The Seductive Power of Power

by Jimmy

In my previous post, I explored the problem with short-term thinking and the need to think like a rock. I suspect part of the reason we have trouble doing this is the seductive power of power.

My Dad was a truck driver. Over his lifetime, Daddy estimates that he drove around four million miles. His Daddy owned a trucking company. With Papa’s drivers, my Dad began driving from North Carolina to California when he was about fifteen. This was before interstates, and Daddy needed blocks taped to pedals to reach them. (When I said drive, I meant drive.) My brother and I followed in Daddy’s tire tracks, so to speak, when we were around four or five years old and began taking trips with Daddy and other drivers, a practice that continued through college. I still remember the trip I took with Daddy to Florida in my cousin’s red conventional International. (My cousin owned a trucking company, too.) We hauled empty Coke cans to a Coke plant down there, then hauled chip potatoes back to New Jersey. I ate a bag of potato chips made from the potatoes we hauled. But what I remember most was my turn behind the wheel.

The truck I drove looked something like this.

Southbound, Daddy drove I-95 deep into Florida. It was around 2:00 a.m. Reflecting the truck’s lights, the white lines receded into the distance, creating the sensation of driving on a treadmill. Few other cars or trucks broke the monotony. Over the roar of the diesel, Daddy asked: “You want to drive this thing?”

“Yeah.”

“OK. I’ll set the cruise control, stand up, and you can slide in front of me and grab the wheel. See that rivet in the middle of the hood? Keep that on the white line and you’ll know you’re good. And check your mirrors. If the trailer’s outside the lines, you’ll know you’re not in the lane.” He stood up. Because the engine was mounted in front of the cab, we had room to walk around between the driver’s and passenger’s seats and the bunk beds in back, a small, travelling hotel room. I could stand up without bumping my head. I shuffled over to the driver’s seat and, careful not to bump his arm, slid into it and grabbed the wheel. Eyed the rivet and white line. Checked the mirrors. He turned off the cruise control, and I pressed the accelerator. The Cummins roared and the turbo whined as I steered that 65’ truck south. Just like that, I was driving 40,000 pounds of aluminum, steel, and fiberglass down the interstate. After I settled in, I marveled at the power. I felt huge, transformed from a skinny nineteen-year-old into a badass cowboy like Clint Eastwood, riding my horse across the prairie with an itchy trigger foot. I suddenly understood one reason Daddy loved driving so much.

We drove north the next day loaded with potatoes. The truck was heavy now—roughly 80,000 pounds. Steady traffic accompanied us. We switched seats again, and I drove for about two hours, taking great pleasure at flipping on the Jake brake (BLAAAAAPPPPPPP) and pushing cars doing 55 m.p.h. out of the left lane. Slowpokes blocking traffic. (Asinine, I know.) At one point, I checked the driver’s side rear view mirror and noticed a sheriff’s car half in the lane, half in the median. I pulled into the right lane pronto and watched as he raced by, lights flashing. The police car following pulled up beside me, the cop leaned over to the passenger window, shook his finger at me, and then took off in pursuit. Chastised (I had been speeding) and a bit rattled (no CDL), I stayed in the right lane until we pulled off for a piss break. That was the only time I’ve driven a truck other than around my cousin’s shop when I worked there, but that delicious sense of power stays with me to this day.

Fast forward a few years. I worked for a general contractor out of Charlotte as a job superintendent. I didn’t know a damn thing, but I learned fast and listened. One of my jobs was raising a spillway outside York, South Carolina. One day I showed up at the job site, only to find out our grading contractor was short a dozer operator and needed someone to clear trees from the borrow area (the place where we got the dirt to raise the spillway). The sub’s boss, Eddie, had known my Dad for years, and he and I had become drinking buddies. We were talking about the problem, when he asked, “You ever run a dozer?”

“No.”

“Well, it ain’t hard. I’ll show you.” We walked over to the International TD-15, he gave me instructions (you let off a pedal to accelerate a dozer), and I clattered off across the dam to push down trees. A TD-15 is a big dozer. The blade is about three feet high and around ten feet wide. Once I clackclackclacked across the dam, I turned toward the trees, most of which were between forty and eighty feet tall. In the next couple of hours, I pushed down and cleared away twenty or so trees, cutting the roots on one side with the corner of the blade, backing down between trees in order to push them out toward the newly cleared area (didn’t want a tangle of downed trees), driving straight up onto the tree as far as I could (dared!) until it leaned precipitously, backed off, lowered the blade and drove forward, catching the root ball with the blade and popping the tree out of the ground. Trees that had been growing for thirty, forty, fifty years, bam, felled in minutes. I relished the work, the roar of the diesel (much louder than Daddy’s truck), the clatter of the tracks, the controlling of something much more powerful than me. Although I’ve always preferred bicycles to diesels, I understand the pull machines have on a person. They made me feel powerful in a world bigger than me.

