Amanda Doerrfeld (2003)

     There is a single phone line that we share to the outside world. It is a strange turn of events when our normal lifeline to the forest is fed through the fuzzy haze of TV or newsprint. Which to use, the coveted telephone or a connection to the internet? We newly forest-living folk busy ourselves, while we wait out turn, with electronic solitaire. There is a single phone line to the outside world that we explorers share. It is a nice connection to our families, but that is not our purpose here. With a growing tie to each other, we have arrived at Robinson Forest to challenge ourselves with experiences, the best learning tool available.

Front porch fever,
Callused hands, bare feet,
Field guide at each side.
Ready and waiting
Even in summer's heat.

Gravel road led the way,
Trailing a tail of dust,
Taking up a new lifestyle
Environmentalist or bust.

Disturbance

     Begin by writing about what you have already written or how you will write what must be written. It seems a strange task but really it is what writers do. Put to paper or keyboard the ideas percolating in such rapidly singing swirls it takes dedication to commit them to a page. I live in a society of disturbance, one so caught in itself that the cycle of destruction doesn't reach the newspapers except in blurbs rarely taken seriously and books excused as radical forms of modern science fiction. Knowledge is confined to small study groups too young, isolated or outnumbered to be taken seriously. Ignorance, a kiss laced with poison but so common that no one notices the radiation.
     It is argued that disturbance, an unsettling change in what has become normal over time, is a naturally occurring phenomenon and as such does not prove any more dangerous than the dilemmas we face every day. Yet, humanity finds itself in a strange position, awaiting the final outcome of where we stand in regards to the world we inhabit. For we, who take up so many battles to change our planet for the better, are the ultimate creatures of disturbance.
     We are unable to inhabit an area without first destroying it. Then we rebuild and only after we have established our places of entertainment and pleasure do we occupy ourselves with how Mother Nature is fairing. Where natural environment once claimed its place, our Walmarts and McDonald's, movie theatres and arcades now occupy space. But we need fuel for all our new gadgets so we strip more land to expose what's within and market coal with an "oh, well" and the grim but complacent thought that that is the purpose of our national sacrifice zones. This carelessness, unnoticed as we drive our gas-guzzlers to and from the gym, does not end with the tortured land left barren after its sweet innards have been sucked dry. New things must grow but only the cheap things found in mass and easily spread by those who defile their own land or shit in someone else's home for the dollars signs that have replaced morals. What becomes of these stripped but reclaimed areas is not Kentucky or rightly any other land, just a plot of repoed plants that reach for a sun that beats unmercifully on a place she doesn't recognize. Those animals that find themselves in this no place may nibble on a shoot or stop at a man made pond only a mountain away from the gaping jaws of a crane that ate at this area only a few years before. They stay, these deer and elk among others creatures of disturbance, because it is easier in an empty, predator-less region. Human pride is afraid to give up the title of sole predator. What is left is the sloppy seconds of greedy humanity who leaves its food to rot while it searches for greener pastures.
     While we cannot escape the bond that ultimately connects us to everything that calls planet Earth home, we can influence the way in which we interact with the world. Disturbance breeds yet more disturbance and it is our responsibility to alter our destruction-plagued society before we make the land, our planetary relatives and ourselves no more than the garbage we produce.

                                             Webbed

     Whether it be a broken spider web or a natural disaster, the influence of the natural world on the human psyche is very powerful.
     When I was ten, I huddled in the hallway of my elementary school as a tornado, sounds of a wind-born freight train, rocked the countryside. I was fascinated by the whiteout I could see through the double glass doors at the end of the hall. Despite danger, it looked like a giant snowstorm.

Disturbed

Tornadoes command respect.
Humbling earthquakes
Remind us our place,
I am frightened by the impact of hungry
Disease. Curious of the weather,
I watch rapt with awe. Hurricanes
Overwhelm with their power and strength.
But nothing disturbs like the clenched
Teeth of greed, the arrogance and selfishness
Of the mutilating machines. Employed by the confused
Searching for a living,
Peaking mountains of curiosity and wonder
Are reduced to rubble.
I am aware of the destruction and
See the disturbance reflected back
To humanity in each damaged hope.
Humanmade disturbances should disturb no creature
So much as ourselves. We are complacent.
In such, lies the danger.

