Mergoat Mag No.4: Dowsing Yonder by mergoat

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ee mo cologists

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ife is a dance between subject and object. Organisms perceive, interpret, and respond to their environment, while the environment simultaneously perceives and responds to the organism. They toss the ball back and forth, shaping each other in such an intimate dance that it becomes difficult to distinguish the two as we step away to enjoy their symphonic union. All experience is a refraction of the infinite.—from “Infinite Outcomes” by Ashlee Mays

Mergoat Staff

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cofounder / publisher & executive editor

Sorrel Inman

cofounder / creative director & designer

Hazel Hoffman editor

Aaron Searcy editorial assistant

Ashton Baker design support

Alex Bonner This text is illuminated throughout with illustrations by Dani Davis.

Mergoat Magazine is a quarterly magazine published out of Knoxville, Tennessee. The best way to support our work is to become a subscriber at mergoat.com/magazine. mergoat.mag

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writing

art & photography

Ashlee Mays Lilly Anderson-Messec Denali Sai Nalamalapu Autumn Crowe Sorrel Inman Crystal Cavalier-Keck Caitlin Myers Bramble Ashton Baker Emily Satterwhite Laura Saunders James Roha Annemarie Abbondanzo Kip Mumaw Zoey Laird Nick Lyell Max Puchalsky

Andrew Zimmerman Hazel Hoffman Ashlee Mays Logan Szymanowski Dani Davis Alex Bonner Laura Saunders James Roha Anna Briley Ecosystem Services Nick Lyell Max Puchalsky

cover art by Ryan McCown

From the Publisher

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Dear reader, The world we once held so close has passed. Ephemeral, the earth’s Holocene spring wanes. Increase. Expansion. Growth. These are the fundamentals of capitalism. The architects of this economic regime do whatever it takes to perpetuate these fundamentals. Nevertheless, the fiscal engineers and national mathematicians continue to exclude an important variable—they forget to carry the one and confuse the quotient for the remainder. Now, we look on as oligarchs scrap in fits and starts to salvage their corporations—and their egos. With each passing year, we reap a new harvest of profit margins from fields sown by this economic machine—the unsavory bounty which is the product of our extractive relationship to the earth. Meanwhile, species extinction continues to increase at exponential rates. Oil spills come and go. Climatic volatility extends from the tops of mountains to the depths of our seas. The procession of development—the erasure of ancient habitats, topsoils, and seed banks—advances ceaselessly across the face of the earth. The inputs of plastics, carbon, and countless toxic chemicals climb to new heights. We have even heard the Biden administration and the Israeli state characterizing the criminal bombardment of the Gaza Strip as a preparatory phase for coastal development and fossil fuel extraction. We encountered unspeakable tragedy this year. The state-sponsored murder of Tortuguita. The violent efforts of lawmakers to erase transgender people. The Biden administration’s approval of the Willow project and fast-tracking the Mountain Valley Pipeline here in Appalachia. Canadian wildfires and toxic air. The near collapse of the Gulf Stream. Bathwater ocean temperatures. The collapse of coral reefs. The ongoing invasion of Ukraine. The invasion and escalated ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip. The lust for access to oil off the Gazan coast. With each passing year, it becomes increasingly difficult to envision a future earth. If you are reading this, though, you may be stubbornly hopeful despite the catastrophic news we receive on a daily basis. You may be someone who craves hope even while the dominant power structures continue to frivolously degrade our environment. Or maybe you are a total

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nihilist, but you like bugs and plants and words. It really doesn’t matter why you are here. You are here. We need you here. For millennia, human consciousness has been transfixed upon apocalypse. Prior to the Enlightenment, our fascination with apocalypse was largely metaphysical—a platonic yearning for a world other than the agonistic and flawed one we experience each day. An ideal world. A world where suffering evaporates in the presence of the perfected or eternal logos, or some other beyond, some yonder. The world of forms. Heaven. Ātman. Redemption. The Kingdom of God. Nirvana. Utopia. As the mythological epoch of human history dwindled, so did the soft silver lining of eternal perfection fade from these apocalyptic visions. By discarding any possibility of a magical redemption or postmortem future, much of the apocalyptic imagery that characterized the twentieth century took on a harsh and dismal edge. The question underlying the godless apocalyptic meanderings of the last century might be posed thusly: “If there is no life beyond my death, how can there be any beyond at all?” Industrialization, world wars, genocide, and climate instability provide ample scaffolding for the imaginative construction—or calculation— of this godless apocalypse. This publication was founded with a singular guiding principle: to survive, we must first hope. To put it another way: to survive, we must believe in the possibility of a future toward which we can direct our hope. We must take care of, protect, and defend our home. And we must not fail to act in ways that accord with this mission. Our work this year, in a sense, can be read as the invocation of a single phenomenal gesture: the turn. Many philosophers, novelists, poets, and creators of all kinds have scrutinized and explored the complexity of this gesture. How, though, do we apprehend the full force of the gesture? At its most basic, the turn contains within itself a duality. That is to say: when I turn away, I also turn toward. Similarly, when I turn toward, I also turn away. Someone like Jacques Derrida might even characterize the turn as a sacrificial gesture—when I turn, I sacrifice the thing toward which my attention and intention had once been directed, thereby clearing space to welcome or call into existence another thing. The turn may be dualistic, but it is also a gesture that intrinsically signifies agency, volition, choice, or will. In other words, the turn is an expression of power. One must choose to turn, even if by instinct. To turn is to fully engage the agential faculties contained within the mind-body continuum each of us calls “I.” I may instinctually turn away from one thing without knowing what I am turning toward, as in the case of escaping a dangerous situation. In this instance, I prioritize turning away from the thing that seeks to injure me, but at that moment I also turn toward something. As I turn in fear without assessing what I turn toward, what I turn toward is left to chance. I become susceptible to whatever presents itself. In the best case scenario, I find a safe haven as I flee. Often, though, another trap is waiting to seize upon my vulnerable and directionless state. In another instance, I may instinctively turn toward something I know very well— something I return to for comfort, nourishment, pleasure, or safety. In this situation, I sacrifice one thing in order to satisfy my desire with another. By turning towards what is nourishing in a blustering reaction, I risk forgetting, abandoning, or even harming the thing I turn away from—a failed sacrifice.

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A multitude of wisdom traditions, though, teach that no sacrifice can be successful without proper acknowledgment and understanding of the sacrificial object. If I do not carry the memory of the sacrificial object, I am bound to repeat past shortcomings or perpetuate the harm I sought to repair. I make a sacrifice in order to atone for wrongdoings, so as not to repeat them. I may also make a sacrifice to overcome fear, timidity, and insecurity in the face of challenges. At our best, at our most thoughtful and strategic, we summon the courage to pause and clearly identify both the threat and the goal. In power, I step away from that which seeks to injure or deter me and step toward that which makes it possible to perpetuate life, peace, power, and autonomy. We have taken time this year to clarify and grieve what we are turning away from: apocalypse. We have considered the turn itself: transition. In this issue, we open the door to face what it is we are turning toward: a future. In this issue, we sacrifice our obsession with apocalypse in order to welcome and renew our devotion to the possibility of a future. In devoting ourselves to a future, we must also responsibly accept that the future will be a product of our present collective actions. It is incumbent upon us to take actions that will produce the future we desire. In Dowsing Yonder, our contributors introduce, demonstrate, and guide us through the machinery of futurity, world creation, and the project of preserving our ecologies and life. You will find attempts, failures, and successes in these pages. You will find threats. You will find infinite possibilities and impossibilities. You will find tools, experiments, tears, and trees. But above all, we find each other in these pages. Casting our fear to the poison clouds that weep above our heads, we choose now to sacrifice a certain apocalypse for what once seemed like an impossible future. Now, we turn to this future.

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TABLE OF DISCONTENTS

Infinite Outcomes

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Species Feature: Florida Torreya

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This Is Not a Pipeline: Nine Years of Mountain Valley Pipeline Opposition Saturophage: Grey Hollow Village Project Feature: How to Rebuild a River Cinderhella The Revolutionary Potential of Games Play: Solarpunk Futures!

Ashlee Mays Museum of Infinite Outcomes

art by Ashlee Mays and Logan Szymanowski

Lilly Anderson-Messec

art + photography by Dani Davis

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photography by Laura Saunders

James Roha

art by James Roha

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Annemarie Abbondanzo and Kip Mumaw

photography by Ecosystem Services and Andrew Zimmerman

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Zoey Laird

art by Anna Briley

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Nick Lyell Solarpunk Surf Club

art by Nick Lyell and Max Puchalsky

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Solarpunk Surf Club

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Denali Nalamalapu Autumn Crowe interviewed by Sorrel Inman Crystal Cavalier-Keck interviewed by Caitlin Myers Bramble interviewed by Ashton Baker Emily Satterwhite interviewed by Laura Saunders

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INFINITE OUTCOMES by Ashlee Mays

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The Museum of Infinite Outcomes is an open-air museum of conservation perched on a chestnut ridge in Knoxville, Tennessee. The museum features an open garden, workshops, a lithographic publishing house, the Library of Infinite Outcomes, and a collection of seasonal and rotating exhibitions. Ashlee Mays serves as the museum's curatorial director.

Nate’s lab is focused on understanding the visual possibilities of these multi-eyed predators. While it is difficult to say if a spider sees through one window or eight, Morehouse Lab has been diving into the colorful spectrum of experience in jumping spiders (family Salticidae). For example, the lab recently discovered a novel mechanism that allows spiders in the genus Habronattus to see color: “By pairing a red filter with predominantly green-sensitive retinal cells, these animals have increased the color “channels” in their retinas from two (UV and green) to three (UV, green and red), dramatically expanding the range of colors they can see.”1 This is a huge discovery, and it has left many evolutionary biologists wondering . . . Why see in color anyway? The easy answer to this question is that color vision allows us to distinguish one thing from another. This fruit is red, this leaf is green. But is color objective in the first place? Is there anything actually red about a strawberry? My partner, Logan, is a visual artist but cannot see the difference between red and green. When sunlight floods the fields, the surface of a strawberry absorbs all the colored light rays, except for those corresponding to red, and reflects these wavelengths back to me.

above Maybe a jumping spider’s view of the Library of Infinite Outcomes.

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of speaking with a spider scientist. His name is Nate Morehouse, and he illuminated the world of jumping spiders’ color vision to me. Nate is a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Cincinnati and the director of IRiS (Institute for Research in Sensing). In Morehouse Lab, Nate leads a team of biologists studying the evolution of sexual reproduction in insects and spiders, which, as it turns out, has a lot to do with how we see the world and how the world is presented to us. There are a few key differences between spiders and people. There is also a considerable amount of overlap between the two. Human people, for the most part, have two eyes. Spiders, for the most part, have eight. I am a visual artist by training, so I think a lot about my two eyes and how they help me navigate the world. I spend a lot of time with waterfowl, imagining what depth perception could be like with your eyes situated on the far sides of your face. I like to think about the night and the world that awakens in our forests as the sun sets. Until recently, I had never considered what it might be like to see with eight eyes. Does a spider see eight separate vision bubbles, like a surveillance room stacked with television screens? Or do they have a singular vision, similar to ours, but with full hemispheric coverage? What would it be like to suddenly expand your vision, to have your periphery widen all the way behind your head?

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Nate Morehouse, Morehouse Lab, current research.

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Although, the bat’s world must look very different than my own. I do not sleep upside down or swoop through the sky catching insects with my face. I certainly do not hunt via echolocation, and I am not a child of the night. I spend my days walking about using my two eyes, and inferior ears, to build stories of what the world really looks like—to me.

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above “What is it like to be a bat?” Inside this box is an ultrasonic bat detecting device hooked to a telephone. There is a bat box mounted several feet above the phone.

My eye receives these reflections, and my brain says they are red. Logan’s eye, on the other hand, receives these reflections, and his brain says they are brown, or green, or red, or something like that. Is color in the object, or is it in the mind? Perhaps it is a collaboration—a dance. The two need each other in order to manifest. We are suspended in moments of coming into being, both entities shaping each other, every action with an equal and opposite reaction. It’s an age-old question: What is it like to be something else? What does a spider see? What does an owl hear? What is it like to be a bat? Thomas Nagel asks us this question in his 1974 paper on consciousness, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” Nagel describes the limitations of standardized scientific language to describe, measure, or even try to understand what consciousness is. As we currently understand it, consciousness doesn’t have a weight to it or any observable qualities, other than the fact that we all seem to agree that we are experiencing it. That experience is key. Nagel argues that in order for something to be conscious, there must be something it is like to be that something. There must be something it is like to be you, there must be something it is like to be me, and there must be something it is like to be a bat.

the same day I met Nate, I also spoke to a classically trained pianist named Stacy Fahrion. Stacy is a Colorado-based composer, pianist, educator, Lumatonian, intonation enthusiast, and the author of the book Polyrhythms for Pianists. We are both part of an international group of artists studying sensory experiences and more-than-human communication called The Biophilium. Stacy knows a lot more about sound than I do. They play a colorful instrument called a Lumatone, where they can program each individual sound on a glowing field of keys, then compose with that unique palette. Tuning systems are all based on the physics of sound. Modern western tuning systems are typically based on equal temperament. Equal temperament tuning divides an octave into twelve equal parts. While it’s a relatively new system of organizing frequency, it’s the dominant one. It is also how most of us hear and compose music in North America. Stacy, on the other hand, programs their Lumatone using a tuning system called just intonation, which is a system of tuning that dances through the pure scale of harmonics. Just intonation is established through ratios, and because it is not limited to five to seven notes, the ratios of just intonation are cyclical—and presumably infinite. The resulting waltz is harmoniously dissonant and hauntingly gorgeous.

right Both art and science can be used as a tool for understanding and documenting the living world.

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The scale of harmonics is continuous, infinite, and undying. The electromagnetic spectrum, too, exists as a continuous range of wavelengths. While our two human eyes are programmed to see a vibrant rainbow of visual information, and our ears can interpret roughly 20,000 hertz of jazz, this is by no means the full picture. The strawberry is red to me. It is brown to Logan, or green . . . I am not sure. The same sunlit field glistens to birds, bugs, snakes, and spiders in an ultraviolet optical symphony that is completely unknowable to me. The whole field shines through on the same continuous spectrum that we each distinguish in accordance with our own limited capacity.

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Here, Ashlee teaches Sightseers: Observing the Living World, a four-week class series held by the School of Infinite Outcomes.

While our two human eyes are programmed to see a vibrant rainbow of visual information, and our ears can interpret roughly 20,000 hertz of jazz, this is by no means the full picture.

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life is a dance between subject and object. Organisms perceive, interpret, and respond to their environment, while the environment simultaneously perceives and responds to the organism. They toss the ball back and forth, shaping each other in such an intimate dance that it becomes difficult to distinguish the two as we step away to enjoy their symphonic union. All experience is a refraction of the infinite. To celebrate, we established the Museum of Infinite Outcomes—a site dedicated to possibility, discovery, and emergence. We are an open-air museum of conservation. We feature seasonal exhibits and educational programming that celebrate these infinitely shifting forms and the underlying continuum from which forms abound. There is no denying the sixth extinction. The onslaught of damage has already started, and so much more is yet to come. As we bear witness to the catastrophic situation around us, might we consider: life needs death, and the dark needs light. As we dive headfirst into the great mysteries of tomorrow—into a sea of anthropogenic devastation—may we root ourselves through our senses, look to our elders, and foster relationships along the infinite scale where we are all dancing in harmony, together.

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left The Perennial Cycle of the Luna Moth Perennials, 2020 (in Collaboration with Logan Szymanowski)

Lilly Anderson-Messec

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Species Feature COMMON NAME(S) Florida torreya, stinking cedar, Florida nutmeg, polecat wood, fetid yew, gopherwood

SCIENTIFIC NAME

FAMILY

CONSERVATION STATUS

Torreya taxifolia

Taxaceae (Yew family)

Endangered

HABITAT

Cool microclimates on limestone bluffs and steephead ravines along the Apalachicola River in northern Florida

LIFESPAN

Long-lived perennial, but rarely reaches sexual maturity due to fungal infection by Fusarium torreyae

THREATS

The fungal pathogen Fusarium torreyae is the primary cause of its death, as well as habitat degradation due to development, silviculture, climate change, fire suppression, alteration of hydrology, and other human causes

Florida Torreya

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Photo by Dani Davis

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

One of the world’s most endangered conifers, Torreya taxifolia is a medium-sized evergreen tree found in a narrow native range: the unique steephead ravines feeding into the Apalachicola River in the Florida Panhandle. Historically, the thirty-to-sixty-foot-tall tree grew wide, with a classic Christmas tree shape. The shiny, sharp needles emit a strong odor when crushed, which inspired many common names such as “stinking cedar.” Once a common species in the understory of these lush ravines, it began to suddenly decline in the late 1950s, and by the early 1960s, all mature trees had died, leaving only resprouts from those root systems, some of which still remain today.

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Ghostly echoes of Appalachia reverberate in North Florida. The Apalachicola River, bisecting the Florida Panhandle, is the only river in Florida that originates from that ancient mountain range. Across millennia, the deep and wide waters have carried many Appalachian plant and animal species south, enriching this biologically diverse region. Many species common in Appalachia reach their southern extent here, as the wide waters of the Apalachicola River allowed many northern species to have a direct conduit south during interglacial periods. Here you will find sourwood (Oxydendrum arboreum) and mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia), intermingling with pines and palmettos among mountainous, ancient sand dunes. These dunes are remnants of the prehistoric coastline that was once many miles inland from the current coastline. Nestled in the unique steephead ravines along this mighty Apalachicola River, an evergreen tree found nowhere else in the world teeters on the brink of extinction.

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relictual A word that describes a species or community that was more widespread or diverse in the past. Ravines along the Apalachicola River north of the prehistoric coastline remained above sea level during the Pleistocene, providing refuge for northern species when they expanded south. The waters of the Apalachicola River originate in the Appalachian Mountains, so the river allowed a direct conduit for many northern species during interglacial periods. The cool microclimate created by the narrow, shaded ravines allowed for their persistence during warm periods. Many of these species may have once had a wider range during cooler periods in history, but their ranges likely shrunk as our climate warmed. The cool microclimate of the ravines allowed them to persist.

since european colonization, Torreya taxifolia has been known by many names: Florida torreya, stinking cedar, Florida nutmeg, polecat wood, fetid yew, and gopherwood. Many of these names refer to the tree’s pungent odor when the leaves are bruised or the wood is cut. The scent is reminiscent of tomato plants to me, but much more concentrated. Its Latin name honors New York botanist John Torrey, who first acknowledged it as a new species in 1833. At that time, Florida torreya was a standard component of the lush and biologically rich steephead ravines found mainly on the eastern side of the Apalachicola River in the Florida Panhandle. These unusual ravines are included as one of the six biodiversity hotspots in the United States, as designated by The Nature Conservancy. They wind for miles inland from the river, eroded slowly over millions of years from the mountainous ancient dunes that remain from the prehistoric coastline. The ravines north of the prehistoric coastline remained above sea level during the Pleistocene, providing a safe refuge for northern species that moved southward with the flowing river during interglacial periods. They are exceptionally steep and deep, an unexpected sight in Florida. A nearly vertical drop of eighty feet is typical. Slide down the sandy slopes, and the soil becomes loamy, with seeping limestone outcrops, culminating in crisp, clear, sandy-bottom streams that flow year-round. This cool microclimate, formed by the cold water and lush canopy, harbors other relictual species of flora and fauna that, like the torreya, are not found anywhere else in the world. Species such as these, restricted to a particular place, are known as “endemics,” and these ravines are rich with them. Because they have such a narrow natural range, many endemics, including the Florida torreya, are also endangered.

Torreya are conifers—evergreen trees with needle-like leaves that bear their seed in cones—and Torreya taxifolia is one of the most endangered conifers in the world. Although its range has always been narrow, it was once so common in these ravines that its lightweight, durable, rot resistant, and robust wood was regularly harvested for various uses. However, by the 1930s, their health began to decline suddenly. By the 1960s, virtually every mature Florida torreya had died, leaving only resprouts from the surviving root systems. Just a small percentage of wild torreya remain today, and those that do are a shadow of their former selves. Once growing to mature heights of thirty to sixty feet tall, the few remaining torreya now rarely reach above ten feet. The majority grow only two to five feet tall before dying back to their roots again and hopefully resprouting. Torreya taxifolia is now considered functionally extinct, as the remaining trees rarely reach sexual maturity before dying back again and, therefore, have no sustained reproduction in the wild.