TD-15 dozer. I could make a mess with one of these.

I was in no way a skilled operator. I tried to put a swale on grade with a TD-8 once (a baby dozer), but all I got was laughed at. Eddie, on the other hand, could work magic with a bulldozer. Daddy was the same way in a truck. They were both skilled with their machines the way Lilace is skilled with writing. Their skills are a gift, they made the most of it, and many people benefited.

I suspect there are people as gifted operating tractors, trucks, dozers, track hoes, and drill rigs around here, and I admire them for that. There’s something seductive about the kind of power we see on display in Tioga County, and no matter how much I question the process, I think I understand part of the drive as well. My Dad said once in jest, “Hell, in my twenties, I would have driven a truck for free.” He felt that power in his bones.

We’re weak sauce without our fossil fuels. Compared to many other living things, we’re downright fragile. Soft-bellied. Slow. Fossil fuel power belies that, makes us feel like gods. It’s an illusion, but so seductive.

I wonder if we’ll ever see the power in saying no.

Thinking Like a Rock

by Jimmy

There’s a bit of a kerfuffle occurring on the net over at Orion Magazine. Sandra Steingraber, author of Living Downstream and Having Faith, has broken up with the Sierra Club.  Her reason? The Sierra Club accepted $25 million from the natural gas industry to help support its fight against coal-fired power plants. (The money came from Chesapeake. Smart move, Aubrey.) Needless to say, the acceptance of the money creates all sorts of credibility problems for the Sierra Club, but they can deal with that. I’m interested in the comments that follow the post and why the Sierra Club took the money in the first place, because they raise an important issue for me—how long is a long time?

In the comments, gas industry employer Michael Knapp has a lot of fun telling the Sierra Clubbers how wrong they are not to thank the gas industry for being so green and helping enable the closure of coal-fired power plants. Perhaps we should be thanking the industry, if we compare only the burning of natural gas to the burning of coal. But what’s lacking with his math are the external costs. I don’t see where he’s figuring into his math all the impacts of extracting gas, like burning diesel fuel, building and repairing equipment, etc. (The same can be said of coal or windmills. Windmill blades are made of carbon fiber and imported. I once asked the manager of the local wind farm who was touting the benefits of wind-power how the environmental effects of making carbon fiber blades and shipping them here figured into his math. He didn’t know.) There are various reports about environmental impacts out there from Duke, Cornell, Penn State, Carnegie Mellon, the EPA, and others that offer differing views on the impact of drilling and extracting gas. But as far as I can tell, there is not enough disinterested science to make many definitive statements one way or the other. I have yet to see the preponderance of evidence concerning hydraulic fracturing that we see for, say, global warming. Natural gas research just ain’t there yet.

That’s where Knapp’s industrialist defense of natural gas extraction and the Sierra Club’s acceptance of natural gas dollars converge. Both are thinking short-term. Knapp’s right about what he says, if we compare burning coal to gas, but once we put his assertions in the larger context of fifty or a hundred or a thousand years down the road, what happens then? He’ll say we have nothing to worry about. I disagree. Pennsylvania may use more water for nuclear plants or golf courses than it does for hydraulic fracturing, but fracking takes water out of the our ecological system, either by leaving it several thousand feet underground or filling it full of toxic stuff. It looks like we have a lot of water, but it’s mostly moving downstream to the Chesapeake Bay. As a geography professor friend of mine points out, “All the water in Tioga County goes somewhere else.” Plus, how do we extract all the crap that’s left in the water after it is used for hydraulic fracturing? Knapp claims a filtration system will work. That may be the case, too, but it’s a technological fix. We won’t always be able to engineer our way out of everything. For example, C02 lives in the atmosphere 200-300 years, which means we are dealing with C02 that was created before anyone had a clue about global warming. What’s to say an issue like this won’t arise from natural gas extraction? We simply can’t foresee that, not based on the science we have so far, which like pesticide use in the 50s and 60s, lags far behind industrial accomplishments. At some point, we have to respect time and limits.