Flint Hill Cemetery

"The question is not what you look at, but what you see."
                              - Henry David Thoreau
                              Journals, November 16, 1850

          Love.
"If tears could build a stairway
and memories a lane,
I'd walk right up to heaven
and bring you home again."
Glen Pee Wee Miller
Jan 23 1971-Apr 7 2003
          Comfort.
"Asleep in Jesus"
"sleep undisturbed within this peaceful shrine"
"resting sweetly"
"We gave this land that we could all rest together"- Founders of Flint Hill Cemetery
          Loss.
Flowers, a flying dove of peace engraved for

Lee Miller	Elbert Miller	Thomas Miller Jr.
April 11, 1950	Elven Miller	Oct 19, 1962
April 11, 1950	Mar 23, 1951	Oct 25, 1962
	Mar 23, 1951

Forever children in a dying land . . .
          Money.
Kentucky needs power, the world needs power and we give them what they crave. That hill up there? We pay it no mind. Just another piece of land. Can't touch it though, people'd get all riled up. So we just leave it for a while. Eventually, no one'll visit anymore and we can extract the coal. The people wouldn't know it, but there's a living legacy, great granddaddy lights their house today.

The breeze at the top of burial hill carries the song of birds and the heartache of industry. What is progress if it leaves the world so heartsick that we die from the loss of dreams?

"The Star of Hope Forever Glows."

     Mother Nature, for better or for worse, made her children survivors. We, only one of Mother's many children, bitch and cry, break our own and each other's hearts, wade in creeks, scream at the top of our lungs and we survive. Our surge of protection for our fellow creatures, especially those of younger generations, springs from our instinctual desire to continue life despite what may happen to ourselves. A sparrow chases hawks from her nest of fledglings. Parents tell their children that they love them and then encourage them to become independent adults. This is also why we feel such unbearable loss when someone we love dies and passes out of our realm of mutual protection. The pain feels like the loss of oxygen. Emotionally, you don't know that at that moment so many families celebrate the birth of new family members. What is real is that someone you love is gone. We must live through these times in order to know, in contrast, the joys the world also has in abundance.
     It seems strange, then, that we, as a people, can destroy without thinking or refusing to think about the results. We create more of the pain that chews our inner beings and yet still think ourselves superior to the "unthinking creatures" that we believe are here for our disposal. I think this insistent turning a blind eye true of war. Kill without thinking, doing what is necessary "for the greater good."
     I never want to kill someone's love. I never want to hurt the planet that allows us to love. We must recognize the beauty in our world of marvels, ourselves included on an equal par in this category, before we can realize the pain that we exert so effortlessly by walking on each other's spirits. Once aware of a love, we will expand our web of protection to include our protector and beware any that get in our way.

     There is a bug crawling on my computer screen. It is tiny and keeps hopping up and down on the curiously lighted surface. Is it searching? It makes me melancholy for surely it will die in this air-conditioned death trap. What meaning we find in each other is obscure. A bug and a human. One working so diligently as to be distracted by a wandering insect and the other wondering what is to be done in this situation. Another blast of cold air jolts me, it isn't summer in here. My tiny friend is gone now, off to some other computer screen, some other human. What does it mean that a moment ago an insect was walking on my words? I look out the window. The sky is rapidly losing color. I wonder if the birds are still singing. The thrum of the air conditioning unit fills the chilly room. Unconsciously, I wrap my arms around myself. I'm looking for my bug friend. The three thousand word essay I am typing doesn't seem so important.

     I do not crave the lights and noise of the city as my constant companion. This country land of eastern Kentucky where I was born and raised cradles me yet the local culture holds me an outsider in tongue and attitude. Can I rightly write of it? I love the wilderness and yet I know my kind has broken the promise of sharing again and again and that nature would be correct in fleeing from my touch. Will it accept me? For it surely must before I can call it my place.

