I returned mid-March to the site of my east-central Ohio Land Legacy Project, an 1,100 property that nineteenth-century agriculture brought to ruin. Poor practices led to wholesale erosion, impoverished land, and abandoned farms. Mid-twentieth century strip mining led to more “scars upon the land,” perhaps, in retrospect for this property, opening the door to reclamation and a return to a viable agricultural enterprise. The owners manage the property for cattle and recreation, and view the land as a legacy for grand children and many generations beyond. I previously introduced readers to the project in May 2018: https://stevejonesgbh.com/2018/05/29/idyllic-pastoral-earth-stewardship-surprise-exemplar/

I completed my field work and family interviews in March. As I prepare my final report for the family, allow me to share with you some observations, reflections, and photos.

Two New Days Dawning

I stayed three nights and devoted three days to the tasks at hand. Never one to permit dawn to escape my notice, I captured early dawn (lower left) and later the sun’s first peek above the horizon (below right) on the first morning. Crepuscular rays grace the upper right of the sunrise image. I snapped both photos from the lakeside cabin where I stayed, an extraordinary place to nest while “working” on such a professionally fulfilling project. Somehow, the word “work” implies something in the way of drudgery, challenge, and unpleasant effort. Nothing could be further from the truth. I found instead a high return in satisfaction and reward.

Day two dawned with comparable glory, first early dawn and then sunrise. Who could ask for anything more. I’ll repeat a John Muir quote I applied just last week in my Post on lecturing at Bryn Athyn College. One hundred thirty years ago, Muir observed, When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty. Imagine 1.7 square miles of abused agricultural land further despoiled by strip-mining, and now rehabilitated to the point of this old forester seeing it representing an infinite storm of beauty!

I would have depicted a third morning had it dawned with other than full overcast, blustery winds, and snow flurries.

Panorama of “Worn-out” Land

The two late afternoon views below, both from the residence patio, are to the north (left) and east (right), providing a good sense of the lay of the land. To the north, the property abuts adjoining land within a few hundred yards. The property extends beyond the distant woods line to the east.

Hard to imagine a 100-foot high-wall dropping away about where the fence row is now!

Evidence of Past Abuse and Signals of Recovery

Just beyond that east side wooded ridge, the non-reclaimed, 50-foot high-wall (below left) reveals the harsh character of the stripping that once came within 100 feet of the residence. This high-wall predates even Ohio’s earliest reclamation regulations. Frankly, I am glad that it remains untouched. Without it, I would have no window into the sandstone, shale, mudstone, and occasional limestone strata underlying the original surface. Nor would I have some gauge on the pace of natural healing. The stripping stopped here because the overburden to coal seam thickness ratio exceeded an economic threshold. At some fifty years, the high-wall is collapsing into the cut basin. Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara; lower right), among the region’s earliest spring ephemerals, is sending up a few blossoms, which precede its leaves by several weeks. By  the end of March, the scree slopes would have been dressed in the gold of thousands of blooms.

The high-wall and basin extending to the south is shallower and nearly grown over with advancing forest. Nature knows how to handle disturbance, whether natural or machine-induced. Imagine perhaps a few hundred years from now, when even a discerning forester would struggle to interpret the anthro-geomorphology that led to the then current landscape.

A Big Surprise Hidden to My August 2018 Explorations

When I walked and studied the property last August, I viewed the 60-year-old forest on the non-reclaimed debris heap above the cabin with amazement. Here is my preliminary summary from August 2018:

Stripped in about 1960, the heap has healed remarkably well [An August note to myself: I need to find out from the current owner what if anything might have been done to revegetate or return topsoil. What did the 1947 regulations actually require?] My quick circuit tallied 14 tree species: sweetgum; ash; red maple; silver maple; elm; red oak; sycamore; black cherry; hickory; walnut; hawthorn; black locust; American beech; yellow poplar. [Note — I found big tooth aspen in March, bringing the total to fifteen tree species.] Were any of these planted? I cored a red oak and counted 58 annual rings, confirming the 1960 or so strip mine abandonment. I am astounded by tree species richness, stand density, and dominant tree heights. Granted, the stand is variable, ranging from excellent stocking to scattered individuals. Site quality also varies dramatically. Dominant tree height approaches 80 feet in places… 50 feet in others. All in all, however, I would not have anticipated the expressed level of recovery and rehabilitation.

I exposed a surface soil profile near the summit. I struggled to dig even to eight inches. Coarse, sharply-fractured stone dominates the profile. The fragments are generally less than two inches, including far more fines than I had expected. The forest floor comprises a surprisingly thick organic layer and leaf litter. Roots are exploiting the entire profile. A distinct A-horizon suggests excellent soil development and organic matter incorporation. Soil formation is underway.

