I
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Street Roots • April 24-May 1,2015
Commentary
Page 13
Appalachian betrayals and Shenandoah lies
Vision, reflected
in sun
BY MIKE WOLD
C O N T R IB U T IN G C O L U M N IS T
By. Rachel D
T T T hat, exactly, is wilderness? In
l / l / “Shenandoah: A Story of
V V Conservation and Betrayal,” Sue
Eisenfeld tells how she came to terms with
the fact that her favorite wilderness national
park, Shenandoah National, Park in Virginia,
was no wilderness at all when it was created
in the 1930s. In fact, some 16,000 people
were displaced by the creation of the park,
many of them
descendants of people
who had settled there
hundreds of years
before.
It’s not an
unfamiliar Story,
though usually the
displaced people in
our history were
indigenous rather
than white. But the
story
of Shenandoah
Shenandoah:
stands out because the
A Story of
drive to create the •
Conservation
park, starting in the
and Betrayal by
1920s, was fueled as
Sue Eisenfeld
much by the nascent
automobile tourism
industry as by
conservationists who wanted to protect the
Southern Appalachian forests from logging.
The first ridge of the Blue Ridge Mountains,’
which became the park, was a short drive
from Washington, D.C.
Business owners in the area, including a
rich resort owner, were clamoring for the
creation of a park that could funnel money
into hotels, resorts, campgrounds,
restaurants and stores. True to its roots,
one of the first pieces of infrastructure in
the park was the Blue Ridge Parkway, a
beautiful ridge-top drive that is the most
visited part of the park.
The Shenandoah Mountains had been a
productive farming and grazing area since
before the American Revolution. It was in
economic decline in the early 1900s. One
principal product was the American
chestnut, which constituted a quarter of the
trees in the Eastern forest It had been all
but wiped out by an imported fungus.
Prohibition reduced the market for apple
cider from the extensive orchards in the
area. But, as the U.S. Department of
Agriculture noted at the time, the area was.
still a major beef producer for the East
Coast. There were also hundreds of farms
where people lived from subsistence and
cash-crop farming.
As has so often happened in land grabs,
the boosters painted the park as virtually
uninhabited. Then it became obvious that
Vision, reflected in sun
hazel-green" glistening back
hiding darkness, swirling.
Bronzed black pltim, like a Crow,
set atop dark austere,
rich with potential.
The sun looks good on you,
yet you hate it.
paint of my soul
By Chance S.
people lived there and that their land had
value. The? propaganda started: “Hidden
communities of backward, illiterate people
living in medieval squalor... illustrate] the
effect of... degenerative cross-breeding... [T]
he ragged children... had never seen_tíie flag
or heard of ‘The Lord’s Prayer.’” Who could
question that such lives would be improved
by forcing them into modern civilization?«
The plan was to create a wilderness to
allow all the evidence that people had lived
there to rot and weather away. Only in the
1960s, with a, revived historic preservation
movement, did the government start to
recognize that the structures in the park
were a part of Virginia’s and the country’s
history.
Eisenfeld was á norice hiker when she
first visited the park. As she developed her
skills and stamina, it became her hobby to
seek out the old structures and cemeteries
and the histories of the families who had
lived there. She sought out old cemeteries
and discovered that there are families that
still visit the park every year to see where
their ancestors are buried. It became a
conflict for her, as she realized that the park
she loved had been created through
heartbreak and displacement
As a piece of personal journalism, this
slim volume works well enough, and it’s an
important story to tell. Eisenfeld
acknowledges that she hasn’t dealt with
some of the big questions about
Shenandoah Park. Threads of the story that
would make for fascinating reading include
the decline of the American chestnut, a
native species that is barely surviving; the
history of the hills and the people who lived
in them; the native peoples and African-
Americans who are not referred to but also
must have lived there; and the history of
racism in the park — when it opened. It wn§
with segregated and mostly white-only
facilities. And, finally, despite Eisenfeld’s
love of the historical remnants in the park,
she doesn’t really talk about historic
preservation and how the stories of the
people in the park, and what they left
behind, could be preserved.
But the biggest question is, can and
should wilderness be created in this way?
Western national parks were arguably
mostly wilderness when they were formed,
although there was still significant use and
settlement by Native Americans. Creating
national parks on the East Coast meant
moving significant numbers of people who
were living there. The American ideal of
wilderness, of a land empty of and
untouched by people, ignores indigenous
use, as well as the people who mined,
settled, farmed and hunted in these lands.
Our insistence on creating uninhabited
places reflects our own ambivalence about
nature and civilization. Rather than seeking
a way of living with nature, we prefer to
pretend we can live away from nature (so to
speak) and visit it on weekends, adding to
the carbon load as we do so. Other
countries, such as Canada and the U.K.,
have national parks where people still live.
Shenandoah could have been such a park.
my weight has been recorded
for the gallows trap door
They want me
deemed a lunatic
for what I have embraced
for answers I have sought
They see m e as dangerous
dreams are now governed by reason
spirits no longer visit
deconstruction of a singular architecture
dragged away from the carnival in the fog
They have thrown me in a cell
with a sink full of razorblades
They have me
memories offer no reprieve
nor the glimmering ray of light that
whispers
“freedom”
beyond ru st of barred windows
the thin line of my lips
shows no emotion *
pale canvas of my skin loosens
around shrunken corpulence
as the paint of my soul
peels away.
They have won.