Sherry Chandler

Look hard and you can find Lost Mountain in grid 71, coordinate R-10 of the Kentucky Atlas & Gazetteer. According to that topological map, the summit rises 1,847 feet above Lost Creek, whose headwaters come to life on the mountain’s north face.

These are the opening words to Erik Reece’s article, “Death of a Mountain,” in Harper’s Magazine for April 2005. I have been putting off reading this article because I knew it was going to be depressing. Because, of course, Lost Mountain isn’t really there any more. It has been subjected to a type of coal mining called mountaintop removal. Reece’s article is a diary of his visits – approximately once a month – to Lost Mountain between September 2003 and September 2004. During this period, the top of the mountain was blasted away by that combination of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil so favored by domestic terrorists and bulldozed off into the hollows, creating a flatland that will be “reclaimed” by sowing lespedeza, an exotic grass in the mountains, thus turning an ancient mixed hardwood forest into a pasture.

Once I began to read the article, I found it compelling. It is beautifully written, reminiscent of the John McPhee articles that used to run in The New Yorker. Reece is a protegé of Guy Davenport, and like most of Davenport’s students, he is not only an accomplished writer but also an excellent thinker. Reece provides a eulogy for the mountain, describing the flora and fauna that are its life as well as its quick brutal death.

The history of the United States, in many ways uncomfortable for me to contemplate, has been one of conquest and exploitation. Maybe that kind of thing is hard-wired into the human brain. The sad thing about mountaintop removal is that it is completely exploitative: it takes away everything and gives almost nothing back. Gristmill puts it this way:

Some of the oldest and most diverse ecosystems in the country are simply being blown up, irrevocably destroyed. The poor surrounding communities suffer from polluted water and air, denuded landscapes, and showers of debris (last year a boulder dislodged by a mining explosion crushed and killed a three-year-old boy in his bed). The process has been aided and abetted by the Bush administration.

Worse, the mines provide almost no jobs — a crew of nine people can blow the top off a mountain and dig out the coal below — and most of the coal is sold outside the state. Virtually none of the enormous profits benefit local communities.

Reece ends his article with a plea that we change our attitude, that we become not conquerors of nature but citizens of the natural community. This has been the green plea for decades and no one hears it. But, as Reece points out,

In the end the natural world does not need conserving. The planet has survived five great extinctions; it can survive the one we are bringing on. And given time, it will grow back. No, it is we who need conserving.

Our warm, well-lighted houses, our SUVs and sedans are purchased at great cost. This information is difficult to face and for two decades we have been discouraged from facing it, from facing anything negative about the consequences of our actions (unless they involve sex). This week the Bush administration has set itself to bring down Newsweek as it brought down Dan Rather and CBS news, the new conservative chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has suggested that they feature less news and more music. In such an atmosphere, Harper’s and Reece have committed an act of bravery in publishing this article. Read it.