The debris heap photo below is obviously from March during the dormant season, which from this angle I would never have guessed is anything but a natural forest on undisturbed soil. Without understory vegetation to limit my view into the forest at eye level, evidence of intentional revegetation leaped into view. How could I have missed the obvious last August?

I found row after row of planted sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) running vertically from bottom to top of the heap. I found no other species in rows. Interestingly, the natural range of sweetgum does not extend into east-central Ohio, growing naturally only in the very southern part of the state along the Ohio River.

The landowner, a gentleman who is a student of his land (a scholar in many regards), had likewise not noticed the rows.  From the debris heap summit, I found parallel planted rows lining the old access trail down the south hillside to the marsh just west of the cabin. For those not familiar with sweetgum seed pods, see below right. The owner indicated that Hannah Coal had mined this particular site. He will determine what records might exist to tell us more about the tree planting plan and action.

I have observed multiple times that every thing in Nature has a story to tell. Overlay the hand (and machines) of man and the stories multiply.

Flourishing Renewal

Still at the debris heap, I found a 28-inch diameter (4.5 feet above the ground) red oak (below left) at the summit. What is its origin? An acorn fortuitously cached by a squirrel at a spot where machinery had deposited an especially rich and thick dressing of topsoil during whatever reclamation transpired? Perhaps the tree planting crew had been directed to plant only the sweetgum in straight rows on the steeper side-slopes, and randomly plant a mix of other species on the flatter summit. Maybe they planted the oak seedling in a spot where the dibble found deeper soil among the rocks in the debris pile. Sixty years ago as machinery stripped and then moved on leaving the debris heap, the now forty-inch diameter hickory (below right) stood witness at the southeast base of the heap, already at least half-a-century old. Why did operators not disturb it? Did it provide welcome shade for workers? Like the red oak and the planted sweetgum, the hickory has a story of human and natural actions.

Again, Nature knows disturbance… and has evolved over eons the tools to persevere, recover, and flourish. Five hundred years ago Leonardo Da Vinci observed, “Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.” Nature knows disturbance!

Multiple Use — Wildlife

This wasted, scarred, and desecrated land is not at all what many would have presumed based upon its history of strip mining. The pond and marsh (below) lie just west of the cabin. Everything within sight derived from stripping and some degree of reclamation. Firewood cut from regenerated forest warms the cabin and fuels the grill. Beavers populate the property and their dam (lower right) supplements pool depth.

The landowner permits trapping for family, friends, and acquaintances. One such trapper a week before my March visit harvested these two beavers.

Deer are abundant on the property. I often saw groups of 3-7 individuals. The family issues permission to hunt to selected friends and family.

Multiple Use — Oil and Gas

Dark afternoon clouds accent the gas well-pad mid-property. Gas lines, access roads, and worker movement and activity complicate cattle operations, yet the above and below ground operations are generally compatible.

Multiple Use — Cattle

Cattle production stands as the primary commercial land use, yet I submit that the overall principal management tenet is Earth stewardship. The equipment barn and cattle handling facility occupy the over-size utility building that served the strip mining company that the family owned prior to starting the current cattle business. Haylage to hold the cattle until spring green-up lies encased in plastic below right.

These cattle await their afternoon repast near the barn.

Multiple Use — Recreation

I took this photo from the east, looking westward toward the cabin and the forest atop the debris heap. Do you see any evidence of strip mining? Had someone dropped me blindfolded at the lake’s eastern end, I would not have known. Yet the 17-acre lake is a strip mine product as is every other facet of the within-view landscape. This part of the property provides robust recreational escape for the family. The pavilion in the foreground of the sunrise photos served as the location for the wedding of one son. I relished my August 2018 and March 2019 nights at the cabin.

As I accepted my bachelors of forestry degree in 1973, the US government was drafting and debating federal strip mine regulations and laws. The President signed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977. I celebrated because I had seen first-hand the scarred central Appalachians near my home in western Maryland. I had no idea that 46 years after graduation that I would be performing a Land Legacy evaluation on a property a hundred miles from my home, leading me to recognize that the line between devastation and remediation can be fuzzy. Unintended consequences aren’t always negative. That the initial strip mining devastation on this project property was more land salvation than ruin. Things aren’t always what they appear to be.

Our role as Earth stewards begins with recognition and embrace of obligation, carries through commitment to action, and results in generations-long pledges to retain and improve some small corner of the world through wisdom, knowledge, and hard work. I interviewed the owners and all four of their adult children. Without exception, the family sees this unit of Mother Earth as a legacy for many generations yet to come. I feel truly privileged and honored to help tell the tale of their love and devotion to the land and its future.