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above: A worker navigates the challenging terrain of the steephead ravines during a day of fieldwork.

distribution Torreya taxifolia is endemic to three counties (Liberty, Gadsden, and Jackson) in northern Florida and part of one county in Georgia (Decatur County), primarily along the eastern side of the Apalachicola River.

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other relictual species endemic to these ravines

Florida Yew Taxus floridana Ashe’s Magnolia Magnolia ashei Torreya Pygmy Grasshopper Tettigidea empedonepia Floodplain Phanaeus Scarab Beetle Phanaeus triangularis Apalachicola Caddisfly Hydroptila apalachicola MERGOAT MAG VOL.1 ISSUE 4 33

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what is killing the Florida torreya? The reasons for its decline have been hotly debated, though habitat degradation due to development, silviculture, climate change, fire suppression, alteration of hydrology, and other human causes have all contributed. The trees are also susceptible to trunk damage by deer rubbing and uprooting caused by invasive feral hogs. Over the years, many hypotheses have been proposed for the disappearance of torreya. However, the primary culprit of the sudden death and decline was recently pinpointed: Fusarium torreyae. This fungal pathogen was unknown to science until 2011 when it was described and named by Dr. Jason Smith at the University of Florida’s Forest Pathology Lab. The novel fungus seems to have evolved in Asia, as it belongs to a basal clade of Fusaria with only a few other members, all of which are endemic to China. It was most likely introduced by importing non-native species for horticultural uses, though it is difficult to know for sure. This is just one example of how we “roll the dice” ecologically when we import and plant non-native plants. The plants you add to your yard can have devastating effects on our ecosystems. Choosing plants native to your region is always the best and safest option. The process of the tree’s decline has been very similar to that of the American chestnut. All Torreya taxifolia remaining in both the wild and in cultivation are presumed to be infected at this point, as the fungus is systemic and its spores are airborne—even trees grown from seed are infected. Although infected, resprouts or seedlings may live for many years without showing any signs of disease until they are stressed. This can be very misleading for homeowners or budding conservationists who plant the tree, as any tree in cultivation will inherently experience less stress than wild populations and will likely appear healthy for much longer. Without outward signs of infection, it’s easy to assume the tree is healthy and uninfected. However, even cultivated trees will eventually experience stress, and once they do, the fungus erupts. The first outward signs are leaf blight and stem cankers. If further stress is not endured, they can persist in this state for many years. Less robust individuals, or individuals experiencing compounding stress, begin to exhibit yellowing of their needles, and suddenly, the entire trunk or tree dies back to the roots, sometimes killing the plant entirely. If the roots survive, the tree may resprout but remain infected, and, thus, will repeat this process. All of the trees remaining in the wild are resprouts, and it is unknown how many times these root systems can resprout.

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fungal spread of fusaria Fusaria are often spread to torreya and other susceptible conifers, like hemlocks and pines, via the nursery industry. Invasive species that are sold in nurseries are often inoculated with Fusarium torreyae. What’s more, torreyas that are sold in nurseries are also inoculated with the fungus and should not be planted outside of their native range.

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Most worryingly, the Fusarium has recently been proven, through two double-masked inoculation trials, to infect various other tree species, including native hemlock and pines. For this reason, it is not recommended to plant Torreya taxifolia outside of its narrow native range to avoid the unforeseen consequences of spreading this fungal pathogen. Native hemlocks, especially, are already threatened by the invasive Asian woolly adelgid bug, which has caused extensive mortality on the East Coast. We know the loss of any species within an ecosystem has rippling effects that can be catastrophic. Unfortunately, in the absence of definitive evidence supporting the cause of the blight (before 2011, when Fusarium torreyae was finally described), some overly enthusiastic individuals and organizations began promoting a campaign of “assisted migration” for Torreya taxifolia based on the assumption that its decline was due to climate change. Based on erroneous fossil evidence, these groups hypothesized that torreya had been “stuck” in its native southern range and belonged further north. To date, there is no fossil evidence that Torreya taxifolia existed further north than its current range. While translocations for endangered species are sometimes helpful and necessary, they must be carefully considered to avoid unintended consequences to the ecosystems they’re being introduced into. By campaigning for and organizing the “assisted migration” of Torreya taxifolia, one of these organizations has essentially aided in spreading this introduced fungal pathogen, Fusarium torreyae, across the East Coast, which will likely have devastating effects. The attempt to save one species is endangering entire ecosystems—the classic tragedy of man’s hubris.

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all hope for the survival of this species in its native range is not lost, however. The

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Florida Native Plant Society and the Atlanta Botanical Garden (ABG) are collaborating to monitor and search for existing populations of torreya in its native range. ABG has also opened a study to determine the effectiveness of various fungicides on Fusarium torreyae. Finding a treatment is hopeful, as many other Fusarium species in agricultural crops have been successfully managed with fungicides. However, since Fusaria are genetically diverse in form and function, and this particular species is novel to science, experiments will be necessary to find an effective treatment. Also thanks to the work of the ABG and the Florida Native Plant Society, Torreya taxifolia is now the most well-represented endangered species in southeastern ex-situ conservation collections. Over 500 genetically unique individuals are now growing in ABG’s conservation nursery, so even if the tree disappears in the wild, its genetic diversity is conserved and ready for a potential reintroduction. Torreya’s listing as an endangered species by the federal government has provided funding for all of this work to exist: a testament to the success and importance of the Endangered Species Act. Continuing to advocate for and advance policy initiatives and funding in conservation is critical to the future of torreya and other rare species. At a time when we are losing biodiversity at an alarming rate, I would argue that funding the conservation of land, habitat restoration, and land management, as well as ecological education in our public schools, is much more important than funding our already over-bloated military budget. The plight of endangered species can feel overwhelming, heartbreaking, and futile, especially when we can see how, in hindsight, human efforts to help have caused further harm. Despite this, I have found hope in witnessing the collaboration of organizations, agencies, and individuals led by evidence-based science. Collectively, we have the power to conserve and protect the life-giving biodiversity of the Southeast.

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This

Is Not a Pipeline

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with an introduction by denali nalamalapu and photo essay by laura saunders

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interviews with autumn crowe, crystal cavalier-keck, bramble, and emily satterwhite

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ach night for nearly a decade now, you have had the same nightmare. Along the Mountain Valley Pipeline route, where you defend the frontline, you struggle to fall into a frightful sleep. A metallic clanging causes you to wince each time you doze off.

denali sai nalamalapu is an artist, writer, and climate organizer based in Roanoke, VA. They are the co-director of the POWHR Coalition, a grassroots environmental justice organization that services communities along the Mountain Valley Pipeline route. They are originally from Maine and Southern India. laura saunders is a photographer and filmmaker living on Tutelo land with lots of time spent in the southern territories of so-called Arizona. Her work focuses on community, grassroots resistance, and legacies of extraction in the Appalachian region where she grew up, as well as stories looking at the historical understanding of forced migration, for-profit detention, and how these impact the growing industry of US border militarization.

A slithering metal monster crawls up steep, forested slopes, cackling along landslide-prone hillsides and seismic zones. Its combustible innards tingle at the thought of bursting into a fiery spectacle that could wipe out all life around it—your grandmother’s house extinguished, burns on your sisters’ legs, carcasses of raccoons and neighborhood dogs. The monster creeps through the Jefferson National Forest, invading your childhood refuge. It feasts on the dirt, flicking old-growth trees to the ground like dominos. It squirms cold-blooded across the busy Appalachian Trail—tearing into the two-thousand-mile national preserve with a mouth full of daggers. It thrashes in streams and disturbs the delicate balance of life. It tosses soil into the water, leaving behind a muddy mess.

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Unlike Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, this metal beast is not self-aware. It does not know it does not belong in the forest—that destruction is its very design. This monster pays no mind to the habitats of endangered animals or to the poison it leaves in its wake. This monster does not know the candy darter— lovingly called an underwater rainbow by neighbors— nor the king of the darters, the Roanoke logperch. Both dissolve into mud. The Indiana bat flutters away, disappearing into karst. You shudder in your sleep because you know the mountains will never be the same. This absentminded beast roams, invading rural, elderly, and poor communities—and where is its creator? Whose bidding does it do? The cool mountain breeze from your open window eases you awake. You open your eyes, and it’s still dark outside. The constant mechanical noise has not stopped.

Boom Time

In the late 2000s, Appalachia hit a fracking boom. Oil and coal production were dwindling in the region, and the fossil fuel industry was turning its attention westward. But improvements in extraction techniques unlocked fracked gas reserves in Appalachia that were unreachable before. Through horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking, the industry used intense pressure to split underground formations and access the gas. In the mid-2000s, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act to exempt the fracked gas industry from the critical clean air and water legislation that would follow. With immunity from this obstructive legislation, the region’s production of fracked gas soared. Fossil fuel companies marketed fracked gas as “natural gas,” deceiving the public into thinking of it as a clean source of energy. In reality, the impacts of fracked gas on waterways, health, communities, and the planet are dire. During this fracking boom, the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) was conceived: a 303-mile, 42-inch fracked gas pipeline proposed to transport gas from the Appalachian Basin to markets in the eastern and southern US. The MVP was one of more than two

dozen pipelines proposed to carry gas from the shale fields to markets on the East Coast and abroad.

The Boom Busts

In the past five years, the fracking boom’s clamor has dampened. Renewable energy is getting cheaper and more accessible. Demand for fossil fuels is projected to decline during this decade. The health and environmental risks of fracking are increasingly exposed by studies and real-life experience. Since 2015, two hundred drillers have declared bankruptcy due to poor stock performance, corporate debt, and cheaper renewables. The pandemic caused oil and gas prices to fall, exacerbating this trend. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis found that the chief regulatory agency behind the pipeline—the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)—based its original decisions to greenlight the pipeline on the existence of commercial contracts to purchase gas rather than the need for new sources of gas. Energy analysts predict lower fracked gas demand than when the project was first proposed. Despite the glut of research pointing to the pipeline’s irrelevance and toxicity, Equitrans Midstream continued to shove the project through. They crawled up to the highest powers in the nation to manipulate the federal government into fast-tracking the pipeline.

Planet Boom

Transitioning from coal to fracked gas during a climate crisis caused by the overuse of finite resources is reprehensible. The technology exists to transition to renewable methods of getting our energy. The evidence behind a swift renewable transition is irrefutable. We need policy and action based on existing evidence, and we need it now. If the Mountain Valley Pipeline were to be completed and put into service, the estimated greenhouse gas emissions could be equivalent to 19 million passenger vehicles, or 23 coal plants, and account for at least 1 percent of all greenhouse gasses from the US energy sector. The MVP is a climate nightmare.

Interstate

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the mountain valley pipeline is a 303-mile, 42-inch fracked gas pipeline proposed to transport gas from the Appalachian Basin to markets in the eastern and southern US. The MVP was one of more than two dozen pipelines proposed to carry gas from the shale fields to markets on the East Coast and abroad. The failed Atlantic Coast Pipeline is shown here, recently defeated in 2020 after seven years of opposition.

Timeline october 2014

MVP first proposed.

october 23, 2015

MVP files an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) with a goal to complete the project by late 2018.

october-december 2017

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MVP receives key permits from FERC, the Virginia State Water Control Board, the Bureau of Land Management, and the US Army Corps of Engineers.

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2018

Construction begins. MVP moves its target completion date to the fourth quarter of 2019.

july 23, 2018

Becky Crabtree, a sixty-four-year-old grandmother, sets up a blockade on her own property in her 1978 Ford Pinto stilted on cinder blocks. A portion of her land was acquired by MVP through eminent domain, and the pipeline now runs through the site.

july 27, 2018

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals takes away MVP’s ability to go through federal land because of their failure to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, National Forest Management Act, and Mineral Leasing Act.

october 2, 2018

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals takes away a permit from MVP because the permit overlooked the West Virginian requirement that pipeline stream crossings be completed in seventy-two hours to limit harm to the environment.

september 5, 2018

The Yellow Finch Tree sit begins. This aerial occupation lasted 932 days and has been lauded by activists as the longest tree sit in US history. The blockade is said to have cost the MVP $213,000.

december 2018

The State of Virginia sues MVP for environmental violations. MVP ultimately pays Virginia $2.15 million.

october 11, 2019

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals takes away two key permits from MVP: the Biological Opinion and Incidental Take Statement.

october 15, 2019

FERC orders all work on MVP stop except stabilization and restoration activities, largely because MVP lost its Biological Opinion and Incidental Take Statement due to concerns about the five endangered species further threatened by pipeline construction.

june 2020

MVP says it will be completed by early 2021.

august 11, 2020

North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality denies MVP’s request for a water quality certification for its Southgate extension.

august 25, 2020

MVP applies for a two-year extension on the original permit it received from FERC, which expired in midOctober 2020.

september 4, 2020

MVP’s Biological Opinion and Incidental Take Statement is reinstated by federal regulators who claim the pipeline will not jeopardize the five endangered species that live in its path.

september 11, 2020

The US Army Corps of Engineers gives MVP back three permits after the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals took them away. This allows MVP to cross almost 1,000 streams and wetlands.

october 9, 2020

FERC extends MVP’s key original permit for four more years.

november and december 2022 march 24, 2021

june 2, 2021

february 21, 2022

The biggest backer of the MVP, NextEra Energy, writes off its investment in the pipeline, due to “a very low probability of pipeline completion.”

may 3, 2022

MVP revises completion to the end of 2023, increasing the project’s cost to $6.6 billion.

july 27, 2022

Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia hinges his support of President Biden’s historic climate bill on a future bill that would fast-track completion of the MVP (dubbed the “Dirty Deal” by MVP opposition). He strikes this deal with Biden and Democratic leadership.

september 8, 2022

Mass Indigenous and frontline-led protests take place in Washington, DC, in response to Manchin’s “Dirty Deal” with Democrats.

september 27, 2022

Senator Manchin withdraws his “Dirty Deal” from a must-pass bill in the Senate.

october 20, 2022

MVP voluntarily dismisses all proceedings in North Carolina.

eminent

domain

Manchin and Republicans try twice more to pass the “Dirty Deal.” Ultimately, they put it in the Fiscal Responsibility Act. Congress passes the bill, fasttracking the MVP.

june 8, 2023

Mass protest to Congress’ decision takes place in Washington, DC.

july 9, 2023

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Four activists set up a blockade by locking themselves to a four-by-eight-foot handmade wooden duck. A banner at the blockade read “Mama Duck Says ‘Water Is Everything.’”

january–june 2023

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The Yellow Finch tree sit officially ends after two activists are extracted from the site by law enforcement with the help of a hydraulic crane that was hauled in piece by piece and constructed on site.

Senator Manchin tries to pass his “Dirty Deal” again by attempting to get it into the must-pass National Defense Authority Act (NDAA). The “Dirty Deal” is dropped from the NDAA. Manchin then tries to add it as an amendment. This attempt is rejected.

FERC restarts MVP construction.

july 2023

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals stops construction until other key permits are reviewed. MVP asks the Supreme Court to restart construction. The Supreme Court restarts all MVP construction. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rules that Congress was stripped of jurisdiction to make a decision on the case through the Fiscal Responsibility Act.

december 2023

FERC granted MVP three more years to build its Southgate extension and rate increases to continue building the mainline, defying popular opposition from politicians, scientists, and community members. The Southgate extension still lacks the correct state-level permits to begin construction.

Oil Slick Watersheds: The Purchase of Appalachia and the Politics of Science Autumn Crowe with Sorrel Inman

Autumn Crowe is an environmental scientist and the program director at West Virginia Rivers Coalition. Her experience as an environmental scientist includes wetland delineations, environmental site assessments, and permitting.

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This interview was conducted via email during the fall of 2023.

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Sorrel Inman Autumn, what are some of the primary goals of WVRC, and what are some of the primary tools the organization uses to reach those goals? Autumn Crowe West Virginia Rivers Coalition was founded over thirty years ago by paddlers who were concerned about the water quality changes occurring in the rivers in which they were recreating. Today, we are the statewide voice advocating for clean water to make sure

our rivers are swimmable, fishable, and drinkable, both now and for future generations. We believe that water policy should be shaped by the best available science and all West Virginians have a right to clean water. Our work focuses on educating residents about policies and projects that impact their water resources and giving them a voice in the decision-making process. Our programs consist of public lands protection, drinking water safety, citizen monitoring, regulatory advisory, climate change education and advocacy, and regional watershed advocacy for the Chesapeake Bay and Ohio River watersheds. Inman When and how did WV Rivers join the opposition movement to the MVP? Were there key species, watersheds, or events that drew your organization into the discourse? Crowe When the pipeline boom first hit West Virginia in 2015, there were thirteen major pipelines proposed for this region. With this onslaught of pipeline construction, our concerns centered around whether all those pipelines were really necessary and what would be their cumulative impacts on the environment and surrounding communities. For all the proposed pipelines, we reviewed their plans and detailed our concerns for the sensitive resources in their path. In

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right Autumn Crowe stands in front of the Greenbrier River with her water quality monitoring tools, where she works with West Virginia Rivers Coalition, an organization dedicated to the protection of water for residents in the region (October 2023).

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the case of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, we pointed out that their route traversed steep mountainsides, sensitive trout streams, and treacherous karst terrain. It also crossed our most treasured major rivers, our infamous Peters Mountain, and the Appalachian Trail within the Jefferson National Forest. We knew that, if this project was to be built, it had to be done right to avoid damaging these state treasures. We engaged with the regulatory agencies, met with communities, and researched the best management practices for pipeline construction. We attended MVP’s open houses and started asking questions. Early on, our concerns and recommendations were dismissed. When asked what would happen if MVP construction impacted groundwater or damaged springs during construction, of which rural residents rely on for their drinking water, an MVP representative stated they would “make it right.” This response sent chills down my spine as it was the exact response of Exxon during the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which was never “made right.”

We knew our state’s regulatory agency was not equipped to provide adequate oversight on the thousands of streams in MVP’s path. So in partnership with Trout Unlimited, we developed a pipeline monitoring program and trained a thousand volunteers.

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The training focused on the best management practices to control erosion during pipeline construction, how to identify when those erosion controls fail, and how to document and report those failures. Over the years, our protocols have improved. We now have a smartphone app called WV Stream Watch that you can download to report pollution. We have submitted over 130 citizen complaints on MVP to the WV Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP). When a citizen complaint is submitted, it triggers the agency to do an inspection. Many of those inspections resulted in the WVDEP issuing the company a notice of violation. Where violations were not issued, the company was given a warning to improve its erosion control measures. These citizens play an active role in protecting our water resources from MVP’s sediment pollution. WVDEP has issued over fifty-six violations on MVP and over $500,000 in fines for violating water quality standards. Throughout these past eight years of trying to hold MVP accountable, we have watched MVP cut corners to ram their project through the regulatory process. We joined others in the region to file suit to ensure that they were held accountable to the environmental laws that every other company must follow. MVP was not complying with the Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act. Unfortunately, Congress granted their approval to bypass these laws and regulations. Now, without these laws to protect our resources, our waters and fisheries will pay the price of MVP’s negligence.

