For centuries, many Appalachian people have faced a dilemma: Either parcel off family land to industry or leave the mountains. A restoration program is helping to address that sad choice.
Courtesy of STIHL Inc.
Lee Bryant surveys his 600-acre property in Kentucky.
In the 1940s, Hubert and Idella Stepp bought 12 acres of untamed mountain soil in North Carolina. For every acre they bought, they’d rear a son or daughter. Since my daddy, William, was the youngest, most of his siblings had moved to faraway lands like Charlotte and Salisbury by the time he was toddling around. That left him free to wander.
At age seven, he started sauntering down to the homestead’s lower three acres—a marshy flat flanked by Bat Fork Creek—to flush doves, chew on wineberries or just listen to the chickadees croon. Grandpa and Meemaw owned a stretch of hardwood so pretty it would make your molars ache, but Daddy loved this soggy field the most.
Courtesy of Lauren Stepp
At the age of seven, William Stepp began exploring the marshy bottomlands of his family’s North Carolina homestead.
In the winter, he says, the bottomlands would turn white and mottled like the top of an iced pastry. And in the summer, after a hard rain, Bat Fork would spew past its banks and cover the entire three acres. That’s when you could catch skillet-sized bluegill, maybe even a bass if you got lucky.
It’s fair to say that field grew up alongside Daddy as if it were another sibling. Their love was abiding and uncomplicated. But as a teen, Daddy learned the grief that comes with giving your heart to a piece of land.
In the 1970s, my grandfather was diagnosed with cardiovascular disease and spent most days gasping for air down at Pardee Hospital. He wasn’t a rich man, so when his Navy pension ran dry, he started liquidating his assets to pay back Dr. Romeo. After pilfering through antique watches and heirloom rifles, Hubert looked out the back window toward those bottomlands and knew what he needed to do.
Courtesy of Lauren Stepp
In the 1970s, Lauren Stepp’s grandfather sold acreage to Duke Energy. The power company soon installed transmission towers.
Daddy isn’t sure how much Duke Energy paid my Grandpa. He just knows what came after—the mechanical groan of dozers, the silt fences, the milky-eyed brim washed ashore. Duke ripped up all the buckwheat and in its place planted a procession of 200-foot-tall transmission towers. They are still there today, crackling and popping like water in hot oil.
As I talk to Lee Bryant in Whitley County, Kentucky, I can’t stop thinking about those transmission towers and how Appalachian identity is so inextricably intertwined with a love for the dirt beneath our feet. And yet, historically speaking, desperate times have forced us to exploit the very land we love so dearly.
Courtesy of Lee Bryant
Thousands of trees were planted in the footprint of the old mine site.
Bryant knows this quandary all too well. As a Bluegrass State native, he’s watched mining companies ravage the land. He’s also watched those exact same companies keep neighbors warm and well-fed.
“Without mining in eastern Kentucky, people would have starved to death. Coal was their only choice,” Bryant says while looking out over an expanse of kudzu. Like an undulating wave, the verdant vine spreads down a steep embankment and then unfurls for eight acres. Beyond the creeper’s reach, oak trees have turned honey-yellow and maples paprika-red.
Some 20 years ago, Bryant purchased this 600-acre parcel just outside of Williamsburg. Defaced by nearly a century of coal mining, the place was “a gravel pit”—a barren moonscape frosted with invasives like shrubby lespedeza, Japanese honeysuckle, Chinese privet and, of course, kudzu.
But Bryant had a vision. He also had emotional ties, having spent the 1980s riding horses and hunting small game on this tract. Then an active mining site, it was here that Bryant learned to love a piece of land, much like my daddy did that mucky stretch of pasture.
“It seems I’ve known this property for forever,” Bryant reveals, going on to explain that the original owner was a family friend, someone who didn’t mind a teenager roaming about.
So, when the 600-acre parcel became available for purchase in 2000, Bryant jumped. In the nearly two decades since, he’s partnered with the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative (ARRI) to rehabilitate the desolate wasteland into something viable.