Life Lessons and Wisdom from Developing an Ohio Land Legacy Story

Louis Bromfield, an Ohio-born novelist and playwright who devoted his life to rehabilitating the soil on his old worn-out farm (Malabar) near Mansfield, summarized a similar zeal and ethic:

The adventure at Malabar is by no means finished… The land came to us out of eternity and when the youngest of us associated with it dies, it will still be here. The best we can hope to do is to leave the mark of our fleeting existence upon it, to die knowing that we have changed a small corner of this earth for the better by wisdom, knowledge and hard work.

I’ll offer broadly and succinctly that embracing and practicing Earth stewardship is reward and fulfillment in and of itself. I discerned four distinct lessons from developing this Post:

• Nature knows disturbance — learn to harness her wisdom.
  
• Very few things are as they first appear.
  
• So much in Nature lies hidden within.
  
• Earth stewardship is a multi-generational commitment of passion and action.
  

Thoughts and Reflections

I wrote my books (Nature Based Leadership (2016) and Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017)) and the two scheduled for 2019 (Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature and Natural Elixir: Lifting Your Life through Nature’s Inspiration) to encourage all citizens to recognize and appreciate that every lesson for living, learning, serving, and leading is either written indelibly in or is powerfully inspired by Nature. Both published books are available on Amazon and other online sources.

Again, here are the four succinct lessons I draw from this Blog Post:

• Nature knows disturbance — learn to harness her wisdom.
  
• Very few things are as they first appear.
  
• So much in Nature lies hidden within.
  
• Earth stewardship is a multi-generational commitment of passion and action.

Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire and Reward you!

If only more of us viewed our precious environment through my own filters. If only my mission and vision could be multiplied untold orders of magnitude:

Colleagues Craig Cassarino and Dr. Jean Meade and I visited an east-central Ohio cattle operation owned by friends and associates whom Craig has known for two decades. Because we three are collaborating on a Nature-based, sustainable agriculture-themed education project near Morgantown, West Virginia (Jean’s location), Craig wanted Jean and me to see the property and meet the landowners. Craig flew into Pittsburgh (90 minutes to Morgantown) from New Hampshire to coincide with my travels to the area. We drove over to Flushing, Ohio first thing Thursday, May 17. At this stage I will not reveal the owners’ identity. I want to coordinate telling their incredible Land Legacy Story more fully with them. Theirs is a story meriting recognition and celebration.

Premium Japanese cattle breeds are among Craig’s many interests. He is the catalyst (shall we say “cattle-yst”?) responsible for this operation incorporating Akaushi, what one web site called one of “the most outrageously marbled, incredibly decadent beef on the planet.” The cinnamon-brown bulls below are Akaushi. The operation’s other bull breed is a more common black Simmental, bred on this operation with Black Angus heifers. A Simmental bull grazes beyond the Akaushi in this photo. The family’s home sits atop the hill. A sight (and site) of pastoral splendor, accented and back-dropped by the rising cumulus.

Yet 35 years ago a 100-foot strip-mine highwall would have greeted this view of the home. No lush green grass… just bare rock and debris, something like the stock photo below. The cattle operation family metamorphosed from a family-owned coal mining firm. Both husband and wife worked for the coal company, beginning in the mid-70s. He left the family firm in 1990 for a larger nearby coal company, serving as engineer and land manager. When that company sold its 42,000 acres of inactive mined land (and inoperable non-mined land) in 1999, the couple purchased those holdings. They have since divested all but 13,000 acres. We toured the ~1,100 acres of pastureland contiguous with the home site… derived from a combination of family land (a mix of personal and family-owned coal company) and some 1999-acquired company land. The photos within this post belie the land’s strip-mine past. I believe John Denver spoke less than reverently of strip-mining in his Rocky Mountain High:

Why they try to tear the mountains down
To bring in a couple more
More people, more scars upon the land

The owners did more than the expedient and minimally expensive to meet the letter of reclamation laws. They acted consciously and deliberately as Earth stewards. Their responsible actions created a landscape of pastoral beauty and productivity. The 16-acre impoundment below supports fish, frogs, and turtles and attracts diverse mammals and birds. I took the photo from the patio of the family’s cabin.

A 50-70-foot-high spoils ridge stands behind the cabin (below left). A clear-water spring exits from the hill (below right) from a point near where I stood to take the photo of the back of the cabin and forest.

The naturally-regenerated hardwood forest would appear as growing upon undisturbed land to the uninitiated. Yet this stand regenerated on unconsolidated, piled over-burden from stripping.

That debris ridge stood already re-foresting when the company rehabilitated the surrounding stripped acreage in 1983. The rolling pastureland where the cattle stand below supports lush forage. Interestingly, native, undisturbed pastureland requires liming to support grass and forbs of this quality. The reclaimed strip-lands include limestone debris, keeping the pH high enough to obviate the need for lime application.

No obvious scars upon the land evident in the scene below, where ten Akaushi momma cows and their two-month-old calves came to greet us when we approached on the Polaris ATV.