Inman It is difficult to summarize the ecological stakes of an infrastructure project as expansive as the MVP. The affected landscapes are diverse, and the inevitable contributions to climate change are expansive. That being said, do you feel comfortable attempting to convey how the development of this infrastructure will directly impact the ecosystems it passes through? Crowe When you examine a map of pipelines throughout the country, there is a reason this section of the Appalachian Mountains has a blank spot in it. The terrain is not conducive to pipeline construction. The Mountain Valley Pipeline traverses steep slopes with highly erodible soils and clean headwater streams containing sensitive species that rely on that cool, clear water. When the vegetation is removed from these steep slopes and the soils are disturbed, there is nothing that can hold that hillside in place when the rains come. The soils slip into the valleys and streams below. All that sediment entering otherwise clear streams has detrimental effects on the aquatic life that calls those streams home. The sediment smothers habitat and the spawning beds of trout that need the pebbly stream bottom to lay their eggs. The trout feed on benthic macroinvertebrates, the stream bugs that live on the bottom of the rocks. Those aquatic critters are also smothered by excess sediment that fills in the crevices between the rocks. The trout have no food to eat and no eggs to hatch, and they can’t breathe when the excess sediment in the water clogs their gills. These Appalachian Mountain streams once held abundant trout,

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but now their habitat is only found in patches with a few remaining strongholds. The majority of their habitat has been degraded by timbering, mining, and now pipeline development. MVP’s route crosses fifty-seven trout streams in West Virginia; some of them are crossed multiple times. In one of those watersheds, MVP crosses a trout stream and thirteen of its tributaries. Imagine the cumulative impact of MVP’s construction on the state’s most iconic fish species. Inman Are there any specific endangered or threatened species that are particularly vulnerable due to the pipeline’s construction? Crowe The candy darter, which was just listed as endangered in 2017, is extremely vulnerable, as it’s only found in a small fraction of its original range. This little fish

hybridizes with another similar species, the variegate darter, that was introduced into its habitat as a bait fish. The resulting offspring of the two species causes the candy darter to lose its vibrant candy stripes that inspired its name. Unfortunately, two of the remaining populations where it hasn’t hybridized are in the path of the MVP at the Gauley River and Stony Creek. The biggest threat to the candy darter beyond hybridization is sedimentation in its habitat. Candies need that pebbly stream bottom to thrive. When those pebbles become embedded in sediment, it threatens their survival for the same reasons as brook trout. Our legal challenge of the biological opinion issued by the Fish and Wildlife Service was related to their findings that the candy darter species would not be jeopardized. Between continued hybridization and the destruction of habitat for the remaining populations, we are concerned that the dazzling candy darter could become extinct.

above The candy darter, named for its brightly hued candy stripes, is native to the Gauley, Greenbrier, and New River watersheds in Virginia and West Virginia. It is significantly threatened by the MVP. While the US Fish and Wildlife Service issued a statement suggesting that the MVP would not jeopardize the candy darter, many within the scientific community have voiced strong disagreement and concern. Photo by Andrew Zimmerman

ecoregions map The MVP mainline traverses a variety of environments, including treacherous topographies, karst terrain, and many other sensitive habitats.

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Inman Thinking of impacts on a broader scale, how do you understand the MVP’s projected contributions to climate change? Crowe You will hear some people claim that natural gas is a bridge fuel to help wean our nation off the carbon-heavy coal resources. However, what they don’t say is that the “natural gas” is methane, which is a greenhouse gas that is eighty times more potent. We really need to consider our energy sources from cradle to grave and assess the impacts of the entire life cycle of that energy source. Methane has two important characteristics that affect its contribution to climate change. While it doesn’t stay in the atmosphere for long, it absorbs more energy while in the atmosphere. One molecule of methane

traps more heat than one molecule of carbon dioxide. Methane also forms ozone, which is a harmful air pollutant. While methane can originate from multiple sources—like cattle belching and organic matter decomposition—oil and gas operations are the largest source. The oil and gas industry is tasked with estimating its own emissions, much like the fox guarding the hen house, so methane emissions are severely underestimated because they use accounting calculations not actual methane monitoring. So it’s critical that we start regulating methane emissions to give ourselves the biggest bang for our buck to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change. Instead, in the most critical time we have to reduce greenhouse gasses and avoid the most detrimental impacts of climate change, we are building a methane pipeline to increase our reliance on this fuel. By building this pipeline, we are not only locking ourselves into more emissions from an outdated energy source; we are also going to see increased fracking in the gas fields contributing even more methane emissions, not to mention the air and water pollution that comes with it. It doesn’t make sense. Instead, we should be investing in real solutions to combat the climate crisis. I just recently installed solar panels on my home. In addition to having a $5 electricity bill, I produce more energy than I need and feed it back into the grid.

Inman You also mentioned that the federal government bypassed the

Crowe When you have a large corporation that stands to make a lot of money off this project, they can use that money to sway decisions in their favor. In the case of MVP, money and power trumped science and the rule of law. Inman It’s clear that the MVP project is controversial and has faced significant opposition. Can you provide an overview of the legal challenges or court cases that have been brought against the MVP and what outcomes or implications have arisen from these legal actions? Crowe MVP had to obtain multiple permits before they could begin construction. They had to first receive their certificate of need from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Then they also needed a permit to disturb water resources from the Army Corps of Engineers. That Clean Water Act Section 404 permit also required individual Clean Water Act Section 401 permits from both West Virginia and Virginia to certify that the project could meet water quality

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Crowe Environmental regulations were put in place to protect our environment and health. These regulations are meaningless, though, if they are not enforced. Our regulatory agencies are staffed with some of the best scientists who are in that occupation because they truly care about our resources and want to protect them. Unfortunately, when politics gets in the way of science, bad decisions are usually the result. At WV Rivers, we urge politicians and regulatory agencies to consider the best available science when making decisions that impact our water resources. In the case of the MVP, they weren’t using all the data available and the best science. Their runoff models severely underestimated sedimentation impacts from construction. The USFWS therefore was lacking critical information when they concluded that the project would not jeopardize the endangered candy darter.

Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act in June 2023 in order to fast-track the MVP. This decision seems to have occurred behind closed doors during the debt-ceiling negotiation between Joe Biden, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), and former speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). How are the USFWS opinion and those congressional decisions related?

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Inman Many people seem to be losing faith in our regulatory agencies in the wake of many questionable environmental decisions in recent months and years. In March 2023, the US Fish and Wildlife Service issued an opinion stating that the MVP was unlikely to affect any federally endangered species. There seems to be a consensus among regional scientists that this opinion is misleading at best and fraught with corruption at worst. What was your reaction to the USFWS opinion?

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opposite page A sign reading “We Won’t Back Down” hangs from one of the two tree-sits at Yellow Finch Camp, which prevented construction along some of the steepest terrain of the route for over two years.

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Inman During this age of misinformation, as we observe the billionaire class purchase scientific opinions and legislative decisions in order to protect their profit margins, many find it difficult to know where to go for dependable information. The processes that lead to the production of these documents and decisions often seem shadowy and convoluted, and mainstream media has failed to provide meaningful coverage clarifying how these things take shape. How do you and WVRC navigate and counteract misinformation surrounding the MVP and environmental issues in general, and are there any recommended resources you might point to for community reporting and dependable scientific analysis as it pertains to the MVP?

Crowe Our goal at WV Rivers is to provide factual information based on sound science. We pride ourselves on being truth tellers and back that truth up with facts so that we can build trust with the public, agency representatives, and politicians. In an age when we have so much information at our fingertips, it’s so important to make sure the source of that information is accurate. We live in the information age; however, the information out there isn’t always factual. One example is the percent completion of the MVP. The media was continuously reporting that the MVP was 90 percent complete, and so it wasn’t a big deal to complete the project. However, the MVP’s own status reports showed that only 55 percent of the route was in final restoration. The steepest terrain and the most sensitive water bodies were still remaining. So that information was very misleading and didn’t tell the whole story. Our in-state newspaper, the Charleston Gazette-Mail, and other national news like PBS and NPR provide factual reporting on the MVP.

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standards. Additionally, MVP was disturbing habitat for multiple threatened and endangered species, so they had to get a biological opinion from the Fish and Wildlife Service and, with that, an incidental take permit if the project would harm endangered species. Finally, because the route crossed public lands, MVP had to get a special-use permit from the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. From the beginning, MVP tried to cut corners to push their project through without meeting the requirements of those individual permits. Because they didn’t do their due diligence from the start, all their permits were thrown out by the courts, sending them back to the drawing board to do it right to comply with environmental laws.

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Inman As I understand it, WV Rivers has used science-based and community-driven data to work toward developing policy solutions for stopping the MVP. We have seen corporations thwart these solutions by various means time and again in recent years, leaving many exasperated with their hands in the air. From your perspective as a practitioner in the world of conservation, what are the most effective ways for average citizens to participate in holding these regulatory bodies to account in the face of multifarious antidemocratic measures?

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Crowe We work very closely with the WVDEP on oversight of the MVP. We know DEP inspectors can’t possibly cover the entire 200 miles in WV at once, so we’ve trained a thousand citizens to identify and report potential violations and erosion control deficiencies. We developed a smartphone app, WV Stream Watch, for citizens to report potential pollution from MVP. We get an email every time a photo is submitted through the app. If it’s a significant issue, we forward that photo along to the environmental enforcement department so they can send out inspectors to resolve the problem. Average citizens are playing a proactive role in ensuring that MVP is held accountable for damaging our water resources. Inman The contours of this conversation relate to a broader problem we encounter regularly in environmental defense movements. Many of us wish that scientific observations could unfold in a dispassionate vacuum of objectivity—this simply is not the case. From the efficacy of vaccines, to the shape of the earth, to the effects of pipelines and clearcutting, it has become a regular occurrence for consensus science to be undermined in our region, in the US, and throughout the world. How would you characterize the relationship between science and politics in 2023? Crowe Science is always changing as new information becomes available. It doesn’t mean that the previous science was wrong, just that the outcome is different than we thought. For example, previously, climate change was referred to as global warming. Now, we know that climate change is more than just warming; it’s causing extreme weather events. So the fact that a politician would bring a snowball onto the Senate floor to prove that climate change doesn’t exist shows that they don’t understand the science behind climate change. Our goal at WV Rivers is to bring science into policy-making so that our politicians can make informed decisions. Inman Given the complexity of the MVP’s environmental and regulatory issues, could you explain how grassroots organizations like WVRC collaborate with larger environmental advocacy groups, governmental agencies, and legal entities to address these challenges comprehensively? Crowe With such a large project impacting so many watersheds across the entire region, we need an entire village of experts to hold the company accountable to environmental laws and hold agencies accountable for enforcing those laws. Three hundred miles of construction crosses multiple states and jurisdictions. We have an army of water protectors and a team of experts to watch over our rivers and streams in their path of destruction. A project of this

Crowe Citizen monitors are responsible for approximately half the violations that MVP has accrued. Where violations weren’t issued, inspections always occurred, and if inspectors saw deficiencies that didn’t quite rise to the level of a violation, they would issue a warning for MVP to improve their erosion controls. So in all cases, our volunteers are helping to identify problems or correct problems before they get worse.

Crowe The WV Stream Watch App is hosted on a Survey123 platform. You download Survey123 then download the Stream Watch survey form. The app lets you upload a photo and select a category for the type of pollution, and it automatically geolocates your position. We get an email every time a photo is submitted that directs us to a map showing where the incident occurred. It’s been really helpful in locating problem areas. Prior to the app, we would get submissions via email and have to do detective work to pinpoint the location if GPS coordinates were not provided. The citizen monitoring program has been instrumental in protecting our rivers and streams by reporting potential pollution. The citizen complaints that have been submitted are helping to hold MVP and other companies accountable to their permit requirements. With so many eyes on the ground, they bolster DEP’s inspections by identifying problem areas that are in need of attention. Citizens are our streams’ first line of defense. They report pollution before it gets worse and prevent pollution from occurring.

do citizen science Download the WV Stream Watch smartphone app to report pollution.

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Inman In your work with WV Rivers, you’ve highlighted the importance of community involvement and citizen monitoring. Can you share some success stories or specific examples of how local residents have made a meaningful impact in protecting their water resources and holding MVP accountable?

Inman Autumn, you mentioned the WV Stream Watch smartphone app that allows citizens to report pollution. Can you provide more details about how this app works and how citizen science and education has been instrumental in your organization’s efforts to monitor and address environmental issues related to the MVP and other projects?

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scale needs multiple approvals from different agencies, so we’ve combined resources so that there’s an expert for each permit or issue that the MVP impacts. Everything from pipeline safety, endangered species, Clean Water Act, and best management practices to stream hydrology. No one can be an expert in everything, so we really rely on each other for our different areas of expertise.

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Inman Finally, in your experience, how can concerned citizens best engage with their elected officials and policymakers to influence decisions related to environmental issues like the MVP? What strategies have proven effective in advocating for responsible environmental policies?

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Crowe We encourage citizens to develop a relationship with their elected officials and find common ground. Contact them and set up a meeting to share what’s important to you. Whatever their political affiliation, we may not always agree with each decision they make. However, we can agree on some common values. We always try to find that common ground. Most of our elected officials understand the values that West Virginians hold. We love our rivers and our public lands. We help our neighbors if their car gets stuck in a ditch. We love bragging about how big our tomatoes grow. When you can find that common ground and connect on a more personal level, instead of red or blue, you see that we are all humans trying to raise our families and build healthy communities. We’ve seen that play out during our legislative sessions. When we rally around a common value of clean water, we can pass really effective environmental policies like the Source Water Protection Act and, more recently, the PFAS Protection Act. Water unites us, and that’s what we always like to remember. right People rally across from a mass action stopping work along the Mountain Valley Pipeline route in Elliston, Virginia (August 2021).

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pictured An elder known as Feline stands handcuffed behind a police vehicle after being extracted from her rocking chair, which was locked on to a disabled vehicle to block traffic on a primary construction road in Bent Mountain, Virginia (June 2022).

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The Proposed Desecration of Monacan and Occaneechi Land: Opposing the Gateway Extension

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Crystal Cavalier-Keck with Caitlin Myers

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Crystal Cavalier-Keck originally cofounded the nonprofit organization 7 Directions of Service (7DS) with her husband, Jason Crazy Bear Keck, in order to provide culture and youth programs on her ancestral Occaneechi-Saponi lands in the rural Piedmont region of North Carolina. After learning that the proposed route of the Mountain Valley Pipeline would cross their land, the two dedicated themselves and their organization to opposing the pipeline, transforming 7DS into what they describe as “a regional grassroots mobilization platform.” Beyond its work related to MVP, 7DS focuses on protecting traditional pre-United States treaty areas of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia; educating Indigenous community members, tribes, surrounding communities and youth on current environmental issues; developing next-generation leaders of the environmental movement; promoting activism within Indigenous communities; and empowering Indigenous community members to effect change. Cavalier-Keck also attended COP28 in Dubai as part of a 28-member delegation from the Indigenous Environmental Network. This interview was conducted in-person in fall of 2023, prior to the December 2023 FERC ruling, which granted MVP three more years to build its Southgate extension.

Caitlin Myers Crystal, thank you so much for sitting down with me. I’d love to hear what brought you into the opposition movement to the MVP and a little bit of your personal story. Crystal Cavalier-Keck I got involved with the MVP about six years ago. I was a tribal council woman for my tribe, the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation. At that time, someone asked if I had heard about

the MVP coming through the region. At the time, I hadn’t heard about it. When I googled it, I found one article that said there was a pipeline slated to come through. It was going to come through Southwest Virginia and then turn across the border into Rockingham County, North Carolina, making its way diagonally into Alamance County, ending six miles from where we live. At that time, the only pipelines I knew about were the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and the Keystone Pipeline (KXL). I was learning about man camps and how these pipelines affect the economy.

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I immediately realized that I didn’t want that in our community. It seemed dangerous, and I wanted to let people know. I started by calling the Sierra Club: “Okay, you guys have to do something. There is a pipeline, fight it!” They quickly let me know that it doesn’t quite work like that, leaving me wondering how it does actually work and how to get involved. I wrote a letter to my local paper. In it, I wrote about how the destruction of earth leads to the extinction of animals, which also affects the human population. Soon after that, I began working with Caroline Ansley from the Sierra Club. She encouraged me to speak to the city council of Mebane, North Carolina, as well as the county commissioners. At that time, these government officials clearly stated that this pipeline was unnecessary and that they would not support it. We also worked with the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), who wrote a letter saying that there is no need for the pipeline. Nevertheless, they continued moving forward with the 401 water quality certification. In our community, we also have unmarked burial mounds. Historically, farmers and developers destroyed many of the mounds, or moved the rocks, or dug up the bones. There are several remaining mounds, though, where the pipeline is slated to cross. Archaeologists had identified the area as a site of significant concern. If sufficient due diligence was neglected, the developers could unwittingly destroy a mound. The MVP leadership pays their own archaeologists to come

out here and call the mounds “rock piles,” when they are actually burial mounds. They are destroying pieces of history. Fast forward a couple of years—I narrowed my focus on the Southgate extension and wasn’t really fighting the mainline. We were building on the cancellation of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP). During the COVID lockdown, we did a water walk

above Dr. Crystal Cavalier-Keck, member of the Occaneeche Band of the Saponi Nation and director of grassroots environmental justice organization 7 Directions of Service, in the neighborhood of her Alamance County, North Carolina, home (October 2023).

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watershed Refers to an area of land that drains stormwater into a common body of water by way of interconnected streams, tributaries, groundwater, and rivers. It is sometimes called a drainage basin.

and had several rallies. We worked to bring people together online, asking them to write comments, call, write emails, and send letters to let the people in power know the opinions of community members. We had an overwhelming response. Roughly 12,000 people wrote comments to the North Carolina DEQ demanding that they deny the 401 water quality permit needed for approval of the Southgate extension of the MVP. At that point, the DEQ did indeed deny the water quality permit. Of course, the MVP appealed this decision. It was in the appeals court for a few months, ultimately kicking it back to DEQ. At this point, it started to become more heated politically, because Michael Regan—former secretary of the North Carolina DEQ— was appointed to the EPA. And so they had to find a new secretary for the DEQ. The primary candidate for the position had made it clear that she would deny the permit, and she faced fierce opposition. She ultimately took the office and denied the water quality permit again. At this point, the Southgate discussion seemed to slow down and fizzle out. Prior to this, the government had sent letters to people to claim their land. Once the water quality permit was finally denied, they sent a new message to those people stating that they were going to release their land holds. So, it seemed as though the MVP would be unsuccessful—until August of last year when the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) came about. During the negotiation of this bill, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) said he would not sign onto the IRA unless the federal government approved the MVP. At first, many larger environmental organizations claimed that the IRA was a positive step. I disagreed, though, because it gutted the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and other important protections. We worked to explain this to other folks

and put together a rally in three weeks. Our popular opposition shut Joe Manchin’s deal down four or five times. Then he ultimately came back again to have the MVP written into the debt ceiling bill that passed in June. In order to win, they just change the rules as we’re playing. Fortunately, it didn’t affect the MVP Southgate. If we can stop the MVP Southgate, the pipeline cannot extend beyond a certain point. That’s what we’re trying to do now—working to stop it from extending to Louisiana or any other ports. The reality is that the people in the community will not use the gas from this pipeline. It’s not benefiting us. Their objective is to port it off and make millions of dollars. Throughout this process, we learned how politicians work. We learned how they come up with great marketing schemes and tell people that they’re going to bring jobs. But— they are not really bringing jobs. The jobs that do come are temporary, and when they end, you go back to what you did before the pipeline. Now, though, you have a pipeline coming through that’s causing cancer and poisoning families, and the only people being paid are the politicians. So that’s how we got started with the pipeline. Myers With rivers like the New River, I think about how connected North Carolina is to these other places in our region. Cavalier-Keck Yes! The watershed in Roanoke—and Virginia and West Virginia more broadly—flows southward into these mountains. So whether the sediment, chemicals, and pollution are going into the New River, or the Roanoke River, it is coming to North Carolina. Whatever they put in the water is going to affect us eventually. Everything is in relation.

Appalachian Trail MVP mainline Southgate extension

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watershed map The MVP route crosses twelve major watersheds. Many watersheds will be affected by the construction of the MVP due to industrial disturbance, increased sedimentation of streams, and risk of pollution.

above Indigenous leaders grieve in front of the White House at a rally held in Washington DC after the Mountain Valley Pipeline was leveraged by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin during debt ceiling negotiations in June of 2023.

