Anna R. Ziegler is an attorney in Hinton, West Virginia, with the law firm of Ziegler and Ziegler. She serves as president of Friends of the New River Gorge National River, is a board member with the New River Conservancy, and a Rotarian.
Photo Courtesy of Anna Ziegler.
I grew up on the banks of the mighty New River in a small southern West Virginia town. The New, ironically one of the oldest in the world, carves its way through the ancient Appalachians in its defying course to the Gulf of Mexico. My youthful proximity to this mighty force impacted the direction my life would take. I followed the New to the Ohio River for college; the stewardship instilled in me as a river guide steered me from a degree in pre-medicine to one in environmental sciences. All the roads on my atlas seem to lead back to Appalachia. These hills and rivers have guided the trajectory of my life.
Often, the change in trajectory is inconsequential. The whiff of a lilac pulls the hiker off trail; the melody of water falling over rocks lulls the angler to an afternoon nap; the coo of a mourning dove shifts thoughts from business to personal.
And just as the natural world pulls and morphs the human’s trajectory, we, too, alter the trajectory of the natural world. The impact is imperceptible, until the results are noticeably unavoidable: too much imperious surface results in deadly floods downstream; our insatiable drive to keep the lights on fuels an industry which generates byproduct that can devastate an entire ecosystem; our customary levels of travel contribute to a diminishing polar ice shelf and rising sea levels.
At the cusp of spring, 2020, the collective trajectory changed. The human world came to an abrupt and sudden halt. In response to a global pandemic, people stopped. We stayed home. We did it for our parents, our neighbors, our nurses, ourselves. We stopped to grieve.
As we stood still, the natural world kept going. The river rolled by, carrying the spring rains on their relentless journey to the ocean. The song birds searched the woodlands for good housing material. The peepers outside my window were blissfully unaware of our hardship. Fireflies lie in wait for just the right moment to bedazzle the night sky. Bees are busy pollinating our food.
Remarkably, the human slowdown altered the natural trajectory. The levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere dropped. The skies cleared in some of the most polluted places. Big-city skylines are visible. Fish have returned to canals and rivers which were recently barren. As humans learned to live with fewer trips to the store and the office, as we found entertainment in our homes and communities, the earth took a deep breath.
Humans are a resilient species. We will recover. The economy will recover. However, we have a unique opportunity to permanently change a critical trajectory, that of the natural world. We’ve glimpsed the impacts of a simpler life on the bigger picture. Modified lifestyles and thoughtful investment of recovery funds into greener infrastructure are something we can visualize. We have the power to change the trajectory.
The story above appears in our July/August 2020 issue.
