It might have been otherwise?

Issue #21

May 21, 2024

Dear Friends,

Today, the sun rose yet again on this land from where I report. The rain has been plentiful but not too much. As neighbors let more of their lawns go to pasture, the chipmunks and other little ones scamper, and the songs of tree frogs and birds are magnificent. With each passing year, as I hear from friends in other places, my calling to write to you from this holy region of southern Appalachia strengthens.

🌱

During several years - between the land of steady paychecks and entrepreneurship - the rhythm of my day included memorizing a poem before lunch. I was writing. The small presses were kind. And yet, I had the nagging sense that the small checks could not sustain even the most frugal existence. Still, that solitude was a cherished time of getting to know my interior. A poem before lunch was a good remedy for many years of 60+ hour work weeks.

I was reminded of one of those poems by my dear friend

Kateri Ewing

. Otherwise by Jane Kenyon was a perfect tribute to Kateri’s late friend. If you’ve not stopped by

Fleeting, Breathing, Human Things

, I highly recommend Kateri’s work.

In Otherwise, Kenyon expresses gratitude for the details of her day. She notes getting out of bed on two strong legs, the ripe, flawless peach at breakfast, taking the dog uphill to the birch wood, and a morning of writing poetry, the work she loved. “It might have been otherwise,” shadows each observation.

The language of our interiors is worthy of attention. Why, out of all the poems I memorized, does Otherwise linger? I lean towards the sober recognition that what I consider a reasonable life is luxurious to most people on the planet. My two-room home is on ancient red soil with a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It might have been otherwise. I have running water. It might have been otherwise. I teach clients movement practices in a business I love and I still get to write. It might…well, you get the idea.

This past week has felt very much like it might have been otherwise. Allow me to explain:

LAND REPORT: Hummingbirds and Rhododendrons

Our mountain has an online communication forum that operates like a neighborhood watch group. For instance, in extreme conditions, driving up the mountain requires a four-wheel drive vehicle. It’s typical for the first person who notices to send out a group email. We pass along the license plate numbers of questionable cars. We communicate when we find a wandering dog.

Photo (with patience) by the author.

This morning on the forum, a neighbor asked if anyone had seen the hummingbirds yet. As pictured above, I sent a copy of my Instagram post from five years ago, noting that it’s still a few days early for hummingbirds. Two years ago, I stopped using feeders because the toxic mold built up too fast due to our humid summer conditions. I’ve let more and more of my lawn go to meadow each year. There are more birds, more songs, and food in the fields, and plenty for the hummingbirds.

Rhododendrons in May. photo by author

A Rhododendron stands tall by my front door. She has shiny, dark, and bright evergreen leaves and she flowers in puffy pink celebrations. Her cousins are native, primary residents of this mountain. They don’t flower often.

This bountiful land exemplifies the benefits of an ecosystem left mostly untouched by human development. How easy to think if we clear-cut a place in the forest, that won’t make a difference in the ecosystem. After all, Rhododendron roots are shallow. But they are also fibrous, and they travel horizontally. The leaves are strong. They bush out. They intercept water.

Rhododendrons are essential for the soil. Their leaves slow the speed at which water reaches the surface, minimizing the impact of hard rain. They maintain the integrity of the soil which allows rain to replenish the groundwater and promote root growth.

Cutting Rhododendrons results in more water flowing over the soil's surface, increasing the likelihood of erosion and the formation of ditches. Last month, a well-intentioned resident cut down Rhododendrons on a tight curve of our mountain road. The objective may have been to improve vehicular visibility. Without the thickets of the Rhododendrons and their working root systems, the road's edge became a deep ditch filled with water after the next hard rain. Nature shows us cause and effect when we are willing to pay attention.

🌱

WEATHER

The first few weeks of May were windier than usual. Last Wednesday, the skies darkened, and the rain fell as hard as an August afternoon thunderstorm. Then the storm cleared.

Around midnight, tornado warnings blared from my phone. (That was the first tornado warning in my seventeen years here. The last tornado hit the lower lands in 1990.) Moments later, the power went out until the first light. Many lost power for much longer. The storm was fierce; the thunder seemed to land on top of the lightning. The lightning lasted long enough for me to register that this storm was not a storm that I knew. It was a bit reminiscent of hurricane winds that would hit the shores of Rhode Island. But there, I knew what to do. Once the boats were tied up in the shipyard, we’d hurry to our homes to batten down the hatches.

As with many houses in Western North Carolina, my home has a crawl space instead of a cellar. Realistically, my home has no structural space that would hold up in a tornado. I held my dogs close and watched. The lightning flashes lit up the trees, lashing side to side. Lower down the mountain, trees cracked, houses were smashed, and roads were blocked. In one home, a father got his child out when he heard the alarm. Moments later, a tree crashed into his child’s bedroom.

The National Weather Service confirmed this storm was an EF-0 tornado with peak winds of 85 miles per hour. In our area, no one was injured, but it might have been otherwise.

Farther south in Georgia,

Janisse Ray

reported that, like me, she did not have her eye on the weather. Her brother called with news of the tornado. Janisse was an hour from home and just about to begin a speaking engagement. She canceled and returned to her farm to check on her animals. Except for the power outage, all was well. She reported this on her Substack. “Each storm is a wake-up call, but somehow we don’t wake up.”