Myers Jumping off that point, many of us know the history of land and resource theft in this region. I’d love to hear that story from your perspective. How does this pipeline fit with that history and the groundwork that has been laid? Cavalier-Keck The pipeline further erases Indigenous people because its construction does not respect the treaty rights of Indigenous people. This is compounded by the fact that they prey on tribes who either don’t have access to good education, or they prey on tribal leaders who have lost their

way. The minds of these wayward leaders are colonized, and they want the money. The tribes are not even receiving that much money. It’s not like they are getting a million dollars every year, residual income, or anything like that. They’re not honoring our treaty rights. The state of Virginia didn’t recognize the Indigenous people of their state for the longest time. If you read some of the historical letters, the state claimed the Indigenous people all died out. These people were finally recognized in 2017, but the state continues to refuse to respect the treaty. The corporations simply ignore tribal sovereignty. Rather than seeking consent from the community, they will talk to one person, like a wayward

leader, and use their voice to signal consent. Consultation is not consent. I think all communities deserve free prior informed consent. People should have a right to determine what goes through their community.

Myers What sweetens the deal? Is there some kind of money kickback? Cavalier-Keck Some tribes, when they receive a letter from the government, think, “Oh, the federal government is acknowledging me, because they sent me a letter.” That is not how that works. They’re not acknowledging the tribe. If they were, they would acknowledge their own violation of the treaties. Some people are not savvy to how politics work at such a high level. They think they have made it when an organization or a company consults with them. They think they are playing in the big leagues—when really, they are just small fish in a big sea.

Myers I know in your work you study the social effects of pipelines on Indigenous people. Could you talk a little bit about that? Cavalier-Keck There is an enormous amount of historical trauma that has already happened here, whether it was slavery, erasure, or genocide. When it comes to money, people think a million dollars is a lot, but it is not really a lot of money once you consider how much houses and cars cost. The community members see these figures offered for their land and become money drunk. We should not be swayed by that. Our lives are more important than monetary value.

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Cavalier-Keck So it would affect my tribe—the Saponi, the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi. For now, the immediate threat stops there. If it continues to push down the river, it would affect the Lumbees. If they continue through South Carolina, there are many more tribes who would be affected. For instance, if they go east to port, they could affect the Waccamaw Siouan. It really depends on how they port it out, so they just send out these blanket letters to tribes. Sometimes tribes don’t think it will affect them, but they are not thinking far enough into the future.

Cavalier-Keck Here on the East Coast is very different. There are only a couple of reservations that were recognized by the government in the 1700s, and they have reservation land that was given to them. Most of our tribes, though, have purchased their own land. They are still subject to state, county, and property tax. These tribes are often formed as a 501c3. That’s how they operate, so most people don’t treat them as sovereign. If the state makes a rule, the tribe still has to abide by that law and are subject to the authority of the county police. That is not sovereignty. They’re not respecting the tribe’s authority. It has so much to do with how tribes hold themselves. If the people of a tribe organize and hold themselves as a sovereign body, I think it would be easier. When lawyers show up using scary language, though, it scares people. That’s what they want to do. They want to scare people.

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Myers If the pipeline were to go through North Carolina, which tribes would it affect?

Myers Are a lot of those folks sovereign nations with their own land?

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pictured Community members look on past the police barrier at a direct action held along Doe Creek in Giles County, Virginia, in May of 2021.

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above Community members gather to celebrate and protest the violent arrests of ground support in previous weeks at Yellow Finch Camp in Elliston, Virginia (2019).

Cavalier-Keck There are definitely people who are sold on the idea. But again, really, the pipeline is only bringing temporary construction jobs to the community. Sometimes they even bring those workers here from other organizations outside of the region. So you may have workers coming into the community with different values— they may be patriarchal and devalue women, for instance. Especially with Enbridge. I’ve heard of a couple of pipeline workers that got drunk on a payday and went out flirting with women and trying to make moves on them. When they didn’t get their way, they made up stories about the women and called the local police, getting the woman in trouble. We also see a lot of human trafficking— Enbridge has been caught twice in relation to human trafficking. We’ve seen people living

Myers It sounds like the way they treat women parallels the way they are treating the earth—as if they are both just something to be turned into dirt. Much of our rhetoric around these fights are often human-centered, but I know you are also involved in advocating for the rights of nature. I am curious about your organization, 7 Directions of Service, and I would love to hear more about how the rights of nature relate to this issue.

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Myers I know you have also written about the interactions of pipeline workers with Indigenous people. I know people are sold an idea of what the pipeline will do for the economy. What does it actually do?

in RV parks or hotel campsites bring women back and treat them like dirt. Everybody is born from a woman, right? We should treat women as sacred beings, but they treat them like trash. It is so unfortunate.

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Waking up to this harsh reality has been a hard lesson for me to learn. When I look at other people, I think they are going to act like me. The reality is, though, that they have not been raised the same way or in the same community as I have, or they have had such a hard life that they feel like they have to swindle people. So we try to talk to people every day in order to help them understand that you have to make a change before humankind is erased by climate change. We’re trying to teach all of these things, and it is difficult. It is so difficult. But we have hope.

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Why can’t nature also sue as a person?

Cavalier-Keck If we had the legal rights of nature in place before we started to fight the pipeline, we could have sued the pipeline. Rights of nature gives nature a kind of personhood status, at which point nature would have the right to sue these corporations. Citizens United gave corporations personhood status, so they can sue people. Why can’t nature also sue as a person? We are constantly violating nature—whether we’re felling trees or making new high-rise developments. We get mad at the animals who are coming into our homes, but we are actually the ones who came into their home. People have trouble understanding that, because they often don’t think of themselves as part of nature. But—we are! We are born into water. When we die, we return to the earth. Whether someone is cremated, or buried in the ground or at sea, they are still part of the ecosystem. People don’t look at themselves as part of nature. When we talk about the rights of nature, we have to first see ourselves as part of nature. We also have to reject the reductive image of the human as a consumer. We started the Rights of Nature campaign because the Haw River in North Carolina is so polluted—1,4-dioxane, PFAS, and GenX are all present in the Haw River. This is a result of a DuPont plant where they make things like teflon. These chemicals are in everything, like your wastewater, your aquifers, and even your city water. As I learned about this, it all clicked that we are eating and drinking these chemicals, and it is killing us. We see everything as a relative with a spirit, even water, trees, the mountains, and rocks. Everything has a purpose. When we take it for granted, those things are gone. We can’t get them back. This is the foundation of 7 Directions of Service. My husband and I work to promote Indigenous spiritual

principles. The seven directions are: women, men, children, elders, Grandmother Earth, Grandfather Sky, and the direction within. We seek to incorporate those principles into all of our work. Myers That ties into the reality that some of these struggles function as property rights movements. We’re talking to people about land that they own, which is already a complicated topic. To own land is a major privilege in this world, even if those folks may not have wealth. How do you go into a movement that could be construed as a property rights movement and engage with it on the level of Indigenous rights and rights of nature? Cavalier-Keck Movements take all kinds of people. I know there are people who wouldn’t be in this fight if their property was not being affected. They couldn’t care less about what is happening to their neighbor down the street. Nevertheless, we know it takes all kinds. So we have property rights people in the movement. We have people who care about the environment in the movement and people who are not affected at all. Everyone is welcome. Everybody has a say in this fight. It is important that we hear everyone’s voice who is part of this. We can’t harp on the past of land that has been stolen, though it is important to never forget. I say everybody has a place in the movement. We have to come together. We have to have a common ground.

below A wide coalition of environmental and climate grassroots groups gathered in Washington DC to protest the Mountain Valley Pipeline and the proposed Southgate extension route in July of 2022.

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above Community members rally next to an Appalachians Against Pipelines lockdown action along the route of the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Giles County, Virginia, in May of 2021.

Myers What does that dynamic mean for the future that you are fighting for? If we were to defeat all these pipelines and close all the coal mines, what does that utopia look like? Cavalier-Keck As we advance as a society—whether it is Americans, Europeans, Asians, or whatever part of the world a person is in—whenever we advance, we’re always going to be fighting someone who wants to do something they believe is better.

It is always at the expense of the people. We have to work together as a society in order to function. And there’s just certain things, laws or rules of nature, that we’re going to have to abide by. That teaching begins at home with our youth. My hope for the future is that we will no longer need this nonprofit and we can just go back to teaching stickball. That’s how my husband and I started. We were teaching people how to play lacrosse, or eastern woodlands stickball. Once the pipeline threatened to come through, we had to turn our wheels to fight it.

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Myers Just to be clear, there was a recent win for the Rights of Nature campaign in Ecuador, correct?

Cavalier-Keck Many countries, like Ecuador and Australia, have laws on books for rights of nature. Here in the United States, there are only a few towns and cities. In North Carolina, we were able to have House Bill 795 introduced into the general assembly, which is a huge win. It hasn’t gone anywhere, but it has given us a chance to educate the people of North Carolina about the Haw River and why we need to protect it. If we can gain protected status for the Haw River by using the rights of nature, then we can protect other rivers this way. Big agriculture and big pharma are the main players we are opposing.

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76 above Community members from Union Hill, Virginia, turn their backs in protest of the Virginia State Air Pollution Control Board in Richmond, Virginia, as they ruled in favor of passing permits for the nowcancelled Atlantic Coast Pipeline (January 2019).

Myers If those are the players you’re opposing, who are the players that you have to engage with? And how do you approach them? Cavalier-Keck When I’m working outside of my community, I try to find the community organizers or the community leaders there. I never want to go to a community and tell them what I think they need. I want them to tell me what they need from me. Myers Thinking about the future and how we envision whatever is coming next, do you think degrowth is a viable option?

Cavalier-Keck I think people need to have honest conversations about alternative ways to live and ignore the politics that are brought into the conversation. These political leaders are paid millions of dollars by special interest groups and lobbyists. We have to bring it back down to how it affects us on a local level. So, a little bit of degrowth and a little bit of honesty will be key components in this movement. Do we remember where we came from? Do we remember the struggles of our grandparents? The further we get away from the struggle of our parents or grandparents, the more desensitized we become. I look at it like this: My great great great grandparents had land. They worked so hard to get the land. The land had been in my family for over 300 years. And then my mom and my aunt left, and then they ended

Cavalier-Keck We would love for people to reach out to us and come to our events. In September, we had a totem pole journey come through and stop in Haw River at Red Slide Park. We did a call out to all faiths and all people–anybody who wanted to show up,

whether they were spiritual or not. We prayed with the totem pole for the water—that we can defeat the pipeline but also for the healing of the river. Look out for more opportunities to be involved in. We are on this education campaign for the rights of nature. Nature can speak. If you are fortunate enough and connected, you can hear what nature is saying. But if you are turned off to that, you cannot hear it. We’re here to help interpret nature’s voice.

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Myers Going forward, how can people show solidarity with the Haw River and the folks in your part of North Carolina?

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up selling the property. They gave away 300 years of our ancestors working hard to keep that land. We’re not getting any more land. When you give it away or sell it, you are selling a piece of your legacy. People have got to understand that money is not everything. All money is not good money.

We are on this education campaign for the rights of nature. Nature can speak. If you are fortunate enough and connected, you can hear what nature is saying. But if you are turned off to that, you cannot hear it. We’re here to help interpret nature’s voice.

Sacrificial Bodies in the Sacrifice Zone Bramble with Ashton Baker

Bramble is an environmental activist based in Appalachia.

Ashton Baker To start, could you tell me about the occupation itself? Your physical predicament—how long did it last? Did you take notes, or have any way to document your journey during that time?

Bramble I was on the slope of Poor Mountain in Virginia. It is one of the bigger mountains that the pipeline crosses—it has one of the steepest grades. There was concrete buried in the ground with a lock box that I could put my arm into. Folks let the MVP workers know that I was down there, and the work was stopped on that whole side of the mountain.

below Bramble lays beneath a banner that reads “No Prisons No Pipelines,” locked to what’s known as a “sleeping dragon” on Poor Mountain, one of the steepest sections of the mainline. This image has been enhanced with AI to improve the photo quality for print. Original image credit: Appalachians Against Pipelines

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If anything happened to a machine, like if it flipped, it could fall towards me. So, all the machines were stopped and shut off for three days. While we were up there, I had a phone, so I was able to take pictures and send messages. I generally got to have a beautiful time on the mountain for a couple of days until they extracted me, which was a much less fun day. They finally did extract me with jackhammers and grinders and then took me up the mountain to arrest me.

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Baker Was there a conversation with the police that occurred before they started to extract you? Bramble Yes. They gave me an opportunity to leave, and I chose not to. They generally were fairly polite but also very mad at me because it was a hard day for them. They had to hike up and down this mountain. They were annoyed and frustrated at the steepness of the grade, which really makes you also wonder why they’re building a pipeline through that area. Ash Did they tell you on what grounds you were being arrested? Bramble They charged me with obstruction and trespass. They claimed that I was trespassing and that I was obstructing MVP’s right of way. Considering this is all stolen land and there shouldn’t be a pipeline built in the first place, it’s definitely hard to hear them making these wild claims. But that is the legal system that we have. Baker We’ve seen the state charge the ecological activists in Atlanta with domestic terrorism, and now they are using RICO

to expand the scope of their legal action. Do you think similar charges will be used against MVP activists? Is that something that you are afraid will happen if people continue to battle with pipeline construction? Bramble That’s a great question. I think because the campaign against the MVP is a smaller campaign, a lot of people don’t realize that it’s been going on since before the Stop Cop City fight started, and before the Line Three fight started in so-called Minnesota. The campaign against the MVP has been going on a very long time, and many of us have been doing this for a very long time. We haven’t seen the same sort of repression as folks have experienced in opposition to Cop City. People have been charged with threats of domestic terrorism here, and people have been held in jail for months here in this campaign. I think it depends on the county, the day, the person, their experience. This pipeline route is much longer than one county or one particular spot, and, because it’s been going on so long, we’ve had wildly different repercussions for people when they take action. It seems to depend on the specifics of each situation. When the cops are doing shit like that in Atlanta, and when they hold me in jail without bail for seven days, what they’re trying to do is scare us. It means that what we’re doing is working. That’s really important to remember. I don’t want people to be afraid even though the repression around Stop Cop City is really wild and terrible. It means that people are fighting this and it’s working, and they’re scared. They’re trying to hold that back. They are using different methods to try to hold the resistance back here, but their goal is the same.

Baker That’s an amazing feeling, to know your efforts are working. But I can imagine that in the moment when you’re being held for seven days without bail, there’s a lot of anger and frustration at the injustice of it all. What were the thoughts and feelings that emerged when you were being held, without bail, after your arrest? What were the sort of things that you were thinking about?

Bramble Since the beginning of colonization, Appalachia has consistently been a place where people who are richer, whiter, and more powerful have been able to fuck over the communities around them. Since committing genocide against native folks, the rich and powerful continued on with coal mining and extractive industry, and then the opioid epidemic—it’s all tangled together in this really terrible history. In relation to that history, there is also an inspiring history of resistance in this region, to which I feel deeply connected. This is not going to be the only fight that we have in this region. It hasn’t been, you know. It’s coming from a long line of fights that have happened, from union workers and one of the biggest labor uprisings in the country, at the Battle of Blair Mountain. People have been fighting in this region for years to have better living and working conditions, while the people in DC live up to the classic stereotype by fucking us over time and time again.

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Baker To build on a thought that you just brought up, Appalachia has been referred to as a “sacrifice zone.” What does that mean to you, as the government is choosing to build this pipeline across our region, and also as someone who chose to sacrifice your body for the land?

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Bramble I have spent a lot of time being very angry at this pipeline for many years. What I often do with that anger is work harder. I know that we are trying to build a better world, and that means we’re going to have to put in a lot of work. When I was held in jail, I used that motivation to put forward an effort to continue to organize and talk to people in jail and to offer emotional support for people who are going through a much tougher time than I am. I have strong outside support, and I knew my friends would be able to pay bail once it was set, as long as it wasn’t outrageous. Many people don’t have that. There are several connected struggles around abolition of the pipeline and extraction infrastructure. With these various related struggles, you can see the roots tangled up in Appalachia—for instance, with the jails and prisons built on top of mountaintop removal sites. The issues are interconnected. So, I was grateful at the very least that I got to spend time working with people on the inside. At the very least, I was able to help with the commissary, making calls for them and ensuring they all have the bail funds number. These are some of the things I’m able to do even while I’m in a really shitty situation. Jail sucks, and it’s meant to isolate you and make you feel alone—and it is really good at doing that. At the very least, though, there are other people in there who are experiencing the same thing, who are able to also help me. I wasn’t able to get commissary for the first week just because it didn’t come in time. So, they would give me shampoo and things like that, and people were really kind. I’m very grateful for all of them doing that.

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That’s not to say there are not many coal barons that live here, and people who work security, and the cops and the jails. There are people who fuck us over right here in this region, too. The ultimate fuck-over, though, is from DC. They write [Appalachia] off time and time again. It’s incredibly maddening that people think Appalachians don’t deserve clean water or aren’t going to even know if people are fucking them over because people in Appalachia are uneducated and poor—because everyone here knows. We all know when we’re being fucked over. It’s not a secret.

opposite page ”Nutty” occupies an aerial monopod blockade on Peters Mountain, Virginia, stopping construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (2018).

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Bramble When I talk about direct action in this region, I frequently reference the book Dixie Be Damned by Neal Shirly and Saralee Stafford. It is a great book about Appalachia and the South in general. The book is about moments of resistance throughout our history, and it’s such an incredible history. I am proud to be a part of that. I think direct action in this region is important because electoral politics have been unable to produce a leader who cares about this region enough to truly stand up against these massive corporations. Many people in this area don’t even participate in electoral politics for this reason. People are used to feeling like no one cares about us, which has led to the mindset of, “We take matters into our own hands around here.” That mindset can go one of two ways. Some choose the way of militias and scary white supremacy shit. Others of us choose to protect our own, who renounce calling the cops, and who deal with our own shit within our communities. That includes opposing extraction and the jail system. There are many incredible mutual aid projects around substances that work to make sure people have the support they need when they’re dealing with addiction. I think that is what’s going to actually make a difference, in this region and everywhere. I don’t want to have to wait for the government or someone else to do something. We don’t have time, and also, they’re not going to. It’s not the system we have set up. What we need is a different way to do things. Direct action—along with communities working to nourish our collective well-being—is how we’re going to actually make a difference.

Bramble Neither capitalism nor the US government were designed to protect people or help people. Both were, in fact, continuations of a violent history. That history is the main source of my personal determination to do something. I’m involved in the fight against this pipeline because it is where I’m living right now. It’s a region I really care about, and I live in community with people here who I really care about. So, I want to fight where I am, and this is where I’m at right now. So, I’m going to fight against this pipeline. I think that is what it is going to take for us to change things—people consistently trying to do something, whether that’s mutual aid, direct action, community organizing, or whatever it is. We need more people who are actually doing things, rather than spectators who say, “Oh, I’m so inspired,” but don’t actually do anything. It can be hard to figure out what to do. I remember being 20. I wanted to do something but wasn’t sure where to go or what to do. With that in mind, I think people who are in the movement need to create ways for people to get involved. Then, we need the people who get involved to actually stay involved. We don’t have enough people right now to do all the things that we want to do, and we need more people who want to stay and want to keep fighting.

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Baker We also have people like JD Vance who thinks venture capitalism will save Appalachia. Could you tell me when addressing these systemic issues in our region, why direct action and resistance are a necessary component of political opposition?

Baker Do you think the desire to cut out the need for waiting on someone to fix the problem is a source of determination in taking action? How do you think others can find the courage or desire to get involved and take action for the causes they care about?

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People are used to feeling like no one cares about us, which has led to the mindset of, “We take matters into our own hands around here.”

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above Local grassroots organizers show visitors the tree-felling along the route at the former site of Yellow Finch Camp. Downed trees were cut immediately following the extraction of two tree-sitters and left for over a year while legal court battles prevented work from continuing (June 2022).

