Fragments From Floyd

And now we are making our home for good on Goose Creek. We walk the trails that our feet have worn beside the creeks and along the ridges. Soon now, once again, there will be blackberries to pick behind the house from the timbered clearings where a young white pine forest grows with adolescent vigor. From the top of these hills in every season we see beyond us the grandeur of what John Muir called "a cathedral made without hands." But without protection after we're gone, it could all become nothing more than a commodity--a real estate plum to be clear-cut, then dissected into smaller and smaller tracts over the years.

This month after living here in Floyd County for four years, we're tying together the last loose ends of a conservation easement. This agreement will confer some legal imperative on future owners to keep this valley a healthy whole as they use it wisely and enjoy it as we have. And there's a larger hope to our efforts. By itself, this property here is just a small patch of sunlight. But combined with the land of adjoining neighbors who may also put their places under conservation easement, together we can preserve whole intact watersheds and unbroken stretches of forest ecosystem on the headwaters of the Roanoke River. The health of both the natural and the human community here and in our region will the better for this.

Today we walk under a canopy of a thousand trees within our boundaries. But we'll always recall those eighteen in our first tiny back yard that made us consider our relationship to and interaction with nature. Since that initial flush of ownership long ago we have become convinced that, since we are only here for a while, we are really just caretakers of land and trees, stewards of creeks and ridges. We don't own these bones and organs of nature any more than we own the air we breathe or these bodies that we use for our short time here.

These young poplar, hickory and basswood trees that we brushed past on our walk today will grow tall, and someone--perhaps our great grandchildren's children--will play in their shade or pick berries under them decades from now. They, in turn, will become the caretakers of this pleasant grove, and in that possibility, I find considerable solace and hope.

A shorter version of this essay will appear in the summer newsletter of the New River Valley Land Trust. I've offered it as a radio piece, but that slot is booked 'til October, so I thought I'd post it here. Maybe someone considering conservation protection of their family farm will find these words and be encouraged by them to take the necessary steps. -- FF