Trackless Wild with Janisse Ray

The storms of now are not the storms of the past. Some say that nature works in cycles. And to some extent, that’s true. This year, the Rhododendrons are more showy than usual. Are the flowers abundant because of the spectacular level of rainfall? Or is it just a cycle? Had I done a better job of reporting in my nature journal, I might have been able to provide a sensible report of sun days and rain days, forklifts and backhoes, runoff and soil erosion, and how that affected the blossoming of certain species of Rhododendrons.

It is typical to have a year like this where the Mountain Laurels and the Rhododendrons are extravagant. The Dogwoods aren’t. The Peonies are. And the Azaleas were just as abundant as the Rhododendrons.

Hail just days after the tornado. photo by author

But a tornado warning at 3200’ elevation on these mountains is not normal. It’s extraordinary. We do not have cycles of tornados, especially when that tornado was followed by hail yesterday. There may be other factors, but I am following this line of thought to bring you to a discussion between

Krista Tippett

and Colette Pichon Battle.

May 16, 2024

The On Being Project

published an interview with Colette Pichon Battle, co-founder of Taproot Earth, a global organization that has emerged from the Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy that Colette Pichon Battle founded and led in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Krista Tippett, the host of On Being, opened the interview by saying: “There is an ecological transformation in the places we love and come from.”

Krista talked about the tornadoes in Kansas and how her people knew how to prepare. Colette spoke of the hurricanes in Louisiana. Her people knew how to read storms. Colette calls Hurricane Katrina the “crack in the universe.” Katrina was too big; it almost took up the whole Gulf.

“…there’s a whole story to understand the difference between the failure of manmade levees versus the unbelievable power of a tidal surge off the ocean. They’re not the same things. One caused the other but they weren’t the same things. So the reality of the place where I lived wasn’t failed levees. It was water off the ocean, water churned up from the storm.”

Colette Pichon Battle talked about the knowledge she gained after Katrina, such as how people have been studying Louisiana’s water situation for years. The universities knew of the danger; the communities did not.

“…to really admit climate, to really, really admit that you understand what is happening to the planet, it will break your heart. If you don’t cry deep, hard tears for the state of this planet and all the people on it, you don’t yet understand the problem. And so once you get to that place, the only thing that can bring you out of that kind of darkness is belief in something greater than yourself. And for me, it is that spiritual connection. for me, it is understanding a greater purpose. And then your job becomes less about passing a piece of legislation and more about making a better world.” Colette Pichon Battle

I recommend reading the entire transcript or listening to the audio on

The On Being Project

.

🌱

VISITORS

May 11, 2024

Dr. J. Drew Lanham, an ornithologist, naturalist, poet, writer, MacArthur Genuis Grant recipient, and professor of wildlife at Clemson University was the 2024 commencement speaker at Warren Wilson College. (Warren Wilson College, their environmental professors and the students who work on my Rights of Nature team are dear to me.)

Lanham’s visit to Warren Wilson College ended a month-long book tour for his latest book, Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves. Lanham writes, “Tomorrow morning, I’m on to Warren Wilson College to deliver the commencement address (dressing the farmer part with professorial robe in tact) and then back through the (Blue) wall and downhill to home. This writing life is a dream come true, but a bit of rest is much desired - and greatly required.” Lanham called Warren Wilson College “a liberal arts college with a heart” on his Instagram account.

Lanham urged graduates to draw inspiration from Mary Oliver’s line, “Tell me what you plan to do with your one and precious life.” He asked the graduates to be part of nature, not apart from nature. You will find this theme in his book: The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature.

If an ounce of soil, a sparrow, or an acre of forest is to remain, then we all must push things forward. To save wildlife and wild places the traction has to come not from the regurgitation of bad-news data but from the poets, the prophets, preachers, professors, and presidents who have always dared to inspire. J. Drew Lanham

🌱

RIGHTS OF NATURE

I write about this place I love. It’s a bubble of goodness in a state where builders are trying to buy every wetland and floodplain for developments. This place is ancient. This place is holy; that feels particularly true on my perch. Few people are willing to rough the two miles up the mountain. The road is purposely not paved. Much of the land is in Conservation status. And yet, we know that builders eye the acres. That is one of the reasons I advocate Rights of Nature. If, for instance, the Swannanoa River had a seat at the table at our Town Council meetings, development decisions might have been otherwise.

Rights of Nature means that nature has the right to exist, to regenerate, and to thrive. I write about nature’s agency often. I promise you I will produce an index of my work going forward. That way I can clearly point to what we have already discussed. As always, my research and writing will continue. Thank you for reading to the end!

In kinship,

Katharine

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Once upon a time, I was ambivalent about online publishing. I tried a few platforms and rejected them. Then I sat with a question: Who writes clearly and consistently with very few system snafus? The answer:

Heather Cox Richardson

. What platform is she on? The answer:

Substack

. Thank you,

Hamish McKenzie

and crew!!

The people here (that’s you), the format, our support for one another, and our meaningful conversations in the Comments make for a kind space in the publishing world. I am buoyed to see

Krista Tippett

and her team bring

The On Being Project

to Substack. Now, I’m waiting for Terry Tempest Williams, J. Drew Lanham, and Colette Pichon Battle.🌱