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Bramble The real answer is that my sense of the future varies widely day by day. There are some times when an action happens and I experience moments of peace. When there are no machines and it’s quiet, it feels so beautiful—like the eye of the storm. I feel gratitude for the moments of quiet that are not inundated by the beeping and grinding of machines that I can hear even in my sleep. In those moments of quiet, I feel like we’re doing something, and I feel like there’s hope. Back in 2018, I never would have imagined that people would still be fighting this pipeline in 2023. I thought that it would be done by 2019. It’s truly wild that we are here now, and I think that gives me hope, not just for this fight. In some ways, I felt more hopeful during years four and five of this struggle than I did in year one or two because what we’re doing is working. That means something. It gives me more hope for future projects. There will always be another fight around the corner against extractive industry in Appalachia. What people often come to this region for is to take from the land. Nevertheless, it gives me hope that if we beat this one for five years, even if they build [the pipeline] tomorrow, that’s four or five years behind schedule. What does that mean for the next one? How can we keep building? This is also a process of strengthening our communities. There have been a lot of people who have come through this campaign, made connections, and then gone on to other places to build stronger communities because of connections they made here. That gives me hope that we’re building a more resilient community with the skills and the networks needed to more effectively make change. That’s not to say that on some days I’m like, I don’t feel overwhelmed or pessimistic. It’s hard to not feel that way. I guess the reminder that if only one person experiences peace because they’re not working one day because of an action we are doing—that means something. I hope to continue that.

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Baker The broader theme for this issue is ecofuturism. Personally, I have a lot of climate anxiety, as many other people do. It’s easy to lose your capacity to envision a bright future. Taking actions for our communities and our environments—as you did during your occupation of the destruction site— demonstrates an enormous amount of hope and care. And that hope infers a future. Tell me what the future means to you. What do you hope for, for the future, for the environment, for our community, for Appalachia? What does the future look like?

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pictured Law enforcement arrives to find the direct action held by local elders locked to a car, blocking a primary construction road along the Mountain Valley Pipeline route on Bent Mountain, Virginia (June 2022).

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Pilot Light, or Burnout?: How to Play the Long Game

Emily Satterwhite with Laura Saunders

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Emily Satterwhite is an associate professor and the director of Applachian Studies in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech. She is a community member affected by the MVP and climate justice scholar-activist based in Yesah lands.

opposite page Dr. Emily Satterwhite, professor of Appalachian Studies at Virginia Tech, outside her home in Blacksburg, Virginia (November 2023).

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Laura Saunders Thank you so much for doing this, for taking the time. I know things are beyond hectic and stressful, so I appreciate you being here. Emily Satterwhite It’s good to be forced into a space of reflection, I think. Saunders That’s a really nice way to hold it. I would love to start by reflecting on the different roles you’ve had through the years— how your involvement began in the struggle against the MVP and where you are now. How has your life transformed?

Satterwhite When Mountain Valley Pipeline announced its intention to build through the mountains of West Virginia and Virginia in 2014, I, like many people, was incredulous: First of all, that they thought they could build that route—which, it turns out maybe they can’t, they’re really struggling! But second of all, that anyone in 2014 would think that building out new fossil fuel infrastructure was a good idea. Given everything we knew, even back in 2014, about the toxic effects of fracking for methane gas, it was just inconceivable that someone was proposing it at all. That was ten years ago. I feel like somehow we haven’t moved that far since 2014. Even then, the science was really clear, and yet in 2023, we’re still seeing new fracked gas infrastructure proposed and permitted by the federal government. In any case, I knew

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I was opposed, but I thought there’s no way this thing actually had any legs. But I learned pretty quickly going to the scoping hearings that it did have legs, that the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality [DEQ] didn’t give a shit and wasn’t going to stop anything. I remember them telling people in Newport that they would just have to find a new source of water if something that DEQ approved damaged their well or their spring. By 2015, people up and down the route were fighting tooth and nail in the regulatory space. I continued to pay attention. But I wasn’t going to the Preserve Montgomery meetings or involved when the POWHR (Protect Our Water Heritage Rights) coalition was formed. At that time, I had a young kid and a husband working towards tenure. I had a lot going on. But for whatever reason, by the beginning of 2018, there was some space in my life. My kid was in a good place; my husband was on the verge of tenure. I was teaching maybe only one class that semester. But it was during that time that I saw an announcement about the tree-sits on Peters Mountain at the Appalachian Trail. Thank God I saw that. Maybe enough people in my orbit were paying attention to it on Facebook. So luckily I came across it, and it was just this jolt. I was just like, Fuck yeah, that’s what I’m talking about! Saunders Almost like you didn’t know that it would feel that good to see it? Satterwhite Right, but I knew as soon as it happened that, Hey, we said, No. No means no. And turns out, people are going to do something about it. We’re not just going to go asking David Paylor at the DEQ for handouts.

Saunders Because up to that point there had been no movement in regards to concerns for the project? It was as if all this effort, all this sustained effort, scores of petitions, tons of time, people pouring themselves out, meetings for years and years . . . Satterwhite Years! From the 2014 announcement to the approval of the certificate in the fall of 2017. And then in the middle of a snowstorm in February 2018, these idiots started cutting trees at the Appalachian Trail on the top of Peters Mountain. It was just like, You’ve got to be kidding me. Saunders What was the community response that you saw or felt? What did you feel about other people echoing your sentiments? Did you see a momentum shift at that point? Satterwhite Yes and no. I went to a rally in downtown Blacksburg that week, and there were maybe a dozen or so people there. As I was approaching, a woman was leaving. I think she had been a member of Preserve Giles or Preserve Montgomery. I said, “Is this the pipeline rally?” And she muttered, “Yeah, there’s no one there. No one cares. I’m leaving. What’s it going to take?” You know, she was just disconsolate. Saunders A lot of people who had been so deeply dedicated up to that point were heartbroken. I remember seeing a lot of people step away from being as involved at that point.

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Satterwhite Once construction started, many hoped that it would be at that moment that a rally would draw fifty people or a hundred people or hundreds of people. The woman I saw just couldn’t take it, and she left. On the other hand, Appalachians Against Pipelines put out a call for gear, and that got a response unlike the measly twelve people who were at the downtown rally. A lot of people donated supplies for the cold weather and snow—the clothing needs and sleeping bags, walking sticks, tents. So there were people who answered the call at that moment who seemed to be inspired by the bravery of those tree sitters and wanted to contribute however they could materially. And so, that kind of became what I did that semester. I taught my class, and then I hiked up Peters Mountain.

Saunders What was it like up on the mountain? What memories stand out? Satterwhite This was 2018, prior to the 2020 Black Lives Matter culmination. But it was still a time when we were hearing a lot about police violence against Black and Brown people. After growing up comfortable as a middle class white woman, there was something that really hit me about being subject to the kind of self-important viciousness of the US Forest Service police. I got lost in the woods more than once trying to find my way after they said it wasn’t safe for us to use the road and forced us off into much more difficult terrain. And so the lie that they were closing the road for our safety—and the meanness of that lie—and

above Community members gather in support of Minor Terry, daughter of Red Terry, on Bent Mountain Virginia. Both Red and Minor Terry spent nearly a month in tree-sits to stop the tree-felling on their family property where the Mountain Valley Pipeline route cuts through (2018).

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the disregard for our actual well-being in their eagerness to protect the fossil fuel industry was really an important moment for me. I was cited at one point for crossing the border of the closure area that was supposedly, again, there for our protection, even though there was no construction happening there at all. It really was a very visceral experience and a glimpse into what it might feel like to live in this world and in this country as a person of color or as a poor person. You know, I think that there is a real dividing line in my life before and after that experience.

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Saunders That hike was no joke. Satterwhite I mean, I think I got it down to 45 minutes. And I’ve never been in better shape in my entire life. Saunders Crawling through the rhododendrons and hopping creeks with equipment and backpacks was the norm from what I recall. Satterwhite It was all the training I needed to climb an excavator in summer 2018. Saunders But I also remember this energy of people like, Oh, you closed the road? Ok. Let’s see about that. Satterwhite Right? Saunders Some people were saying to me at that point, “What do you think we do here? Our day-today life is about these

mountains. Why wouldn’t we hike up with everything we have? Especially because you’ve said that we can’t be here.” Satterwhite These are our mountains. Saunders And look at what is being done to them. I also heard people describe it as an “occupation” with all the agencies and once they started carrying so much weaponry. Does that feel accurate to you? Satterwhite Yeah, well, especially the day they rolled up with their long guns because somebody tried to give a woman on a pole some food. I mean . . . Saunders They pulled out the artillery that day. Satterwhite Well, the Forest Service cops panicked. Giles County rolled up with automatic weapons. I mean, haven’t they heard about hippies? I get they know they’re in a place where people are comfortable with guns, but there have been false projections made about pipeline protesters over and over. The courts still act as if protestors are a flight risk, that they are going to flee and not return to their court date, even though that’s never happened. As if their unfounded fear is a good reason to not give them bond or not let them leave the state. Or to roll up on people assuming that everyone is armed. It’s been five years, and yet it’s still happening. Anyway, that’s their training, to allow themselves to respond to the worst case scenario they can imagine. And that’s what they did that day. Saunders So seeing what happened on Peters Mountain and the lengths that both the “hippies” and the law enforcement agencies were willing to go to was the moment for you where you said, Oh, there’s not really any turning back here? Satterwhite Yeah. I wouldn’t have put it in those words yet at the time. In retrospect, I was learning what an oppressive state really looks like. Saunders It was one of the first examples that you had in front of you to that degree from your upbringing and more widely what you’d witnessed up to that point?

Satterwhite Permitting practices in general, not just eminent domain, have been used to concentrate harmful projects in poorer and Brown and Black communities. And so, in some ways, I think that the pipeline fight created this intersection between those groups normally targeted and more privileged groups who have the resources to resist and to force fossil fuel companies to employ eminent domain. In the case of the Dakota Access Pipeline, there was a lot of resistance across a lot of sectors, though deservedly what got the most traction in the public imagination was Standing Rock and the Indigenous resistance. In the case of MVP, in some ways it feels like the linear nature of the project is what has doomed it in the sense that MVP may have thought that all of Appalachia was a sacrifice zone and would be easy to steamroll, because we are poor and without champions on the national stage. And yet, there has been this coalition of exactly those poor people, who are tired of rolling over, and also people like me who haven’t ever experienced the state as oppressive and as extractive for people with more power. You know, maybe the initial organization of this MVP fight was around fairly wealthy people fighting eminent domain, or fighting the easements across their land one way or another whether that actually got to the eminent domain stage or not. Saunders With some successful re-routing for the wealthiest people, which was a stark contrast, in comparison. Satterwhite Absolutely. In Bent Mountain, for example, there’s a suburban neighborhood near the pipeline that MVP took great pains not to go through. Instead they crossed the properties of elderly single people and an elderly widower veteran. They routed through absenteeowned land where owners wouldn’t feel directly threatened by the presence of the pipeline and so may be happy to have the easement payment for whatever reasons. Absentee landowners weren’t concerned about the health of their renters or the impact on their daily lives of the

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Saunders I think that’s a perfect transition into a wider conversation about the people of varying backgrounds who have come together to fight against the project and how that began. Initially, what people heard about the pipeline was the term “eminent domain” as it related to the easement. Most large infrastructure, even something like an interstate, will involve the invocation of eminent domain where citizens find themselves without recourse beyond struggling through litigation for who knows how long—as

we’ve seen here. I think there’s one active case left, with three people involved who didn’t get their cases thrown out. This is after more legal filings than I even have a full accounting of over the years. But for the most part, it really quickly revealed the greased wheels of the systems in place and how closely it ties to the legacy of colonial land theft built into the legal fabric of the United States. I would say it also revealed what you’d discussed about the unexpected relationships across deeply varying politics. How do you view these aspects and where the conversation has gone since?

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Satterwhite Yeah. I remember messaging back and forth on Facebook with a former libertarian student of mine. I was complaining about the role of the Forest Service, and he was saying, “Oh, yeah, we can agree on this. There should be no federally owned land.” We agreed from totally different perspectives. His solution would have been private ownership, whereas I had always believed in public lands. It was clear, though, that the federal government was not holding land in trust for the good of the people. They were holding it in trust for the good of the profit makers. It became clear over my many trips there and from the different FOIA requests that journalists and others turned up that the Forest Service had been talking for months and years with Mountain Valley Pipeline about how to help them build this pipeline and how to surveil and target anyone who opposed building a pipeline in the national forest and under the Appalachian Trail.

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Satterwhite Yes, it is full of Virginia Tech faculty with a lot of expertise and resources. Saunders I documented some of the meeting when the route was still set to go through Preston Forest, and I will never forget the fervor people marched in with to show MVP everything they had. Now we know the result was the shift of the route, but many meetings have only led to arrests or furthering the rhetoric of “respecting the process,” while the process seemed to ignore the very people it claimed to represent. But I specifically remember it being an example where even proximity to wealth, having time, having expertise as professors and exposure, had direct results.

Saunders I grew up in Blacksburg, and I most certainly wouldn’t describe it as an overly active political space, despite what people might think. Satterwhite Despite the way it’s labeled as a blue bubble. Saunders Right. That was not my experience of growing up here. It was still very conservative, with some leanings towards being liberal from the influx through Virginia Tech. But there was no protest. There

opposite page Dr. Emily Satterwhite, professor of Appalachian Studies at Virginia Tech, locked onto a piece of construction equipment, stopping work on Brush Mountain, Virginia, for fourteen hours (2018).

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Saunders Where many Virginia Tech faculty live, correct?

Satterwhite Preston Forest got it moved, shifted into the National Forest instead of through their backyards. To their credit, a lot of them have stayed in the fight ever since. And I think of other people who initially were threatened and then felt a reprieve when the pipeline was rerouted. But they had experienced, however briefly, what it felt like to be told, “We are going to do this, and you have no say, and we don’t care about you, and we don’t care about your property values. We don’t care about your life. We don’t care whether you want it or not.” Circling back to what I was saying about linear projects, having so many casualties necessarily from so many demographics across 303 miles has been the downfall of this project in the sense that it inspired a cross-class movement. Maybe initially that’s not what it was, but once people of wealth and means and privilege felt the fleeting sensation of “Poof, it could all be gone in an instant,” it was an awakening for a lot of people. The system is fixed, and we have to break it.

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construction process. I saw at least one case where MVP seemed to have targeted land held in trust. And that was a trusteeship because the person was disabled physically by a suicide attempt much earlier in their life. If you’re looking on the GIS maps to see what’s held in trust, whose postal address doesn’t match with the address of the land, you can see MVP trying to cherry pick their way. But they definitely had some missteps, like initially planning to go through Preston Forest, which is a wealthy subdivision in Blacksburg.

was only a group of maybe ten to twelve people that would go to protests, so that was not the culture of this area. Satterwhite No, absolutely not. I’ve heard Dr. Marian Mollin say this, and she’s a historian of social movements. She has said there was no resistance culture in Blacksburg until the pipeline fight. Saunders Barely any at all.

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Satterwhite But now, that has changed.

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Saunders Looking even wider, it’s not until you get into the coalfields or the deeper reaches of southwest Virginia where any prominent organizing history happened. It wasn’t as known, or present, and certainly wasn’t as acceptable here. So now, to see that happening, it was like a clear bell: this is really a moment, and this is really transforming some of the fabric of the people here and how the community looks. It was bringing in folks that had been either geographically or economically shoved out so to speak because of the divisions of class, which are still present. Satterwhite By 2018, I had lived here for thirteen years and had not met any neighbors who raise goats, who run cattle, who have a little piece of land to go back to after they work third shift, or work the railroads—and I’m an Appalachian studies professor. I was already predisposed to be interested in and care about rural neighbors in a way that a lot of Blacksburg faculty do not. Yet it took this pipeline fight for me to find common cause. Saunders And so now what does your constellation look like? I assume you were just naming people from your life there. Satterwhite It’s transformed me completely—alongside seeing the intensification of the climate and ecological emergency. I grew up where geographic mobility and upward economic mobility were part of my family dynamic. There was really no place I called home. Before this fight, I was mostly surrounded by peers who would move in a heartbeat for a better paying job or to be in a more cosmopolitan, more urban, environment. I cannot imagine at this point in the planet’s history picking up and moving, because we’re going to need each other. I don’t want to have to start over with building those relationships of knowing who I can count on and who I can trust. Even though it might be easier to move to family land that’s two hours away—what would I do without the people? And so I feel like I’ve been walking between worlds with one foot in each world for five years now. There are people who kind of keep their heads down and keep their career on trajectory, or maybe they just have to bring home a paycheck in order to pay the mortgage and feed themselves. There are those people. And then there are the people who can’t unsee the damage that the state has done—whether you’re talking about the state of Virginia, the state of West Virginia, or the federal state. When someone sees what the state is capable of—what it’s willing to do, who it is willing to sacrifice—they can’t unsee the climate catastrophes, can’t unsee the

damage to people’s water and land at the behest of rich people who want greater profits and who will lie through their teeth about it being best for the national and global interests. People lie and say gas is better than coal when there was only a brief window when that was plausible. Anyway, my point is that I struggle with living in both these worlds at the same time. The world where you hope and feel and act as if there’s a normal trajectory from here and the world where people know that there are cataclysms. Whether that’s eminent domain, the next climate event, so-called natural disaster, or COVID-19—whatever it is. There are people who are living aware of the cataclysms that are the recent past and the certain future. And it is really hard on those people. MERGOAT MAG

Satterwhite Because you haven’t moved, but it’s been taken from you. The place has been irrevocably altered.

Saunders What do you feel when you’re moving through all this physically? What is your relationship to the mountains or the water here or even the word “home”? Has it shifted? Satterwhite I think this is a good example of walking in two worlds at the same time, because sometimes I drive along the route—it’s only five miles from here at my house. I’m doing grant-funded research in the eastern part of Montgomery County. In order to do the work, I am coming in closer proximity to the right-of-way. So when Mountain Valley Pipeline was trying to use an injunction on me to not cross the right of way, it was like, Well, that’s going to be a trick because I live here. How can I not cross the right-of-way? It’s right smack through the middle of our county. And now you want to tell me I can’t be on the right-of-way? How does that work? Which is kind of what you were talking about with people who have been dispossessed of their place and they’re harassed and surveilled when they are anywhere near the right-of-way, even though that has been their home. In contrast to that experience, I live the Blacksburg life day to day where people can ignore what’s happening right outside of town. I only know about the heartache and the destruction because of this network of people that I created in person, in real spaces, who now live on my phone and are with me all the time. Dozens of messages every day. This is what they’re doing to my stream. This is what they did to my hayfield. This is what’s happening. And I can choose to look—or not. But it is with me constantly. It burdens me. Not to the same degree it burdens

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Saunders And there’s no escaping it. This is the thing that came up earlier, too. For example, when you’re driving down the roads, the same roads we’ve driven all these years, they’ve become sites of connecting different stories from people impacted by the pipeline. It’s impossible to miss the scar of the cut on the mountain, and then they share about their daily life: whether it’s the rumbling and blasts from construction or maybe being harassed by workers, all the different forms of psychological and physical harm they’re experiencing. I’m constantly hearing how there is no respite. The place that they would go is the place they’ve lost. The term “solastalgia” comes up a lot—the longing for a home, a spring, a place that no longer physically exists, even though it’s the same location.

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pictured Trees felled by the Mountain Valley Pipeline, including the tree-sits previously occupied by the Yellow Finch Camp in Elliston, Virginia, which blocked further construction on the route for over two years before extraction in March of 2021.

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the people who are sharing the photos and the stories and living it firsthand, but it weighs heavily. And I know everyone else I’m in the room with, everyone else I’m on the Huckleberry Trail with, everyone else on the campus . . . there may be, at any given time, anywhere on the campus, only five other people who are also seeing the destruction. It’s crazy-making. Saunders The disconnect and the way you can be living in such alternate realities . . .

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Satterwhite How are we pretending that this isn’t happening? I get why no one else in this room wants to look. You’re busy, you’re tired, you’re taking care of a lot of people. This system has got us grinding all the time, trying to struggle to get the money, to buy the things, to fight for access to the health care systems we have. You know, just getting by is enough work, even for people of means right now. So I get why you wouldn’t then have the bandwidth to pay attention to what’s happening five miles away from you.

