoying a reclaimed surface coal mine in Martin County, Ky., on Aug. 20, 2015. It’s this grassland that they like. (Chris Musgrave)
(Daniel Ulrich)
(Daniel Ulrich)

Now, drainage controls are engineered, preventing washout. Native grasses are planted along with nut-bearing trees to promote wildlife. Within a few years, what started out like a scene from “Mad Max Beyond Thunder Dome” is a lush paradise that supports diverse wildlife.

No better example can be found than that of the privately held Appalachian Wildlife Foundation. It’s in the final stages of building a public educational research station, located in Bell County, Kentucky, where the first mountaintop removal mining site in the United States is. People unfamiliar with the reclamation process have no idea it was mined, and the elk couldn’t care less.

Modern-day surface mining is like making sausage: The process is not pretty but the end result is great. The location of the wildlife foundation several decades ago more resembled the surface of Mars or the moon as the top of the mountain was removed of the overburden in order to reach the valuable coal seams below. When coal is too close to the surface, the ground is not stable and it’s not safe to mine underground. To access this coal, the ground above must first be removed.

(Daniel Ulrich)

It is only fitting this wildlife sanctuary was once paraded by those opposed to mining as an example of how awful mining is, because active mining is ugly. This short-sighted view ignored the big picture and the responsible and forward-thinking stewardship by the landowners. When mining was first completed and the reclamation process started, the first few years the land was home to only grasses and low brush and briers taking hold. After a few years and seasons, the soil develops as vegetation decays returning to soil. Per the requirements based on extensive research, the soil is only compacted to certain point to prevent run-off, but not so tight as to prevent trees from easily re-establishing, (early reclamation law required soil be very compacted, inadvertently thwarting vegetation, and thus wildlife returning).

Today most people wouldn’t know Boone’s Ridge was a mine, (with limited active mining still occurring). This is true of most surface mining today, as only contour mining is permitted, where the peak must remain and only the outer edge of a coal seam is mined creating a bench. This bench is filled post-mining and the mountain is returned to its original contours. Once these location are covered with significant hardwood trees, they are indistinguishable from other parts of the hillside not mined to the untrained eye.

Education Works

The many creeks and streams in the region were once clogged with decades of trash and sewage from straight pipes.

Today efforts by private volunteer groups such as PRIDE (Personal Responsibility In a Desirable Environment) remove trash from the streams every April. Over the past decades, septic tanks and new sewage treatment plants have almost ended raw sewage discharge. As a result, fish and aquatic species are flourishing, and even beavers and river otters are returning.

The Salato Wildlife Center in Frankfort, Ky. (Chris Musgrave)

I currently serve on the board of the Kentucky Environmental Education Council, which has played a key part in cultural change for the last several decades by exposing Kentucky students to environmental issues and terms.

Yet another factor changing culture is simply time: The outlaw hardscrabble poacher culture borne of desperate times of the Great Depression has to a large degree died out or become too old and feeble to do much harm. Less fortunate segments of society now have social safety nets and improved infrastructure making it easier to meet basic needs unavailable in the past.

This certainly has helped remove the pressure of necessity to subsist. Most sportsmen today buy licenses and make good faith efforts to follow the seasons, limits, and regulations.

The Salato Wildlife Center in Frankfort, Ky. (Chris Musgrave)

Private corporations can play a role as well, often the ones contributing to funds that make much-needed conservation efforts possible.

The Salato Wildlife Center in Frankfort, Ky. (Chris Musgrave)

Having studied the history of energy and environmental law and being a sportsman myself, I’ve heard much blaming of corporations, industry, and hunters of today for the harms of the past. Education has helped dispel some of these misconceptions. And yes, we do have some real environmental problems in this world; most have root causes traceable to the desperation of poverty, corrupt systems of government, or ignorance of the harm of our actions.

For example, when the Soviet Union collapsed, desperation and anarchy nearly wiped out caviar sturgeon in Russia. Corruption happens, too. Recently, when a mine in Pike County started receiving complaints from surrounding neighbors, it turned out the federal mine inspector was accepting bribes to not enforce the law. Once discovered, it was stopped and the inspector and operator are now in jail. Ignorance of the consequences of actions factors into these environmental problems. Take the example of DDT pesticides; once the harm was discovered, regulations caught up and banned its use.

The wilds are returning to Eastern Kentucky in what could be called a triumphal environmental story. Sportsmen license fees and private funding have been the backbone of conservation and restoration efforts, and even cultural awareness is increasing. (Chris Musgrave)

I saw a wild bald eagle about seven miles from Lexington, Kentucky, just last week. Last summer, a black bear was spotted downtown near a University of Kentucky hospital. These occurrences were unthinkable 30 years ago.

Chris Musgrave is a Kentucky attorney, farmer, and policy professional in energy, environment, agriculture, education, elections, history, and government administration and affairs. He enjoys hunting, fishing, and writing music and articles for fun. He is also a board member of the Kentucky Environmental Education Council and Historic Preservation Review Boards.