Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 10, 1994 TAG: 9407180116
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ZENITH, W.VA. LENGTH: Long
Behind, scores of people, more than show up at most funerals in this isolated West Virginia community, drove in trucks and four-wheel drives up the rutted dirt road to pay their last respects. At the eulogy, his nieces read poems about the mountain where their uncle spent much of his time hunting, fishing and just being by himself.
They buried Jesse Cole in a solitary grave on the ridgetop far from anybody, dead or alive.
After the service they gathered at Jesse's house and ate the food they all had brought, because that's the way of life up in the mountain.
Like going over to the Amos farm to catch the best sunsets in West Virginia.
Like driving over the mountain to Waiteville to help a neighbor who's behind in planting.
Like drinking cold, pure spring water from the faucet or straight from the creek.
Like knowing that square of fern-covered rocks is the foundation of your daddy's old schoolhouse.
Like saying "in the mountain" because it's so much a part of you, and you a part of it, and calling businessmen from outside "suits," because they aren't.
Like not worrying about crime. Waiteville's crime blotter this year contains one item: A couple of kids broke the window and stole the pop money at the Waiteville Store, which used to be the railroad station. Even at that, the suspected vandals were from outside the community.
They say coming here, to the hills and coves of the long mountain ridge that divides West Virginia and Virginia, is like slipping back in time 100 years. Which is fine by these folks.
So when the Appalachian Power Co. in Roanoke decided to string a high-voltage transmission line through here, the mountain folks could hardly believe it. The idea is so heinous in their eyes, it's criminal.
"When I heard about it, I didn't think it would really come through. Until everybody started fighting about it," said Doris McDaniel, shaking her head as she rocked her infant granddaughter on a wooden bench at the Waiteville Store.
McDaniel lives in the old homeplace that her grandparents built, and where she was born. Her father was both a logger and a farmer, like most of the men who lived in the mountain back then.
"And we always wanted it to be beautiful like it is," she told a visitor one afternoon last week.
Russell Guess was at the store that day, too. He swears that moving back to Peters Mountain six years ago restored his health, which had been deteriorating.
During his years in military service, Russell said, "all I thought about was these mountains." Outside the store, he stood in the road and pointed to the valley he can see from his front window. Only a few miles wide, it lies between Peters Mountain and Potts Mountain, a serene stretch of rural America. It has no name, just Waiteville.
"And that's where that stinking power line's going to come, and it's going to be 180 feet and have red balls on it, and strobe lights. Now, can you imagine what that will make the valley look like?"
Soon, a handful of others had come outside, too, including Michael Haithcock.
Four months ago, Haithcock bought a 351-acre farm in the mountain. He already has the name of the place, a $400,000 investment in a lifetime dream, printed on his new checks: Coyote Mike's Cattle Ranch.
It's got it all: a native trout stream, a farmhouse with a couple of barns, lots of pasture, deer, wild turkey and a stand of old oaks that he wouldn't sell or cut for the world. He certainly doesn't want any power company to cut them down.
"It really [irritates me] that no one told me about the power line coming across my property," Haithcock said. He was at Waiteville Store last week to see about getting his electricity turned on, and ended up meeting some of the community's most vocal opponents of Apco's project.
The Border Conservancy
In between neighborly talk about who does good fence work and the merits of raising buffalo vs. cattle, Haithcock learned more about the power line and the Border Conservancy, formed last winter by Peters Mountain people in both states to fight the line.
"I know nothing about it, and I'm definitely going to the meetings and find out more," he said.
"Don't worry, I've got your address," replied Amy South, who's in charge of the group's mailing list and newsletter, then added, "We've got a new recruit."
Nothing like this has ever happened in the mountain, and the residents are doing all they can to stop it. They've driven hundreds of miles to attend public hearings during the four-year controversy. They've testified before Congress, written scads of letters and made T-shirts, bumper stickers and signs that dot a good many of the fences and front lawns around Zenith and Waiteville.
They worry about their water getting contaminated from construction and herbicides. Two of their springs, they boast, have placed first and second in the International Water Tasting Contest.
They worry that a huge transmission line, with towers more than 100 feet high, would mar the scenery and kill the modest tourism industry in the area, as well as deter retirees from moving in.
They fear their property values will drop, that the electromagnetic fields coming from the 765,000 volts zipping along the line will cause cancer and other health problems.
But above all, they fear the transmission line will tear asunder their way of life here, in the mountain.
`Come to the mountain' South and her sister, Patricia "Cookie" Cole, Uncle Jesse's nieces, will tell anyone who'll listen what the mountain means to their family and neighbors.
"I told them people in Washington, in the cement and glass and heat, `You don't know. You got to come to the mountain, and put your feet in the creek,' " Cole said. "That soothes my soul, I tell you."
And to one of the "Apco suits" that came to the mountain to talk with the local residents about the project and the utility's power of eminent domain - the authority to buy property rights from an unwilling landowner - Cole replied, "I said to him, `Only God's got eminent domain on Peters Mountain.' "
Other folks gathered at the Waiteville Store spoke of the mountain's hold on their lives:
"Anybody ought to feel it when they see it."