Bird:
If I could speak,
Would you hear my
Longing? The questions
In my stance?
Stance defined by
Motion but also emotion
That makes me who I am.
I would ask you
Of your world,
How you see the
Air and breathe the view.
And what would you ask me?
You have no need for cars,
TVs, stereos or malls.
Maybe the closest thing
We share is our dance of love.
To fly so high or stoop so low
In searching.
Would you speak, smile,
Let me sing with you?

     So many names; ever changing, ever coming, ever meaningful. It is like being underwater, seaweed-like fungus growing on the cliff sides. Spongy green tentacle arms reaching, white tips ready for sunfood. It has the feel of a pillow. The darker moss makes its presence along side.
     Queen Anne's Lace, something I loved to wear in my hair as a little girl, is a wild carrot. Jewelweed uses water pressure to stay erect and is used to cleanse poison ivy oils from the skin. Arumkus is known, locally, as Goat's Beard. People in the past refused to eat tomatoes because they are part of the poisonous nightshade family. Growing on four, six or eight rings of leaves, Bedstraw is the plant that inspired Velcro. There are more orchids in the world than any other plant.
     Such diversity, there is a time for all physical forms. It strikes me, as I nibble on wild wintergreen in the leafy cool, that the beauty I find in this world is in the uniqueness and individuality of every being and yet the connection of organic shapes and stirrings that we all share. Fungi and coral, sky and water, the shape of my bones and the curve of textured trunks flowing toward our mutual benefactor sun.

Falling

Special, quiet and pretty,
The best places are never easy.
They ain't along roadsides
With private lodging available,
Food, liquor and toilet at hand.
Places, like real people,
Ain't known on first viewing.
Up an eight-five degree slope, wet and
Sweet from rain, over and around sliding
Soil and up. Wintergreen dotting the hillside is a good
Excuse for a break. The mint that grows all over these hills
Tastes of a life made here. Only a few rotting stumps left from
Tornado of '95. Nature does her work.
Enough poison ivy to choke a goat though. There is my tree, friend for thirty years.
Not like other trees sitting here on the edge of a cliff and the edge of
Life. Coiled roots, like snakes from a kid's book, hold the ground tryin'
To keep 'em both safe. Roots for a seat, I've spent a lot time in this shady spot, cooling my
sweat. Looking around, you see the world. I am not the first to dream here. My Papaw,
stubborn old farmer, went up the mountain with me, a kid of 8 ahold of his overalls. I always
loved summer. Granddad rests awhile in the sight of this spot just over on the side of that hill.
We have to move him soon, seems. Don't know where we're going to go. They want the coal.
My brother works it. Tells me not to fight it. They want coal. My friend, clinging for years on
the brink, roots around moss. They don't know about this spot or a hundred spots. They ain't
their spots to miss. I want my kids to know moments when you bite your lip in wonder.
Dreamed of a family climb, fallin' and cursing all, up this difficult, muddy path. Now I have to
go for they say my spot ain't mine. Property of an institution, money for coal, money in trade
for life itself. "There ain't nothing so precious as land, it's what keeps us alive", my granddad. I
know. I know like coming of rain. My turn to fall off this mountain.

Marriage

To leave the mountains is a notion we gave up long ago.
There's a language spoken here can't find anywhere else
And people out there sure don't understand us.
It's hard to work mountain land, have to be born
Here to make your way. We age; hard
Peaks don't wear down near as quick as we do.
There's security in that.
We live in the skin of the land. I raced my brothers up and down
This gravel road, left my skin on the rough tree bark,
Twisted my ankle in Troublesome Creek beside our house.
Witnessed the pain when my uncle cheated on his wife.
They fought it out on our front lawn, even the woods
Was still that night.
I made love for the first time on Lookout Point.
I still smell him on the wind
When I visit the spot.
The man walking down the mountain
Toward the fence my daddy and I put up
When I was twelve is tired and,
Lord knows, he ain't a politician.
Lived here all his life, you can
Tell from rough hands and the sun lines on his face.
He speaks the language. He knows the struggle in the land.
Been a bad year. The trees come down tomorrow and
Maybe the mountain if the bills ain't paid. My husband,
A man with the mud-sweat of the earth in his blood,
Is selling our memories. Too stubborn, too solid to change his mind.
We've lived our lives together here.
This place, witness and player, tough and true, our joys and pains.
Tomorrow, which lover do I betray?