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Saunders What do you pull into when you feel those really reasonable moments of fatigue and overwhelm and just hopelessness? Maybe there’s a court win that feels important, and then there’s another violent arrest. Or maybe work had been stopped for a while, and then it starts, and now you’re back to receiving horrible photos on your phone every day. How do you dig in when it gets hard? What do you do when it feels like it is too hard? Satterwhite It’s two sort of opposite directions. One is to take time to be out in nature. I have friends who say, “Hey, there’s a reason we’re fighting for this place, and we have to get out in it and love it and enjoy it.” That was anathema to me initially. Like, Do what? Take a whole day and do nothing on the river? Who does that? But that has been one solace, while over and over in my head it’s on repeat: I can’t believe they broke the world. So I’m going to relish every last drop of it while I can. In the opposite direction, I remind myself that there is no use in self pity or asking, “Why us?” because it has happened over and over again to so many people. So part of what keeps me grounded is knowing how many people have felt this way, how many people and how many other struggles all across Appalachia, all across the United States, all across the globe have felt like this. There is this incredible injustice happening, and I can’t get anyone to care. And knowing that, sadly, over time more and more people will have reason to see this truth. And to, I don’t know, just try to be generous and gracious with people about where they are, whether that’s in their bitterness because they’ve been abandoned for decades or whether that’s in their obliviousness because they haven’t had to see. Saunders We both spent time in eastern Kentucky after the horrible floods in summer 2022. I just remember thinking so clearly while I was there, This will visit all of us. Satterwhite Mm hmm.

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pictured Local, state, and federal state agencies use spotlights on Peters Mountain in Giles County, Virginia, while “Nutty” occupies an aerial monopod blockade, stopping work and tree felling along the route for fifty-seven days in early 2018.

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So part of what keeps me grounded is knowing how many people have felt this way, how many people and how many other struggles all across Appalachia, all across the United States, all across the globe have felt like this.

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Saunders From holler to hillside this will come for everyone. There won’t be any amount of insulation people have for these disasters to leave anyone alone. What are your thoughts about how these things reach different people and the varying reactions to it?

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Satterwhite I mean, I’ve always been someone who asks, “How do we fix the structure?” Going back to the discussion of the national forests, I’ve always been a believer that the government should serve the public good. And so to be sacrificed by the state, and to have to really reckon with that, it doesn’t look like it’s going to change in my lifetime. So what can I do? This is really hard for me. I have had to shift to considering how to hunker down and take care of each other. That is not my go-to. It’s not in me to walk away without trying to hold people accountable, whether it’s local elected officials or state government or federal government or regulatory agencies or the cops or whoever it is. And yet . . . I’m trying to figure it out, but it’s dawning on me that I am going to maybe need to reorient myself away from holding power structures accountable towards something that looks more like saving who and what I can. That’s just not who I’ve ever been to this point, and now, I feel, naively so. Until now, I’ve always believed that we could, and that we are obligated to, make the system work. Saunders You can correct me here, but it feels like you would also have intimate knowledge of Appalachia’s long history of resistance and the very personal connections that many people have to specific sites of resistance— places like Blair Mountain or perhaps now Peters Mountain. These sites have become sacred to Appalachian folks for different reasons—for the names they stir up for people, for the symbols and spirit they represent. It would be really hard to step away from that and accept the idea that you couldn’t, or shouldn’t act, or it isn’t as effective as maybe you thought. Or maybe just having to reconsider, what does effectiveness look like? These are all conversations that keep happening through so much turmoil and upheaval: What does positive, tangible change look like? What does a true impact on quality of life look like? When people have said the pipeline fight has been lost, or suggest it has been a failure, others have replied: “We’ve been doing this for ten years. How do we classify that as a loss?” As in, how could all of that possibly be filed away as a loss if places like Yellow Finch existed, if people like Nutty existed, if people like Becky Crabtree in her Pinto existed? How does that all feel to you? How do you hold all those things? Satterwhite Again, I’m of two minds. On the one hand, it’s always darkest before the dawn. I know that Widow Combs sat down in 1965 in front of a bulldozer that was trying to strip-mine her land and got hauled off to jail over Thanksgiving. It was two decades later before Kentuckians finally ended the broad form deed, which allowed coal companies to access the coal underground, even if it meant disturbing the landowner’s surface rights. It was not just the bravery of Ollie Combs but that of many people fighting for that legislation to get changed.

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Satterwhite Or even before that with the Inflation Reduction Act! Which is best described as a green capitalism act. With the IRA in the fall of 2022, we really saw the expansion of a rift we should have recognized much earlier: this tenuous alliance between people who are eager for a transition because of the green capitalist profits that are palatable for someone like Biden versus the people who are working to keep justice and the wellbeing of the most vulnerable at the forefront of the discourse. We’ve really seen that chasm expand in the climate movement between the pro-green industry type and the people fighting for Black, Brown, poor people and the sacrificial places we’ve talked about. Saunders Right. And what about the wider movements of solidarity? Why would Appalachians care about these other projects elsewhere? I know that those conversations have brought up a lot of really, really painful truths for people here. For example, some landowners are being confronted for the first time with the fact that they’re on stolen land and learning this is the land of the Tutelo, or Monacan, or territories of the Cherokee people–calling to name specific violence that they’ve never felt implicated by or had to reckon with. How do you see that conversation being part of this pipeline fight or even the wider Appalachian futures conversation? Where does Appalachia go from here? Satterwhite Because the casualties have reached into white middle and upper middle class, I feel like many, though not all, have been able to finally see settler colonialism for the first time. I think, honestly, that I, in 2018, saw settler colonialism for the first time as some-

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Saunders Or the extraction we see through this notion of sacrificial zones, including the way this pipeline specifically got pulled out by Manchin’s interests and then greenlit by the Biden administration for the debt ceiling to go through?

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Then, there is Blair Mountain. In 1921, 20,000 pro-union miners marched on Blair Mountain to help unionize the miners on the other side of it. They laid down their arms at the behest of their national government, and it took until 1933 for labor rights to be installed nationally. What part did the battle at Blair Mountain play in that legislation ten years later? I don’t know how you would quantify that. But I know that, in the 2018 West Virginia educators’ strike, employees in all 55 counties went out on a wildcat strike. They took up the mantle of that proud legacy and said, “This just isn’t right. I cannot do right by my students under these conditions.” So on the one hand, I try to keep in mind that we can’t know the ripple effect and we can’t know when the dawn is coming. You can’t know the impact of your courage and your stance and your fierceness until later. On the other hand, it feels like we’re running really short on time, not just ecologically, but also in terms of entering a more and more fascistic phase in the evolution of US society. So those hard-won victories in Appalachia, over time, they give people strength. And yet, so far we have been unable to change the structures of the state and who those structures serve.

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thing not of the past. I was aware, of course, of imperialism, colonialism, and genocide— but it was something that wasn’t part of my present or didn’t seem ongoing. We are still living in the aftermath and the consequences of that mindset that was—and that continues. No matter how I had faced it intellectually or taught it in my classroom, until I felt like I was living it, I really didn’t get it. I don’t think people should have to live something to know it. That’s kind of the whole point of education. But the experience of being sacrificed has altered people here. I think about the number of people in Shannon Bell’s study who have said, “Well, I tell you what, now I see that the problem is capitalism.” That came up multiple times in these surveys unprompted! I’ve seen people waking up to the reality that we cannot continue to consume the planet unchecked. You know, some people have really had an awakening. They are connecting to Indigenous and Appalachian experiences past and present in powerful ways. Saunders Are there any lines or ties that you want to make that we haven’t touched on yet? Satterwhite I’d like to touch on one thing related to the conversation of repression and to this broader moment of 2023. We are in a moment—I mean, it’s been a decade—but we are in a moment where we can see the cause and effect of the expansion of the fossil fuel industry. We are not yet, in Montgomery County, Virginia, living in an era of Baldwin Felts agents. You know, like in the 1910s in southern West Virginia, where the sheriff and the private detectives have a lock hold and people are afraid to organize or are afraid to speak. But we could get there. We’ve seen the fight against the Moun-

tain Valley Pipeline achieve more success in southeast or southern West Virginia, outside the coal fields and fracking fields, and, in Virginia, east of the historical coal counties. The success of the anti-MVP movement has been in part because of the shock of the brazenness and the sort of winner-take-all attitude of the fossil fuel industry, long known in places like northern West Virginia where the fracking fields are. I think there’s been less resistance there because it’s already an economy that’s captured and a people that have very little space to speak against fossil fuels. And so, part of what I’m fighting for when I fight the Mountain Valley Pipeline is the destruction of our water and our mountains and our air and our climate. But I’m also fighting against a closure of the opportunity to speak my mind about the fossil fuel industry or about capitalist and state power generally. Because as the fossil fuel industry, as Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC, smells victory, it seems they will suffer no objections. They now have Congress at their behest. We’ve heard the judges and the cops say about pipeline fighters, “They just don’t seem to get the message. They just keep showing up and getting in the way.” I think they don’t understand that it’s now or never. At least, that’s my fear. And it’s not just my fear for Montgomery County, Virginia—that my county will more and more come under the sway of powerful players and become a place where we are only allowed to say what those powers will suffer us to say. But I feel that people are losing the freedom to speak out against power globally right now. I don’t know. Maybe people have felt like this before. But there are real ecological limits here. I feel like it’s now or never. I feel like either we speak up and collectively push back or we lose the opportunity. I have seen people talk about Israel’s carpet-bombing of Gaza as an experiment. If Israel can get away with that in Gaza, what can the United States get away with? What are people willing to abide in the name of Western democracy or law and order? That seemed like a stretch when I first read it, but it has stayed with me to revisit. When Roe v. Wade was overturned, I thought, Okay, this is the moment. This is the moment where people are going to see that everything is at stake. Because now even liberal white women are pissed. And they’re outside the homes of Supreme Court justices. This is when people realize they have to take to the streets and abandon decorum. And poof. The moment felt over. Saunders Well, there’s always the promise of that return to comfort. The promise of keeping just close enough to power to keep yourself safe. The promise of being rewarded for not doing the thing, for not saying the thing. We’ve seen West Virginia in particular has passed new protest laws, and we’ve seen court cases go differently in different jurisdictions. And we’ve seen escalating violence in different moments

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depending on where the court hearings were. And currently there is just one remaining legal case, of three landowners still fighting, is that correct? Satterwhite Three landowner couples.

Saunders Did you believe the project was unlikely to be completed as it stood in the court system prior to the passing of the debt ceiling bill? Satterwhite It was dead. I thought the Mountain Valley Pipeline project was dead when the Fourth Circuit Court passed their rulings in January and February 2022. I said to my husband, “The pipeline has suffered a blow that it cannot recover from.” And he started crying because he thought maybe we get our lives back. And Jonathan Sokolow and some others told me, “Well, it’s on its last legs, but it’s still on life support.” I just thought it was a matter of time. And I still think it was a matter of time. I think it still may die, honestly. But it literally took an act of Congress to keep it moving forward. Saunders They’ve continued to push back the finish date up to this most recent SEC filing where they said they couldn’t find enough workers.

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Satterwhite I guess I actually want them to know how much it means when they do anything. I talked to Crystal [Mello] this morning, and she was pumped because of some senior citizens in California who were giving a Wells Fargo branch a hard time on behalf of MVP pipeline fighters. It just gave her hope that not everybody has abandoned us.

Satterwhite Well, it means everything. Because, like I was saying, the judges and the cops are all saying, “Congress has approved this, so knock it off.” We’ve been done in by our state legislatures, by our Congress, by our presidents, by our regulators, by the Supreme Court when they leaned hard on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss the environmental regulation cases. What else are we going to do? Clearly there’s no appeal to power here that’s going to work. We’ve been shown the laws don’t matter. They keep changing the law on behalf of the pipeline itself. What else are we supposed to do? So on the one hand, in our communities and in the country, there is a “You lost, get over it” attitude. But there are also those who say, “You got thrown under the bus. I see that, and I am going to stand up for you.”

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Saunders But prior to that, there had been hundreds of different cases and motions. To watch that happen and know there can be a giant hand that can come down and say, “You know, you had your time, you’re done now.” People are reporting very concerning patching on the pipes and seeing severe rust from them sitting exposed to the elements for years, along with other deeply concerning things without any possible way to protect themselves or anyone on the route because, legally, they are bound. So it would appear, the urgency of this moment, it’s omnipresent here. It’s normal to hear desperation from people every time you talk to them about what’s happening and what’s being built. It does feel like time is running out and like people are at the very edge. They’re quite literally looking over these mountain slopes and saying, “There’s no way . . . there’s no way.” What would you want people who are confronting this only now to know about what people have done here?

Saunders What is it like to see support come in after the debt bill passed?

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Satterwhite You mean they’ve recently admitted that they lied through their teeth. Just like, back in May, MVP told Congress, “Oh, it’s 94 percent complete.” Nobody has learned anything about how unreliable a narrator MVP really is.

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Saunders That has been one of the most challenging things for people to push back on. They’ve exaggerated completion estimates for many years, without evidence, but had their numbers mostly regurgitated and unchecked because of the obvious challenges present in putting those figures together. When I was doing the research for a podcast last year, as far back as 2018 or 2019 they were saying 75 percent and then 79 percent . . . just sort of slowly creeping up despite work not getting done because of stop-work orders or missing permits. Satterwhite I mean, their last filing in October 2023 said they were still 56 percent complete to final restoration, which is what they were in May 2022 when Congress passed the debt ceiling bill.

Saunders So whatever happens, whether the pipeline is in operation or whether it never makes it that far, what is your hope from here forward? I heard you say you have a hope of getting your life back . . . Satterwhite That was my husband Phil’s hope. Yeah. I’m never getting my life back. There’s no going back. It’s been a “Which side are you on?” kind of decade. And I’m not sure what the way forward is. I know we have to keep finding each other—the people who see things for how they are and who are willing to make sacrifices to address the common good in a real way, not just make a donation occasionally. But I haven’t lost all faith in the ability of the United States to become a democracy. I’ve lost the belief, though, that it ever was one. So, I believe in people taking care of people, and I believe in people refusing to be manipulated into thinking that other people struggling to get by are the problem. I don’t know what else. I’m still trying to figure that out. Saunders I think that seems like a wise place to be, to keep asking questions and just look around and see who’s there to keep asking questions with you. Thank you so much, Emily. Satterwhite Thank you, Laura.

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Saturo I

n the heart of Bangkok, summer

While this immersive event took place in Bangkok, its

of 2023, a miniature landscape

true roots are more local to the Appalachian region,

unfurled—Grey Hollow Village,

being a product of local technologist James Roha.

a manifestation of a post-

A longtime purveyor of critical natures and alternative

singularity world. The immersive

views of non-human life, James Roha conceptually merged

exhibition, Saturophage, stood

regional aesthetics and vernacular craft with theory

simultaneously as a spectacle and

and the practices of people like Donna Harraway and Liam Young to create a future hybridization of a post-

casting the reflections of our

singularity world in the midst of emerging AI.

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a mirror to the epoch we inhabit,

landscape, interwoven with timeless

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reshaped and accelerated by the

rapidly shifting technological human coevolutions. In the gallery, audiences did not merely observe but participated in a narrative world,

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existence of advanced algorithms—a place where characters, land, flora, and fauna were reconfigured by the very processes that increasingly shape our reality. More than just a showcase of AI’s prowess, Saturophage grappled with the existential nuances of a world on the cusp of AI-driven evolution.

Key to this world were the characters, who themselves underwent a thorough development. Initially, kitbashing was employed for design, followed by digitization and AI algorithmic interpretation. Post-processing led to a final physical form via 3D printing and object collage. This iterative process not only mirrored generative AI systems but also utilized tools like Midjourney to maintain geometric coherence in alignment with Grey Hollow Village’s theme.

-phage

James Roha

The landscape, village, characters, Saturophage virus, and story continued to evolve over four weeks inside the 1559 shophouse gallery.

lay in wait to be discovered by treasure hunters and travelers.

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Following the local exhibition, various parts of the installation were dispersed around the entire nation of Thailand via geocaching. They now

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White Phase [The audience is invited to explore the village.] As you cross the threshold into Grey Hollow, a shiver runs down your spine, and you feel the weight of the world you’ve left behind lift from your shoulders. The atmosphere of this mysterious realm envelops you, immersing you in a land where the vibrant hues of reality have been replaced by a mesmerizing world. The air is thick with a continuous drone, punctuated only by the occasional gust of wind that rustles the skeletal branches of trees, their leaves long since devoured by the mysterious force that has drained the world of color. The once-lush vegetation now appears as ghostly silhouettes against the desolate landscape, their shadows dancing on the monochromatic canvas of the earth.

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Red Phase [The audience completes a number of tasks for the inhabitants to help the villagers navigate the evolutions.] Upon your return to the village something seems different; almost a tangible violence in the air—a feeling of rapid change. While before most color had vanished, new threads of vibrancy have emerged—a strong red permeates the space of the land. The virus has changed. The people have changed. The land has changed. Where color was once consumed, new growth has now emerged.

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Blue Phase [The audience decides who will win the conflict.] As tumultuous times have come, the village has retribalized. Factions have emerged from slumber and now congregate in pursuit of a guided evolution for the village as a blue tide washes over the village. The Sha, protectors of the earth seek a balance of new and old, change and stability. The Ko, musicians and creatives, seek the empowerment of all through the destabilizing virus’s potential. The Coven, manipulators and logicians, seek the control of society in response to the violence of change. The villagers, inhabitants and passives, believe that a natural course will make itself evident—happy to carry on with a changing life. These factions fight for primacy in the age of change.

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Green Phase [The audience is invited to the geocaching treasure hunt.] The Saturophage has made its mark, reshaping the lands of Grey Hollow Village; the clans strove for control and the Sha make their mark on the future. As the village transfers its power the guild has frozen this moment of the simulation and distributed the essence across the land. Seek the future yourself, laden in

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the hidden places on the far side of the earth.

Ko-Sah A member of the technorg musician’s conclave, Ko-Sah amplifies

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life through music. Upon striking

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melodic chords from pulseweave strings, the flora vibrate wildly, accelerating their growth.

Gel-No-Sah The mangled synthweaver has long held a position of prominence in Grey Hollow village. Elderly and youth alike come seeking mind dives for clarity and perceptive wisdom.

Discover more characters and their hiding places around the world.

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technoorganic music, this organism taps into the pulse of Grey Hollow, infusing the infected world with vibrant rhythms of the future.

“I wanted to make something speculative and highly accessible—a

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Ko-Mah As a master of

balance of fun and wonder, something that would inspire people to think critically about the near future being created by new technologies during and after the experience.” Stay tuned for the second chapter of the Saturophage “Sorn-Lai, the first forest” coming to Knoxville in the summer of 2024 by James Roha @james.roha and Fable X @Fable_x.digital.

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PROJECT FEATURE

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Ecosystem Services PROJECT NAME

CONDUCTED BY

Upper Rapidan Eastern Brook Trout Initiative

Ecosystem Services

PROJECT TYPE Stream and aquatic connectivity restoration

LOCATION

Upper Rapphannock and Rapidan Headwaters in Virginia’s northern Piedmont

DATE STARTED 2012

PROJECT GOALS

Improve fish passage, improve in-stream habitat, and engage partners to promote watershed level planning

OUTCOMES

Two culverts removed and bridge replacement; 2.7 miles of access to upstream headwater for trout spawning; one road-crossing bridge replacement; 1.38 miles of intact brook trout habitat reconnected reaching to Shenandoah National Park; 1,558 linear feet of stream restoration; 3.09 acres of riparian planting; postrestoration fish sampling documented increases in abundance and diversity of species; brook trout found during 2019 fish sampling, one year post-construction

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How to The Upper Rapidan Rebuild Eastern Brook Trout aInitiative River:

by Annemarie Abbondanzo and Kip Mumaw

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n an early morning

in March of 2017, two ecological restoration specialists traverse a cold mountain stream in the eastern foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. The water cascades downstream producing a patchwork of white eddies and calm pools amid boulders etched with lichen and moss that produce a dendritic pattern like the veins of kintsugi pottery. While the setting is captivating, the two specialists have the task of documenting the geomorphology, or shape and geometry cultivated over time by flowing water. Once analyzed, it will act as a kind of blueprint for a proposed restoration project. They lean down into the frigid water to measure the size of the boulders and cobbles, document the location of trees and woody debris jams, and piece together the patterns of a healthy stream. Just downstream, there is a road crossing, a knife’s edge that severs aquatic habitat and, in this case, populations of brook trout.