A branch of the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, ARRI is dedicated to restoring active and abandoned mine lands throughout Appalachia using the Forestry Reclamation Approach. For a layperson, this approach can be distilled into two steps: First, loosen up the soil with a ripper shank—a dozer attachment that looks like the prying talons of a hawk. Next, plant native trees.
Courtesy of STIHL Inc.
All of the trees on Bryant’s property have been planted by hand.
Though the second step may seem obvious enough, mining companies have long cut corners. After sucking a site dry, many will compact the soil with heavy machinery and then plant non-native grasses in an attempt to mitigate erosion. But this does little to encourage biodiversity, wildlife habitat and water quality. Half-hearted reclamation efforts also do little to “camouflage the terrible scars left behind,” says Bryant.
Wanting to create a space his family could enjoy for generations to come, Bryant worked with ARRI and other stakeholders to address invasives and plant some 50,000 trees on his property, known to locals as Flying Rooster Farm.
“Name a tree, and it’s there,” he says, rattling off a list of species endemic to Kentucky, including the American chestnut.
According to Bryant, these “breathtaking” restoration efforts have attracted deer, turkey, bear and a number of small animals like voles, rabbits and mice. The quail population, which continually ebbs and flows, is also improving.
“Wildlife has just exploded,” he says. “It’s like they say, ‘If you build it, they will come.’”
Luckily, Bryant is beginning to notice reclamation efforts in other parts of Kentucky too. However, in many corners of Whitley County, the landscape is still marred by giant swaths of ransacked soil—“areas that we ravaged,” Bryant says slowly, his voice tinged with something like sorrow. But, he rationalizes, “it was either mine or move for so many generations of people.”
Needless to say, Appalachian natives have faced this type of dilemma for centuries. With limited monetary resources, they have liquidated the very ground they walk on—selling their land to mining companies, commercial and residential developers and, in my grandpa’s case, a power mogul.
Courtesy of Lee Bryant
Nearly a century of mining ravaged Lee Bryant’s Kentucky holding.
Of course, the results are varied. Most rational people would argue that condos are better than coal mines. However, the sense of loss that comes with watching a stranger despoil your land is all the same. It’s a bone-deep sort of ache that sticks with you, that haunts you.
I know for a fact that my daddy still drives by that three-acre stretch of flat, soggy pasture. Hubert and Idella left this earth long ago, but Daddy still goes back to the land that raised him. He gets out of his car and walks along Bat Fork Creek, eyeing the eddies for bluegill and listening to the chickadees trill.
Those birds, with their smoky-gray wings and black caps, almost seem to say: We miss you. Come back home.
Hellscape to Haven: ARRI at Work
Thirty years ago, when Cliff Drouet was hired as an independent forestry consultant for coal companies in northern Alabama, he knew absolutely nothing about surface mining. “Except that it was ugly,” he remembers.
But today, as a forester with the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative (ARRI), Drouet has made a career out of knowing all there is to know about the legal, cultural, economic and environmental implications of coal mining.
Courtesy of Lee Bryant
Lee Bryant poses with a turkey harvested on his property.
A coalition within the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, ARRI seeks to re-establish healthy forests on previously mined sites in Appalachia. Typically, says Drouet, these sites are 10- to 1,000-acre wastelands of barren dirt “packed harder than a Walmart parking lot” and riddled with issues like sheet erosion.
Per the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, coal companies must revegetate the land and take other steps to minimize hazards like pollution and landslides. But in some cases, often because of bankruptcy, mining moguls don’t follow legal protocol.
That’s when ARRI steps in.
Working with nonprofits, universities, private landowners and other partners, ARRI applies the Forestry Reclamation Approach (FRA). Grounded in decades of research, this technique involves loosely grading the topsoil to create a suitable growth medium. Then, foresters select a mix of commercially valuable native species, planting upwards of 700 trees per acre.
The resulting land is lush and vivacious—the antithesis of what coal companies normally leave behind.
“Private landowners used to avoid mine sites like the plague,” says Drouet. “They considered these places austere and non-productive. They believed nothing would ever grow here.”
But now, the perception is changing. “People see potential,” Drouet notes. “They see promise.”
To learn more about the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative, visit osmre.gov.
The story above first appeared in our March / April 2023 issue. For more like it subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!