     Staring up into the starry sky, I feel the press of many questions. Most prominent, even in this peaceful realm of quiet darkness, animated fireflies and countless stars, what is disturbance? Can a tornado, stripping a hill of trees, be less disturbing than a bulldozer? An urgent flutter about me insists there is a difference. After clear-cutting or mining, everything is gone. What remains is a baron lifeless land that will never be the same. This is a human-constructed disturbance and is by no means a rare thing. A tornado may strike only once in a hundred years while humans will work diligently until the land is gone for money or development. A tornado, or any natural disaster, that we have no claim to and no control over is frightening. It is large and noisy and it can take human lives. But even when all large trees in an area have been leveled by huge gusts of wind, life prevails. Understory vegetation grows healthier and the abundance of light lets saplings mature quickly to fill in gaps of the canopy. Even the fallen rotting timber becomes a favored spot with much insect and bird activity. The power of such natural disasters is startling but not nearly as devastating, now or in the long term, as the disturbances of logging, mining, mountaintop removal, clearcutting, oil spills, pollution, hazardous waste and nuclear production that humans force upon our planet. I feel tiny gazing at the stars, but I am aware that the lifestyle I choose has an impact on everything around me, the way I live does make a difference. Disturbances on Earth are bound to happen but it is our responsibility to ensure that they won't be our disturbances, the kinds that never recover.

Sounding

Do you listen?
Hear the pulsing of wings
As the honey sky fades.
Do you listen when woodland
Lungs expand and sigh before
Harmony rain? Rivers
Burble, laugh, stream with
Purpose, rush with anger.
Dawn, afternoon,
Dusk, night
Each has a breath
And trees their own
Swooshing growth sound.
Fallen leaves,
A musty sweetness,
Crinkle underfoot,
A different voice
When kissed by moisture.
Do you listen to night?
Purposeful wings call
To the air, an owl swoops,
A mouse cries,      Silence.
Stars listen, do you?
Do you hear trees
Crash down and waters
Blacken and slow and choke.
Mountains are drowned out
By manmade thunder.
Do you hear our pain
In dynamite?
Silent death in blind noise,
Destruction a new sound.
A new cry.

Strides

My braids are heavy with rain.
Dirt Smeared, bloody from feeding
Mosquitoes, I walk alone down this
Abandoned gravel road.
I was a little girl in the Daniel Boone National Forest,
Now, I crunch back through Robinson,
An old little girl set out with resolve.
I know with each step I take in woodlands,
Something dies, crushed beneath a giant.
Stinging nettle and poison ivy, old challengers
I am weary of. Heart shaped violets and
Wild yams watch me pick my way uphill.
Whichhazel is a good understory tree.
A gall is a tumor formed on tree leaves
When insects lay eggs on them.
The insect babies eat this growth
When they hatch.
Beech is shade tolerant and smooth.
I am learning this area by heart.
I live as lightly as I can and know that
Someday something much more
Powerful than my life force will footprint
Me. There is no easy answer. To care, to
Change the world, is a joyful burden.
A something each of us can do.
In my present state, I feel ready,
A small smile as damp with sweat
As rain playing on my face.
A wren plucks a pokeberry beside the road and
Away with this treat. Unity.
One's cyanide is another's silver lining.

We have arrived at Robinson Forest to challenge ourselves with the experiences that are the best learning tool available. We leave craving even more the explorations that change us.

Away to Here

We come to the woods with our patchwork
Hearts searching for extravagant answers to
It all. Trickling preconceived notions tickle
In the back of minds as we struggle over mountains,
Around creatures, crawl under fallen trees and march
Straight through poison ivy, a constant nagging.
But what strikes us is the desire to
Slog through the mud, peep under rocks,
Scale mountainsides, sit around fires and to
Discover the humility in our humanity.
So we are changed.
Our big questions are left for us to answer
As we continue our lives. The summer will
Wane, we will move to different places adding new
Patches as we go. When we return to the forest, the hope is,
We will discover that we never really left.