The concept of restoring “aquatic connectivity” refers to maintaining or improving the ability of aquatic ecosystems, such as rivers, streams, and wetlands, to function as interconnected and healthy systems. Roads can have significant impacts on aquatic connectivity, often with adverse effects on aquatic habitats and species. A survey of fish populations of this stream revealed genetic separation in brook trout upstream and downstream of the road crossing suggesting population fragmentation. In the case of brook trout, these obstructions to passage can prevent migration for spawning or their ability to seek cooler waters given the impacts of our warming climate and habitat degradation. Culverts, which are structures that allow water to pass under roads, can block fish passage in various ways, primarily when they are not designed or maintained to pass the full range of flow, sediment, and wood. These impacts happen quietly and cumulatively and without the intent of destruction. We build

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aquatic connectivity Maintaining or improving the ability of aquatic ecosytems, such as rivers, streams, and wetlands, to function as interconnected and healthy systems.

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These projects are cause for hope.

roads to new homes and new farmland—our society sees these impacts as normal and innocent. It mirrors much of the ecological degradation that is now getting greater public attention due to climate change: our steady use of fossil fuels invisibly warms the earth. Most of the effort, discussion, and— importantly—funding of climate change solutions has focused on large-scale projects such as renewable energy development and carbon capture. This is reasonable given the magnitude and urgency of the issue; however, these solutions are likely to negatively impact ecosystem health and integrity. The public narrative about the importance of this tradeoff resulting in local ecosystem destruction sounds remarkably like the justification for the historic and ongoing environmental degradation in the name of economic development: they are unavoidable and worth the cost. Those of us working to preserve and restore ecosystems on a local level can easily find ourselves feeling pessimistic and ignored. In the words of Biologist E. O. Wilson, “We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life”. Indisputably, this danger has already manifested, and there is reason to question our ability to prevent the worst consequences of climate change and loss of biodiversity. As the geomorphic survey continues, the ecologists approach a pool with a beautiful mess of fallen branches protruding above the water’s surface and anchored to the streambank and bed. Within this lattice, almost motionless, is a fish mottled with oranges and reds blending perfectly into the gravels below and the dance of shadows produced by slowly moving water. This is a brook trout. And the restoration effort being conducted is targeted to improve their habitat and remove barriers that prevent

their movement. It is one of hundreds of projects being done each year to restore ecosystems within the Chesapeake Bay watershed. These projects may not garner the headlines like other environmental projects, but they are a critical piece of the work being done to ensure that nature endures for its own sake and for the sake of future generations. The process for completing these projects looks different due to their distribution, multiple-agency jurisdictions, and funding opportunities. They are frequently community-led and watershedbased. These projects are cause for hope. They reflect an acknowledgment that it will require individual engagement, community participation, and collaboration with other species and natural processes to change the course of our society from one of consumption and neglect to one of care and stewardship. The truth is that technological solutions won’t achieve the results needed and, in some cases, will be attendant with impacts of their own. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognizes this and calls for nature-based solutions to be among the tools employed to address these challenges. However, mobilizing individual landowners, nongovernmental organizations, and local governments to commit resources towards incremental environmental gains can be a difficult, if not impossible, task. Nevertheless, the elegance and allure of some species can galvanize action and become the foundation of restoring our connection to nature. There are certain species that become powerful symbols that condense meaning and evoke strong emotions. They represent deep cultural and historical meaning and can play a significant role in political and social movements. Like the bison, the brook trout is one of those species and holds a special place as an American symbol. It embodies

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the beauty of the natural world while serving as an important reminder of the challenges America’s aquatic ecosystems face. Its long history in North America among many Native American tribes and early European colonists is well documented in literature, art, and folklore. The legacy has endured, and the brook trout are designated as a state fish in nine US states, including Virginia. It’s a symbol that can serve as a bridge between people with diverse perspectives and backgrounds and an indicator of the overall health of freshwater ecosystems. Saving the brook trout has come to reflect our responsibility to protect and preserve the natural world for current and future generations.

Brook trout populations have declined throughout their historic eastern United States range from Maine to Georgia. Since brook trout are highly sensitive to changes in their habitat, particularly water temperature and water quality, their decline is considered an early warning sign of ecosystem degradation. The decline of brook trout is an indicator of broader changes in habitat conditions that can impact the abundance and distribution of other aquatic species like insects, amphibians, and other fish. Recognizing this important species, conservation organizations, academic institutions, state and federal agencies, and local communities have all contributed towards conserving brook trout populations

above A female Southern Appalachian brook trout fans the stream bottom to displace silt and debris from her nest, known as a redd. This will ensure her eggs won’t be smothered and deprived of oxygen as they develop. Meanwhile the dominant male defends the female and redd from any would-be male suitors. Photo by Andrew Zimmerman

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There are certain species that become powerful symbols that condense meaning and evoke strong emotions. They represent deep cultural and historical meaning and can play a significant role in political and social movements. and their habitats. One example of this effort is the creation of the Upper Rapidan Eastern Brook Trout Initiative. In 2012, the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC), a conservation organization in Virginia, and Trout Unlimited (TU) partnered to send a mailer to every landowner that lived on or near a trout stream in PEC’s nine-county region spanning Clarke and Loudoun counties to the north to Charlottesville and Albemarle County in the south. The goal of the mailer was to learn what specific conservation challenges interested local landowners and start to establish networks for communication and resource sharing. Several landowners engaged with the mailers and provided valuable feedback that aquatic connectivity was a top issue—specifically improving poorly designed road crossings that create barriers to fish passage. Stream crossings designed for fish passage allow for fish to travel with the added benefit of reducing

flooding and property damage—a win for landowners and fish alike. The landowners’ feedback provided a starting place for action. Together, PEC and TU secured grant funding from the US Fish and Wildlife Service National Fish Passage Program to create an inventory of stream crossings in the watershed. In total, 133 road-stream crossings were inventoried in Rappahannock, Madison, Greene, and Albemarle counties in the eastern foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The partnership assessed all the roadstream crossings for aquatic organism passage and found that sixty-four crossings provided no or reduced passage. The next step was to prioritize the dataset to help focus resources and efforts. A local stream restoration firm, Ecosystem Services, joined the partnership to help establish criteria for ranking and then apply those criteria systematically to the crossings.

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see two massive boulders sitting in a field. They looked out of place and as surreal as a Magritte painting. It seems almost unfathomable, but these boulders were washed downstream from an unprecedented storm that occurred on June 27, 1995. Over thirty inches of rain fell in less than a day, reworking the landscape and the streams in the process. During the subsequent reconstruction, Kinsey Run was channelized, moved, and enlarged. While well intended, these modifications contributed to habitat disconnection and prevented smaller storms from spreading out on the floodplain. Instead, the flows were contained in the channel, as designed, which washed away habitat and caused streambank erosion and further downcutting of the streambed. Under the umbrella of the Upper Rapidan Eastern Brook Trout Initiative, the partners secured grant funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Patagonia, and Trout Unlimited to assess, permit, design, and implement the removal and replacement of two perched culverts on Kinsey Run with an open-bottom structure that spanned the entire channel. Prior to restoration, the two culverts were negatively affecting aquatic passage directly by blocking fluvial processes that maintain instream habitat. The pipe was narrower than the incoming channel, and it choked the stream creating backwater during storms, debris jam, sedimentation, and downstream water surges with associated scour. Moreover, since the pipe outlet was skewed, it was directing flows at one bank and accelerating erosion. In addition, water velocities contained within the pipe and the elevation drop at the outlet were too high to pass trout and other organisms. The goal of restoration designs for stream-road crossings, also called “stream simulation” designs, is to make the road invisible to the stream. To anthropomorphize

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Ecosystem Services chose six parameters for scoring that would be best suited to ranking the projects for ecological uplift. Each parameter was weighted based on its importance to stakeholders. A higher score meant the crossing was a greater priority for removal. The ranking system rationale, results, and dataset were made accessible to the public through an interactive web map. The Kinsey Run project was identified as topranked using the weighted scoring system. The project team developed an action plan to specify steps for project initiation, execution, and monitoring. These early efforts were quickly materializing into a long-term project. To help with implementing the action plan for Kinsey Run, partners worked to mobilize a network of supporters and advocates willing to volunteer, donate, and participate. This effort culminated in the formation of the Upper Rapidan Eastern Brook Trout Initiative. The initiative served as an umbrella for coordinating and consolidating efforts around the common cause of removing top-ranking crossings. Supporters included the Piedmont Environmental Council, Rappahannock-Rapidan Regional Commission, Friends of the Rappahannock, Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (now the Department of Wildlife Resources), Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, Ecosystem Services, Trust for Tomorrow, and the Thomas Jefferson Chapter of Trout Unlimited. The Kinsey Run project was located on private property in a small community known as Graves Mill. The project partner, Friends of the Rappahannock, led the outreach efforts and worked with the landowner to secure permission for the project. The landscape appeared like any rural environment, with pasture and small farms divided by split-rail fences. In view of the farmhouse on the property, you could

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top right Brook trout documented in Kinsey Run one year post-restoration. bottom right Staff from the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources conduct a postrestoration fish survey to assess and document the diversity, abundance, distribution, and health of fish populations within Kinsey Run. left Culvert removal and bridge replacement on Kinsey Run to restore fish passage.

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above The structure was negatively impacting fish passage in multiple ways. Since the pipe was narrower than the incoming channel, it choked the stream, creating backwaters, debris jam, sedimentation, and downstream water surges with associated scour. Moreover, since the pipe outlet was skewed, it was directing flows at one bank accelerating erosion. In addition, water velocities contained within the pipe and the elevation drop at the outlet were too high to pass trout and other organisms. below Project goals required full aquatic organism passage postrestoration. Since the outlet was narrow and skewed, bank stabilization measures were used upstream and downstream of the crossing. Streambanks were planted with native riparian species, including pollinator species.

With grant funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, the team replaced the road crossing and obstruction with a free-span bridge and restored 750 linear feet of degraded habitat on Bolton Branch. To protect and enhance the riparian zone, native species were planted for shade, cover, and food for trout. The vegetated buffer also helps to filter pollutants before they enter the stream. To stabilize streambanks, native vegetation and bioengineering methods were used to prevent erosion and maintain a stable channel geometry. Trout features such as pools, riffles, and runs were built and packed with large woody debris and native cobble and gravel to diversify the streambed and to provide hiding places for juvenile trout. Select instream structures were installed like log jams and boulders to improve habitat complexity and create areas of slower water where trout can rest and find food. The project reconnected 1.38 miles of stream for fish passage. The 1.38 miles is particularly significant because it reestablishes a lost connection to Shenandoah National Park.

above Floodplain connection and riparian zone planting are critical for ecological balance, wildlife conservation, and long-term resilience.

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building on the momentum

of Kinsey Run, the partnership looked to implement the second top-ranked project, Bolton Branch. The Bolton Branch project ranked highly as a priority stream because it is a Class II, cold-water trout stream, but the existing road-stream crossing obstructed fish passage.

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the stream a bit, it should not notice the road at all as it flows past, which means that the habitat that organisms rely upon will also not be disrupted. Pools, boulders used for cover, baseflow depth and width, and defined streambanks are all continuous from upstream to downstream. The restoration design was coordinated with the landowner, partners, and review agencies. This process requires the consideration of multiple objectives and needs, and since the varying perspectives can sometimes be at odds with one another, communication and transparency are necessary to come to agreements. Construction started in spring of 2018 and lasted until the summer. The Department of Wildlife Resources collected fish population and temperature monitoring data upstream and downstream of Kinsey Run prior to restoration and after the project was complete. One year postrestoration, trout were found downstream of the crossing for the first time. As an indicator species, trout are a positive sign of improving water temperature, oxygen levels, and water quality. Since the project was identified as the only obstruction blocking access to upstream habitat, it reconnected approximately 2.7 miles of access to upstream headwater streams for spawning that had been lost since 1995. Restoring a cold-water mountain stream like Kinsey Run improved the aquatic habitat and preserved a precious ecosystem that provides benefits to local communities.

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Aquatic Organism Passage

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Before and After Restoration

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above Overall, Aquatic Organism Passage (AOP), abundance, and diversity increased across site 1 and site 2 from 2017 to 2019. Pre-construction data was collected in October 2017, and post- construction data was collected in October 2019. These results compare data as pre- and post-construction events. In 2017, at total of 164 individuals were observed, and in 2019, a total of 282 individuals were observed. The result illustrated a 72 percent increase in aquatic organism counts. Diversity of species also increased across all samples from 2017 to 2019.

above left This segment of Bolton Branch was prioritized for restoration because it is a class II coldwater trout stream directly below Shenandoah National Park. Restoration was proposed to halt streambank erosion, improve instream habitat, and restore floodplain connection. above right The restoration approach involved channel filling, bank grading, and installation of select structures and bioengineering measures including riffles, cascades, log j-hooks, logs sills, and brush toe. Onsite resources including rock and wood were utilized for structures. Native grasses, shrubs, and trees were planted on the streambanks and riparian buffer.

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The Department of Wildlife Resources and PEC conducted monitoring for fish passage at Bolton Branch after construction to examine long-term trends in fish species abundance, biomass, and community composition. Their results indicate that overall aquatic organism passage, abundance, and diversity increased from pre-construction to post-construction. Prior to construction, a total of 164 individual fish were observed, and after, a total of 282 were observed. This result is a 72 percent increase in aquatic organism counts. Moreover, the increase in brook trout populations demonstrates an improved habitat and stream health condition. Increases downstream of the project from the ‘source’ population demonstrate the importance of what is termed the ‘rescue effect,’ where once-disconnected populations are supplemented from upstream.

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above Spring flowers bloom on Bolton Branch two growing seasons post-restoration. Purple coneflower, sunflowers, and goldenrods seen within a mix of native grasses like soft rush and Virginia wildrye.

trout restoration projects

offer a microcosm of the larger environmental effort. Small yet critical gains require long-term commitment and extensive coordination among committed, collaborative actors. The partners on this initiative have had some initial successes and hope to continue this work in the region. Restoration projects can be challenging due to the extensive coordination and effort required. Projects are highly resource-intensive, specialized, regulated, and scrutinized. Balancing ecosystem complexities with competing stakeholder goals and funding constraints is no small task. While minimizing work, or skipping steps, can offer short-term relief and may feel like an efficiency gain, it’s more important to strike a balance between short-term benefits and long-term goals. Early community engagement, planning, and proper allocation

of time and resources are critical prior to implementation. Projects that are layered, with each step building upon the previous one, help to maintain forward momentum by creating structure and organization that simplifies management, allows for adaptation, and reduces the likelihood of a major setback. Restoration work is made possible through partnerships built on common goals and trust. Each project comes with its own set of regulatory agencies, funders, environmental organizations, landowners, and local community. While diverse stakeholders expand expertise and resources, they require clear planning and proactive engagement. Groups that work in a transparent manner to define objectives and partner roles are better adapted to navigate strategies for conflict resolution and longterm engagement.

initiatives are one form of direct action that can have an impact on restoring our ecosystems and mitigating the ecological disasters of our age. The difficulties and mistakes that we may encounter are a provocation to recognize and care rather than a reason for apathy and disillusionment. We may experience a future borne of brutal adaptations. We may face significant changes, loss, and uncertainty that will take an ecological and emotional toll. And yet there will be opportunities for progress, innovation, and positive transformation. It is both possible and worthwhile regardless of the ultimate outcome or permanence to give our attention and effort to this challenge. By recognizing the intrinsic worth in our actions and experiences regardless of their longevity or eventual fate, we can deepen the connection between our own wellbeing and the health of our environment.

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Yet, even with planning and proactive engagement, partnerships can experience periods where momentum wanes, enthusiasm dwindles, and objectives become less clear. Ebbs and flows are a natural part of the life cycle. A change in leadership, evolution of partner organizations, resource constraints, and burnout are common causes. Importantly, healthy partnerships are dynamic entities committed to continuous learning and improvement. Embracing growth and transformation allows partnerships to remain relevant and effective. Our environmental future is a subject of great concern and urgency. The simplest daily act, like asking about the weather, can start a cascading mental loop. First, it’s anxiety and stress. Then it’s skepticism, distrust, and sweeping generalizations to oversimplify the complexity. The future is uncertain and likely to be imperfect. But community-led

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We may experience a future borne of brutal adaptations. We may face significant changes, loss, and uncertainty that will take an ecological and emotional toll. And yet there will be opportunities for progress, innovation, and positive transformation. It is both possible and worthwhile regardless of the ultimate outcome or permanence to give our attention and eﬀort to this challenge.

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Cinderhella by Zoey Laird

hat day, the air smelled of fire. The

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sun ate at life and made us squint. Our vision, once whole, frayed around the edges. The city’s trees could not protect us from the heat.

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s usual, I had somewhere to be, and I had to get there urgently. We all did. We moved along the conveyor belt of seething concrete. I kept my gaze down, my neck tucked in like a bird who hadn’t yet flown the nest. Our steps were even and polite, so we did not have to look up. I wouldn’t have, except for the wet footprint. I stopped. The concrete was already disappearing the footprint, evaporating from the outside in. There was another one, and another, and a mourning dove, following the footprints too.

oo coo, the dove called, and flapped its wings.

y eyes flew to a pair of bare feet, farther up the street. She was standing there, so impossibly wet, a desert mirage. Her little black dress clung to her body. She held a single black stiletto. Rivulets of water ran down her forehead, legs, like she was an underground spring that sprung a leak. Nobody had time to notice her, but I needed

water. The bird and I were two thirsty creatures drawn to an oasis. I came to the last pair of footprints and she turned around, closer than strangers get.

“

I’ve been walking a long time,” she said.

I“

didn’t know what to say.

“

I had to haul my black ass this whole way. Nobody even offered to give me a ride.”

he mourning dove splashed its wings in the small puddle at her feet. She wiped a current running across her face.

I’m fine,” she said. “I just got to get out of this dress.”

e stood in front of the new apartment complex with a banner out front. “Leasing Now,” it said, above the image of a thin, light-skinned couple, playing with their French bulldog puppy. Did she live around here? I didn’t think so. She’d turned her back, singing softly.

took the train home, to the outskirts of the city. We rolled past tall buildings, and the kudzu crept higher with each stop, overtaking all. Power lines connected giant green thumbs where poles used to be. The horizon was an orange sun falling into the undulating kudzu sea. Cars floated between small concrete islands of graffiti.

ow that we’d made eye contact, I couldn’t disconnect. He didn’t blink, hopping from seat to seat, back and forth across the aisle. It was hypnotic weaving. Then he was across from me, and I faced the hum of his electric blue eyes, like a bug-killing light. His jawline sawed as he ground his teeth. His nostrils trembled when he sniffed, sharply. Any excitement in my body fizzled.

P “ I

rince Charming wasn’t attracted to me. He was high. I adopted an understanding posture. Poor man, I thought. Out of his mind.

What do you think the meaning of life is?” he asked.

sighed and nodded pleasantly, still unable to break from his unblinking eyes. I said something about the importance of love. He didn’t seem to be listening, like he was listing off prepared questions.

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Are you sure you’re ok?” I called after her. She stopped in the brick laid archway of the graveyard, silhouette framed by water vapor. She raised both her arms above her head and kept them there, with her back to me. She was waiting for someone to pull the dress off. Did she want me to? I had to go, and besides, what if she was crazy, or dangerous? I looked down. Her footsteps were gone.

was tired, staring out the window and thinking about her. We were all tired, and busy, our bodies folded into our devices. I felt an itch, a buzzing at my periphery. Someone was staring at me. I looked up and immediately recognized him. We would all recognize him. Not by his name but his role—he played Prince Charming, and it was surprising he noticed me.

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“

If I ruled the world,” she sang. “Black diamonds and pearls . . .” I recognized the tune, and I wanted to tell her, but she was walking away. The mourning dove was flying low across a parking lot, towards the entrance to a graveyard, and she followed it. The graveyard was full of old stones and older trees, oddly situated in the center of a residential and commercial district. The only patch of land that couldn’t legally be razed for the sake of modern living. I remembered that I had to get to where I was going and quick.