Same for the two views below. The owners care deeply about the land… and it shows.

The owners prescriptively manage grazing to ensure healthy forage and cattle. Although I did not probe or shovel beneath the surface, I saw evidence that the site is developing true soil with deep roots and organic matter incorporation. If the landowners agree to composing a Land Legacy Story, I will bring along my soil probe and put my doctoral expertise in forest soils to work.

Nature’s Own Reclamation Methodology

As I write this post, Kilauea volcano in Hawaii is spewing lava… lava that will soon serve as raw material for rich soil as weathering (chemical, physical, and biological) acts upon it. Fact is, all of Hawaii’s land is of volcanic origin. The entire island system and its rich life resulted from severe disturbance. I recall standing at Exit Glacier near Seward, Alaska, reading the interpretive signage chronicling the glacier’s retreat over the past 50 years. Near the current ice front, raw terminal moraines of unconsolidated glacial till stand tens of feet high. At the sign marking the front five years ago, vegetation covers the deposits. By ten years ago, tree seedlings and saplings dominate. Where the glacier face stood twenty years prior, a young forest occupies the site. Nature knows disturbance. Nature pays little heed to whether the cause is human-derived or of her own work.

However, we can assist Nature’s healing and abet her amelioration processes. The Flushing, Ohio landowners returned the land to a near-natural contour. They accommodated drainage and surface water flow to resemble patterns common to this region. The company had stock-piled surface soils and reapplied them to the reclaimed landscape. They re-vegetated quickly and encouraged its growth and establishment. They are conscious of soil formation as a necessary requisite to full and long-term land health and its economic vitality. Land ownership comes with costs (e.g., taxes; access maintenance; protection from fire and trespass; fences); the owners seek a return on their continuing investment of time and resources. They seek an economically viable premium breed cattle operation. They realize that the more responsibly they steward the land, the more viable their operation.

They believe in Earth Stewardship… because it’s the right thing to do and it’s doing things right. As we drove back to Morgantown, we observed many pastures on hillsides that have never been stripped for coal. We saw far too many hillsides bearing the distinctive scars of over-grazing. Corduroy contours of cattle walkways; bare ground where the grasses and forbs no longer constitute a soil-protecting stand; resultant erosion gullies; failed stream banks. Good land practices follow simple and proven treatment sequences and actions. Excellent stewardship can yield exemplary results on land that some would describe as having been decimated, destroyed, ruined by strip-mining. We saw first-hand in Flushing that good stewardship can return such abused land to full (and perhaps better than pre-disturbance) productivity — restoring its beauty, magic, wonder, and awe. In contrast, as we returned to West Virginia, we witnessed that irresponsible treatment of undisturbed land can be a travesty of abuse, devastation, destruction, and ruination without a single bulldozer scarring the land.

Broad Lessons for Our Relationship to the Land

I will draw this essay to a conclusion by offering four relevant quotes from a conservation and land ethic giant, Aldo Leopold.

Leopold wrote in A Sand County Almanac: “All conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.” The landowners, my colleagues, and I certainly do not view the property as wilderness yet we do see it as a landscape blend of domesticated and wild. The fish, amphibians, and reptiles within the ponds do not care that their habitat is an artificial impoundment. The critters living within and near the debris-hill forest pay little heed to its origins.

Leopold also wrote that “We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” The landowners may not have referred to their operation as a community. However, they spoke of it in such reverent and respectful terms that they conveyed the same sentiment Leopold expressed. They view the land, their home, and the cattle enterprise as fully integrated… and they see themselves as one with it.

I observed earlier that the landowners reached beyond the expedient in rehabilitating the land. Leopold counseled all of us, with respect to caring for the land and its denizens, “Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” Leopold expressed these thoughts nearly 70 years ago; the Ohio land stewards have been walking the talk for at least 35 years. They have and are doing the right thing.

Even as I quote Leopold, he had his own favorite quote: “My favorite quote: The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land… In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.” May 17, we visited a property cared for by landowners who are clearly citizens of the domain they have the privilege of tending.

Note: I am available for Nature-themed motivational/inspirational speaking and writing… for NGOs, businesses, landowners, agencies, and Nature-oriented enterprises. Contact me at: steve.jones.0524@gmail.com

Land Legacy Stories: This Blog Post is an example of the approach I take to developing Land Legacy Stories, detailed tales of the relationship between caring, informed, and responsible stewards and their land… intended to extend generations forward and linking them to the past. Contact me to discuss your Land Legacy Story

My Premise and Core Belief: Every lesson for living, learning, serving, and leading is either written indelibly in or is powerfully inspired by Nature!

Responsible Earth stewardship provides a full measure of humility and inspiration, two necessary components of living life fully: