Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 26, 1995 TAG: 9502250002
SECTION: BOOK PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
They stretch through our imagination like an ancient, flowing river of rock. Once jagged peaks, now softened by time, rain and wildflowers, the Appalachian mountains begin their 2,000-mile journey rising from the verdant farmlands of central Alabama reaching northeast to the freezing waters of the Atlantic, ending as a desolate, wind-washed island north of Newfoundland. Scott Weidensaul's passionate love and deep knowledge of these mountains fires the pages of his latest book.
Created by the earthly dance of shifting tectonic plates and colliding continents, the 500-million-year old mountains have undergone epic transformations, rising and crumbling and awakening again during three separate mountain building epochs. The time-mellowed peaks we see today are the result of the last uprising about 290 million years ago. The ancient dance continues under our feet, even now, in the endless unexplainable rhythms of the earth.
Weidensaul introduces us to a region vibrant with life, a region cradling an extraordinarily rich biodiversity in its wooded arms. In ``Mountains of the Heart'' we are taken on a stunning journey into the complex and unique ecosystems of the Appalachians, from forest to stream, from bog to soaring peaks. He describes with clarity and ease each complex environment that makes up the whole.
We are introduced to the diverse inhabitants: cottontails, coyotes, foxes and red-tailed hawks who ``with perfect control, tear the sky open and leave us numbed by the beauty of it.'' We enter forests of ``nobility and grace'' that swell with tamarack, pine, fir and birch, and leave them feeling refreshed. With Weidensaul, we revel in the wildness of the Appalachians, in the sense of refuge they provide ``when the tame world gets to be too much.'' Or too little.
Never far from our consciousness, however, is a sense of foreboding. Five hundred years of European settlement have taken a tremendous toll. In the staggering history of these mountains that number is a mere whisper, but the effects, sadly, are not. Human inhabitants in these mountains are not new, with estimates from 11,000 to 40,000 years. But it was the tide of European activity that began to drastically change the face of these mountains. The insatiable desire for gold, furs, timber, minerals, and later coal, have left their destructive effects. Early records casually mention white pine forests brimming with trees topping 200 feet. Mere vestiges of these virgin forests remain: ``average times for an ancient pine: six hundred years to grow, about one hour to drop, delimb and cut into standard sixteen-foot lengths.''
The Appalachians today are still deeply affected by human dwellers. Pollution strangles streams; lumber and mineral demands and housing developments threaten the very existence of some creatures.
Weidensaul is cautious, but at times his optimism glows in spite of human carelessness and greed which have stripped and scarred these mountains. The Appalachians are resilient. They hold on. They are healing. We share his joy when he discovers something ``beyond price'' on a journey to Newfoundland: ``the knowledge that there is still one part of the Appalachians so wild and unsettled that herds of caribou can simply vanish into them, for months on end.''
Weidensaul ends his book describing a hike he took in Vermont's Green mountains with an old friend and two children. The young girls were excited, exploring flowers, spiders webs and mushrooms with the fun and laughter of youth. A new generation was learning the joy of the Appalachians. Maybe they too will learn that ``they are something worth fighting for.'' We come away feeling hope for the uncertain future of the mountains of his heart. Of our heart.
Merrill Slaven lives in Alexandria.
by CNB