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““ “

What’s the nature of good and evil?”

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Inside us all,” I said. He paused to lick his lips, nervously.

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What if,” he started, and leaned forward. He tore off his heavy backpack and threw it on the next seat.

hat’s when I saw, stuffed in the top, between zippers, the heel of a black stiletto. “What if you did something bad?” I stood up and grabbed the rail to steady myself. Though there were other people on the train car, I felt trapped, alone with Prince Charming.

H I“

e went on, eyes lit up, “I took acid and I thought it would be spiritual . . .” glanced at the heel. I wanted to grab it, pull it out of the pack. Where did you get that,” I said, pointing, but he wasn’t listening.

“ “

. . . I just met my darkness, man.” What did you do?” I asked, with urgency.

y stop was coming up soon. I had to know. He shook his head, and finally let his eyes drop to the floor, releasing me. I moved quick, and there it was in my hand. It was her missing shoe. His head snapped up, and the bug light went out. Zap. I hid the stiletto behind me, backing towards the door.

“ “T “H “T

It’s dark in there, man,” he said, one hand running through his blond hair. Where?”

he train pulled into my station. In seconds, he got so close I saw red in the whites of those blue lights.

Real dark!”

e was yelling now. I wanted to go home. Black!”

“

he doors opened. So dark in there, it’s black!”

held the stiletto to my heart, and I ran.

hen it was over just as suddenly. Though cooler after the rain, the air stayed heavy like smoke in my lungs. In hazy, gray light, glowing faintly, I walked towards the graveyard, in a stream of couples from the new apartment complex, and their puppies. What would they do if they found her, naked and barefoot? Call the cops? I crossed the parking lot and passed underneath the brick laid archway. The careful landscaping of the graveyard was a fresh wasteland; fallen leaves separated from each other by weak stems, like hands that couldn’t be held. The greatest casualty was a mature oak tree, brutally halved mid-trunk. The oak was bent backwards over a grave.

CB CW oo, coo.

eside the dress perched the mourning dove, the only one watching. My hands hesitated.

oo, coo.

as the dove encouraging or warning me? I picked up the dress and shook it out. The fabric was dry, though the oak’s wood was heavy with rain. It was undeniably the same dress she’d had on, without a trace of wetness. Its placement looked like an offering on an altar. She must have been coming back for it, so carefully laid in the crux of the tree’s collapse, like a secret inside the trunk, exposed by the fall. I folded it and put it back.

“

Our mother,” her mother? Maybe she planted the oak tree. No, that tree was older than either of us, and it should have lived on. It should have, but. “We’ll walk right up to the sun, hand in hand,” there was that song again. It sounded

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took refuge in the lobby of the new apartment complex and watched through floor to ceiling glass. Meteorologists failed to predict the storm. The wind demanded submission. Limbs that did not submit were torn off and thrown away. Bodies that would not bend were broken. I pictured her out there, with her arms raised. Was she naked now, splashing in puddles with the mourning dove?

“

Our mother,” the headstone read, and whoever’s mother she was, she died too soon. Above her, the oak’s insides were still thrumming with energy, with the lives this tree supported. I peered into the body. Placed there, in the fulcrum of the split, was a folded black garment. Her little black dress.

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rince Charming didn’t chase me. The next day, I took the shoe into the city. I carried it in one hand down the sidewalk, just as she had. I looked at people’s faces, hoping she’d see me. I listened for the song she sang, and as I approached the graveyard, the rain started.

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like her, so I grabbed the shoe and swiveled around, but there were only squirrels in the grass, foraging the oak’s green, premature acorns.

he sky smoldered a darker gray. The rain extinguished all traces of burning. I took a few steps backward, the mourning dove’s head cocked to the side. I stood in the middle of the brick walkway, in a small river of storm runoff. A woman and her poodle passed in front of me, stepping to avoid the water.

“ “S

They found a girl tied to a tree, dead out here.”

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Excuse me?”

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I G

he pulled her poodle farther downriver.

“

You have to be careful. It’s not the same place after dark.”

couldn’t tell if she was speaking to me, or to someone through her wireless earphones. She floated away. The mourning dove opened its wings, and we both started moving with the current, deeper into the graveyard, past the oak tree. raves grew sparser and harder to read, inscriptions crossed with muscadine, trumpet creepers, and ivy vines. The bricks of the walkway became irregular, here and there, following the water on a dying trail. Then the bricks stopped and the dove flew inside an impenetrable front of growth and shadow.

didn’t know the graveyard extended so deep, or grew so wildly. The river flowed into where the dove had flown, and my feet were pulled on by the current. I clutched the shoe tight and pushed through, keeping my head down, until I felt a break in the branches.

e were in a small opening, a hollow. The dove congregated among cardinals, finches, jays, all types of birds. They feasted on fallen fruits of the storm. Oak, poplar, maple, and mimosa trees grew strong alongside their seedlings, encircling the hollow. The small river stopped running here, and was absorbed into the earth. I could smell the black dirt. There were no grave markers in the ground, but the hollow was reverent.

he abundant life, hidden within the order of the graveyard, felt like a memorial. I thought about what the poodle woman said. Could this be where—“We’ll walk right up to the sun, we won’t land.” I crouched low with the birds and held my breath. I laid the shoe down on the wet earth. The form of a young woman appeared in the trees. She came towards me, slowly. I stood up and she was so close; I saw parts of her in shadow—half her face, the strap of her dress, her hip bone.

he moved in darkness and for a moment, her presence was full. Then she was leaving the hollow, but I hadn’t yet told her I liked that song too.

“ “

Wait,” I said. “Are you—“ and I started to follow. She raised one arm in a half shrug without turning around.

If the shoe fits,” she said, and laughed. I glanced down for the stiletto in the undergrowth, but by that time she was gone. I waited in the hollow, in total black. I thought she might reappear. She never did, and neither did the song. I lifted my head to the sky and listened.

oo coo.

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Play Our Way to Utopia Nick Lyell Solarpunk Surf Club

“

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getting over people’s fears

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of rethinking private property is going to be really tricky.” This was not a sentence I had expected to come from my father-in-law, but there we were—having a collaborative, constructive, sometimesfunny, sometimes-serious family holiday conversation about dismantling borders. We were playing Solarpunk Futures, a tabletop game I co-created with artist collective Solarpunk Surf Club. The members of our collective are far from the only ones who see revolutionary potential in games. An incredible recent flourishing of indie video and tabletop games attests to this shared impulse—games like Sunraise, Half-Earth Socialism, The Deep Forest, Bloc by Bloc, and Space Cats Fight Fascism to name only a few. Still, the ability of gameplay to immediately subvert the ingrained capitalist realism of my in-laws left me astonished. Solarpunk Futures is a storytelling game where players imagine pathways to a desirable future by collaboratively overcoming real-world challenges. By assuming they are already in utopia and merely remembering their Ancestor’s struggle, players implement a planning strategy called backcasting and can transcend “the idea that what currently exists must necessarily exist,” which Murray Bookchin described as “the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.”

Play is a low-stakes and often-social form of creative expression. Games are simply a more structured, ludic version of play as opposed to more freeform, paidiac play. In our patriarchal capitalist society, play is denigrated and suppressed in adults—and increasingly in children, too. This is especially true for adult men who may only allow themselves to “play” war in video games. This isn’t merely a cultural problem but a result of the real and ongoing enclosures of time and labor into maximum profit for the owners of capital, alongside the simultaneous atomization of individuals from interdependent communities. Any play we are allowed to engage in is often associated with the “gamification” of our labor. People cannot be reduced to robots of capitalist production, though. We always find a way to express our needs through play. Sports, tabletop games, and video games are a few examples of this. Under capitalism, these expressions of human needs are transubstantiated into one-way, transactional fandoms that enrich EA, Disney, or the billionaire owners of sports franchises. In this framework, games become tools for subjugation, coercion, or reinscribing oppressive logics. Though Monopoly was originally a satire, it was promptly reinterpreted as sincere. Many contemporary games are settler-colonial, nationalist-imperialist, or explicit military propaganda and recruitment tools—such as Settlers of Catan, Risk, and Call of Duty, respectively. In light of the consumptive nature of play in a capitalist society, many committed organizers experience guilt over simple pleasures that feel like excessive indulgence while others suffer.

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communal visions of the future, practice adaptable responses to existing material conditions, anticipate challenges, and explore exciting, anti-dystopian possible futures and the processes to get there. Sitting around the table with my family that night, we were doing more than just telling stories. We were challenging each other in good-faith and constructive ways: “The plant medicine work that your Ancestor did helped free people up from employer-based healthcare in order to take more risks in the labor movement my Ancestor was organizing so that both had more of a systemic impact.” We also discussed strategies that didn’t work: “My Ancestor was a big advocate of Esperanto as a common language to break down borders, not that it went anywhere [laughter].” We identified combinations of tools and values that could be a part of small steps toward a free and caring society: hackers disrupting border control; ecosystem stewardship as sites of cross-border solidarity; and the linkages of mutual aid, care-work, and labor organizing. The “Tool” cards—adaptable to a variety of contexts but firmly rooted in revolutionary traditions (e.g., “General Strike,” “Community Land Rights,” “Direct Democracy”)—guide emergent possibilities for old and new revolutionaries alike. All of this was discussed among family members who don’t identify as leftists of any stripe. What’s more, our conversation was fun and energizing. The seeds of a different future. Solarpunk Futures helped turn what could have otherwise been a strident debate about borders into something constructive. The mere assumption of a utopian future allows players to let their guards down and break out of the realism that often characterizes our ordinary lives. By exploring the future through the contexts of gameplay and storytelling, we can create conditions where otherwise-unthinkable radical conversations can blossom.

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As Bakunin said, “Freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice.” Yet, a long tradition on the left has held that joy needs to be integral to our struggles—a sentiment echoed in Emma Goldman’s oft-quoted quip, “If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution.” We must shed the skin of toxic martyrdom, guilt, and shame that characterized the old world. There is an ethical, prefigurative case to be made for allowing free individuals to express the full range of their creativity through play. There is also a tactical case to be made when considering how we achieve a liberated society. When animals play, it serves two important evolutionary purposes: education and social bonding. Games and play serve the same function in humans. If we are to win the fight against all forms of oppression, it will require mass political education and the cultivation of deep, solidaristic social bonds. Exploring possible scenarios through play, building trust and understanding among your community, and elaborating inspirational visions are all critically important elements of the transformative work that evolving material conditions require. We are not suggesting that revolution will be all fun and games. Understanding the historically grounded nature of capitalism and engaging with on-the-ground political organizing are also critical components of revolutionary praxis. Nevertheless, before we can overturn the horrors of capitalism, we need to motivate a great many people to move from the sedentary position of hopeless spectators and tepid reformists to a place where envisioning a desirable, viable, achievable world is possible—not one person’s armchair utopia but a democracy of utopias. I was excited to see Solarpunk Futures guide my family to think expansively about the future and where our agency lies both during and after the game. Gameplay helped us build solidarity, inspire commitment to

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In addition to the print available in this magazine on the following pages, Solarpunk Futures is currently available for free print-and-play download at thefuture.wtf.

Instructions—

01. The Ancestors The social ecological storytelling game where you and your friends build a better world.

Each Assembly Member draws one Ancestor and one Value card. Share each Ancestor’s name, brief background, and the Value that guided them to struggle for a better world.

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02. The Challenge Draw one Challenge card as a group. Each Assembly Member describes what they remember of the Challenge: why it was so daunting and why it conflicted with their Ancestor’s value.

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03. Building the New World Each Assembly Member draws two Tool cards. Set a five-minute timer for the group to write down how each Ancestor first approached the Challenge. When the timer is up, share.

04. Remembrance Collectively tell the story of how the Ancestors came together to overcome the Challenge. The game ends when everyone agrees that the Ancestors have been honored for their struggle.

THE ASSEMBLY FOR THE FUTURE’S REPORT TO THE

FREE EARTH ARCHIVE

01. The Ancestors

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My Ancestor’s name was ________________________ and something remarkable about their background was _________________________ ________________________________________________________. The Value of _____________________ was important to them because ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________.

02. The Challenge

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Before our people overcame the Challenge of __________, I remember ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ The Challenge conﬂicted with my Ancestor’s Value because _________ ________________________________________________________.

03. Building the New World When my Ancestor initially addressed the Challenge using the Tools of __________________ and __________________, they ﬁrst began by ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________. When __________ found out what my Ancestor was doing, they tried to stop them by ______________________________________________. This meant my Ancestor had to take the following risk: _____________ ________________________________________________________. In these initial efforts, my Ancestor was successful in ______________ ________________________________________________________. Yet, more work was necessary to fully overcome the Challenge because ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________.

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Each Assembly Member will fill out this report throughout the Remembrance ceremony.

04. Remembrance When my fellow Assembly member’s Ancestor, ____________ , met my Ancestor, they worked together to ______________________________ ________________________________________________________. Their work was harder than they originally thought it would be because ________________________________________________________. Yet, our Ancestors rallied to overcome this by ____________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________. Have we honored our Ancestors for their struggle? What kind of utopia did your Ancestors build? Share at thefuture.wtf/report

Scan the above portal to access easily printable blank reports to send to the Free Earth Archive. For the full gameplay booklet, visit thefuture.wtf

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ACKCA STING is a technique to produce scenarios for rehearsing life in the future. In Solarpunk FutureS, play begins from the perspective of a desirable, ecosocial future in which the major crises of our time have already been overcome. Players then use backcasting to collectively “remember” the stories of how their Ancestors built such a social ecological utopia. The power of backcasting lies not only in breaking out of capitalist realism and avoiding the banal extrapolation of present trends into ever more dystopian imaginaries, but also in its facilitating human-scale, microcosmic experiences of a more free and regenerative way of life. These experiences, in turn, allow players to reflect on their lives beyond the game, and the actions they may take in the present to bring about the future they desire.

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“T here is the arrow, the running river, without which there is no change, no progress, or direction, or creation. And there is the circle or the cycle, without which there is chaos, meaningless succession of instants, a world without clocks or seasons or promises.” – Ursula K. Le Guin

ODIFIED CO NSENSUS is a decision-making process of ensuring all

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1. Discuss

Share ideas freely and ensure everyone’s voice is heard before making any proposals.

If, after discussion, no consensus is achieved, a majority vote may be used.

5. Adapt

In the case of an objection, the whole group searches for adaptations to achieve consensus. Ask questions to make sure the nature of the objection is fully understood, then make modifications to the original proposal in order to satisfy the terms of the objection. Once adaptations have been made, return to Step 3.

2. Propose

Put forward a particular idea for the group’s consideration in order to make a decision and/or take action.

6. Vote (if needed)

3. Test

Rather than taking a vote, ask if anyone objects to a proposal. Common ways to test for consensus are by asking, is this good enough for now? Or, is this safe enough to try? If there are no objections, then consensus is achieved.

4. Object

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────────────────

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opinions are heard while no one feels strongly against any group decision. Consensus here does not necessarily mean “ full agreement,” but consent, as in “no objections.” In Solarpunk FutureS, decisions are made through this collective and nonhierarchical process, thus subverting the traditional role of a “Game Master” found in tabletop role-playing games. Modified consensus cultivates the conditions for collective, rather than individual, utopian imagining by offering a low-stakes opportunity to practice direct democratic decision-making. These decisions are made within relationships of epistemological equality, wherein each player wields an equal influence in shaping the narrative.

Anyone can object to a proposal if they feel strongly against it. If there is an objection, proceed to Step 5.

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We need to build people power to achieve our utopia. First, we must develop our collective understanding of the Challenges we face.

Is it utopian? Most importantly, the Challenge needs to be utopian in its resolution. Realists should shake their heads at the idea that it can be resolved. Players should raise their eyebrows at the audacity of their Ancestors to take on such an intractable problem. Once you have seen a wave that beautiful, the whole sea looks different.

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What is the material impact of this abstraction? Abstractions and hyperrealities like Capitalism, heteropatriarchy, and climate change are examples of waves that are too big to catch for most players. To operate at a manageable scale, focus on immediate effects of these concepts. What is one way in which the concept has material impacts on the people you hope to play with?

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Make Your Own Challenge

Use this guide to make your own Challenge for Solarpunk Futures by defining one of the many ravenous, cancerous heads of the Capitalist hydra.

Will my group of players accept the premise? The game exists to stretch all of our collective imaginations, so it’s important that no players feel compelled to play sarcastically or attempt to sabotage others. You don’t have to all agree on the best way to ride the wave, but it helps to not run into each other. Name and define the Challenge so that players from varying backgrounds can continue to “suspend their disbelief.” This guideline changes based on who is playing.

Is it specific, but interconnected? A good surfer knows how waves reinforce and interfere with each other. Solving any one Challenge should force players to reckon with many of the other heads of the Capitalist hydra.

Make Your Own Challenge

Jove kept an herbal garden and always learned from others about medicines while working their garden to heal the land around them. Some evenings, they performed Burlesque in a small community variety show which helped them process their anxieties, fears, and joys with other performers and with the audience.

02. Value Card: Conviviality

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01. Ancestor Card: Healer

Deforestation was so challenging because the front-line of it was often the poorest, landless people making what wages they could to survive. Jove saw that deforestation would only continue to displace people’s homes, sacred places, watersheds, and lifeways, and so knew if they took conviviality seriously, they must do something about the clearcutting plans threatening their local forest.

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03. Tool Card: Library

Jove began where they lived, and decided to take direct action, to help the forest defend itself and to aid the forest to make it more sacred. They uploaded all of their favorite books into many usb sticks, and then turned those usb sticks into tree spikes. They spiked their forest trees. Though they were hidden, they remained accessible to anyone with a usb cable who takes their time to find one. That person was then encouraged to take and read some of Jove’s favorite books, but also to add some of their own. In this way the library was a living, growing act of communal care that rewarded the patient and the observant, the same as the forest.

e er Th

f the st o

movement kept o n, b ut t hey knew they

04. Tool Card: Community Meals

Once the library was in place, Jove hosted community meals in the forest to bring people in, to teach them about the medicines growing wild all around them, and to forage for food. They also brought in their performance troop to participate and entertain. Surreptitiously, they made sure to invite all of the timber workers to these events as well to attempt to create an alliance with them in support of their ongoing unionization efforts. When the timber company found out, they tried to get their workers to rip the trees out, but amid the ongoing union contract, they did not want to risk themselves on potentially spiked trees. The company then pressured the police to have Jove arrested for eco-terrorism and to identify her library spikes. were goin est to win . . . g to need allies beyond their for

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Cut out the Challenge, Tool, Value, and Ancestor cards from the following pages to enjoy Solarpunk Futures with family, friends, strangers, and enemies.

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163 CHALLENGE CARDS

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166 CHALLENGE CARDS

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167 CHALLENGE CARDS

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170 TOOL CARDS

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174 TOOL CARDS

SOLARPUNK FUTURES

175 TOOL CARDS

DOWSING YONDER

176 ECOFUTURISM

MERGOAT MAG

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178 TOOL CARDS

SOLARPUNK FUTURES

179 TOOL CARDS

DOWSING YONDER

180 ECOFUTURISM

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182 TOOL CARDS

SOLARPUNK FUTURES

183 TOOL CARDS

DOWSING YONDER

184 ECOFUTURISM

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185

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186 VALUE CARDS

SOLARPUNK FUTURES

187 VALUE CARDS

DOWSING YONDER

188 ECOFUTURISM

MERGOAT MAG

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190 VALUE CARDS

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191 VALUE CARDS

DOWSING YONDER

192 ECOFUTURISM

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193

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194 VALUE CARDS

SOLARPUNK FUTURES

195 VALUE CARDS

DOWSING YONDER

196 ECOFUTURISM

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197

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198 ANCESTOR CARDS

MERGOAT MAG

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200 ANCESTOR CARDS

Happy futuring! SOLARPUNK FUTURES 201 ANCESTOR CARDS

In solidarity, Mergoat Magazine and Solarpunk Surf Club

DOWSING YONDER

202 ECOFUTURISM

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VOL.1 ISSUE 4

203

ECOFUTURISM

Vol. 1 Nº 4

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ISSN

2835-690X