"You can't write it down on paper."
"The mountain, the roar - there's a roar on that mountain."
"I just think it would be like an end to life in the way we know it."
"They talk about endangered species, I tell you what - the people in those mountains are an endangered species."
A kinship with the land It was comments like these that got the attention of the Jefferson National Forest last year as it began work on an environmental impact statement. The route Apco has chosen would cross about 15 miles of the federal lands, so the utility must get permission from the forest.
By law, the Jefferson must determine what the public is most concerned about, study those issues and develop alternative routes. Along with obvious concerns about recreation areas, aesthetics, water quality, wildlife and human health, the Forest Service added another issue - a cultural attachment that residents feel to Peters Mountain.
"There is a kinship out there that people feel to the land," said Frank Bergmann, project coordinator for the Forest Service. "We couldn't really dismiss it. We felt like it was something that needed more attention. What is it? What does it mean?"
Last fall, South and Cole asked Bergmann to visit communities and meet some of the longtime residents as part of the forest's impact statement. No fewer than 20 letters, memos and faxes followed in setting up the visit.
James McNeely, a Bluefield lawyer who's been one of the most outspoken critics of the line from the start, wrote most of the correspondence for the Zenith and Waiteville opponents. He shaped it into a classic battle over the procedure behind conducting an environmental impact statement, citing federal law chapter and verse to punch holes in the agency's work.
Two dates for a visit were set, then canceled by the Forest Service because of an ice storm and severe weather. McNeely's letters got longer and angrier, calling the government workers "carpet rangers." He said Bergmann didn't have the credentials to study the cultural attachment to Peters Mountain and accused the Forest Service of trying to do a "window dressing" job on the issue with a "drive-by study" done during a single visit.
Letters from Forest Supervisor Joy Berg got shorter and cooler, with phrases such as, "As I have stated previously . . . " and "Your concerns have been noted." A visit was set a third time but almost was aborted when Bergmann indicated it would be unethical for Forest Service employees to accept lunch at the home of Cole's and South's parents. The family took it as an insult, because mountain tradition dictates that only enemies refuse to break bread with their hosts.
Bergmann immediately replied that he would be happy to accept the Coles' hospitality, and the visit finally was made.
Nothing to chance During this time, the Border Conservancy grew out of the many meetings residents held to arrange the visit, which finally took place March 5. "I'll bet they gained 10 pounds that day because they got fed three or four times," Cole said with a laugh.
Bergmann said the visit never was intended to be a full study, but simply to clarify what people wanted the Forest Service to study. Trying to capture someone's feelings about a place is new territory for the agency.
Noting that some residents said the mountain is like a mother to them, or a member of their family, Bergmann said, "We're still wrestling with that. I'm not sure we have a real good handle on it yet."
He has talked with other agency offices and the consultant who is working on the impact statement, and searched for other cases in which a project of this magnitude affected a rural mountain community.
Border Conservancy members say the government hasn't done nearly enough to really understand their attachment to the mountain. So, with money they've raised from auctions, pie suppers and dinners, they've hired a geography professor from Concord College in West Virginia to draw up some maps and reports about the area.
When it comes to their heritage, and their future, these people won't leave anything to chance. Cole, South and others are interviewing neighbors themselves, learning everything they can about the mountain that they don't already know.
South came across a poem about the mountain, signed by "Old Monroe Farmer," and copied it into the back of her parent's Bible.
Her father, David Cole, lives in Zenith, in the shadow of Peters Mountain. He often sits in his Lazy-Boy chair in the living room, looking out the front window as the hawks fly over the ridgetop where his brother Jesse is buried.
When they were young men, he and Jesse cut timber in the mountain, and farmed a little to make ends meet. Times were tight, so David Cole took a job in a steel mill in Cleveland. Every chance he got, he'd come back to the mountain with his wife and growing family. The children often cried when they had to go back to the city, where they couldn't see the stars in the night sky because of the glow of electric lights.
Cole commuted 10 hours every weekend, seven hours after they put the interstates through. In 1968, he moved back home.
"Now I can sit down here and relax and enjoy it and look at the mountain, and now they're going to string a power line across here," he said. "It'll ruin it."
"Peters Mountain" Peters Mountain high and grand In all your beauty
there you stand, near to far, you change your hue, From em'rald green to sapphire blue.
Before the age of man you, there, Arose to keep in constant care The vales and valleys down below, Through summer's sun and winter's snow.
When summer comes with bud and flower, And bees tha buzz through ev'ry hour, Then fleecy clouds go floating by As silent guests of bright blue sky.
Peters Mountain, you must know When winter comes with sleet and snow, For oft is heard your moan and sigh, For song of bird and warm July.
I love you now from olden days, With all your wildwood, winding ways When leaf was green or red and browned, Or when the snow was on the ground.
Author: Old Monroe Farmer.
by CNB