The formation of the earth compared to a 24-hour day. We're young 'uns.

The short-term thinking that undermines Knapp’s arguments also undermines the Sierra Club’s decision to accept natural gas money. The Sierra Club has been fighting against coal-fired power plants for so long that they were desperate for any solution. Along comes natural gas—problem solved. They were, in a sense, beguiled by gas industry rhetoric and driven by their desire to do something, anything, to mitigate the impacts of coal. (I’m sure there were other factors, too.) That’s a problem with the issue of energy today. The solutions are super complex (remember C02?), yet our primary way for framing the issue is economic, which means we think in the short-term. This kind of money-driven thinking permeates our culture like the air we breathe and the water we drink. The issue always comes back to money, which means it always comes back to short-term thinking.

We need to think like rocks—in geologic terms, not human terms. We haven’t been here long, yet our brains and fossil fuels have enabled us to have an impact all out of proportion to what we could do before the Industrial Revolution, which is a micro-blip in geologic time.

My question to you: How do we start thinking long-term?

As the crickets’ soft, autumn hum
is to us
so are we to the trees
as are they
to the rocks and the hills.

—Gary Snyder

“The Obligation to Endure”

Guest post by Rachel Carson

Note from Jimmy: I’m currently teaching environmental literature and re-reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. As I read the following passage from Chapter 2: The Obligation to Endure, I couldn’t help but make some substitutions. My words appear in Carson’s text in brackets. Carson’s original words appear at the end. From Silent Spring:

It is not my contention that [hydro-fracturing fluids*] must never be used. I do contend that we have put poisonous and biologically potent chemicals indiscriminately into the hands of persons largely or wholly ignorant of their potentials for harm. We have subjected enormous numbers of people to contact with these poisons, without their consent and often without their knowledge. If the Bill of Rights contains no guarantee that a citizen shall be secure against lethal poisons distributed either by private individuals or by public officials, it is surely only because our forefathers, despite their considerable wisdom and foresight, could conceive of no such problem.

I contend, furthermore, that we have allowed these chemicals to be used with little or no advance investigation of their effect on soil, water, wildlife, and man himself. Future generations are unlikely to condone our lack of prudent concern for the integrity of the natural world that supports all life.

There is still very limited awareness of the nature of the threat. This is an era of specialists, each of whom sees his own problem and is unaware of or intolerant of the larger frame into which it fits. It is also an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged. When the public protests, confronted with some obvious evidence of damaging results of [fracking**] applications, it is fed little tranquilizing pills of half truth. We urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the [gas drillers***] calculate. The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the facts. In the words of Jean Rostand,’The obligation to endure gives us the right to know.’

Carson’s original wording: *”chemical insecticides”; **”pesticide”; ***”insect controllers”

This passage was originally published in 1962. While there are some differences between what Carson writes about pesticide use and what’s occurring with the gas industry, the thrust of Carson’s passage captures the larger issues. Especially given the passage of HB 1950 aka Act 13. (Here’s one take on the bill from a retired Pittsburgh official: “Now I know what it feels like to live in Nigeria. . . . You’re basically a resource colony for multi-national corporations to take your natural resources, take them back to wherever they are at, add value to them, and then sell them back to you.”)

Enough said.

Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It

by Jimmy

I need some help. I’m trying to understand the ebb and flow of people’s attitudes toward natural gas development in north-central PA for some research I’m working on. In my way of thinking, we learn things in two ways—through lived experience and what we learn from words. I would argue that the latter makes up most of what we know, and much of what we’ve learned about natural gas development has come from encounters with various media, that is, words. Your assignment is to help me think about this. Let me elaborate.

Kenneth Burke. Dude understood a lot about words.

In grad school, I read Kenneth Burke’s Definition of Man, a definition I’ve chewed on ever since. Burke defines humans as symbol-using animals, animals who use words (symbols) to create much of our understanding of the world and our place in it. He also raises questions about reality:

“What is our ‘reality’ for today (beyond the paper thin line of our own particular lives) but all this clutter of symbols about the past combined with whatever things we know mainly through maps, magazines, newspapers, and the like about the present?”

Of course, these days Burke would include blogs, list-servs, websites, conversations, etc. I often spend a lot of time at the beginning of my writing courses asking students to think about what Burke means here. Like I said before, words make up a large percentage of our reality. I’m a physical being living in a physical world, yes, but I understand more about my “reality,” who I am and where I live, from what I read.

Let’s think about this in terms of natural gas development. The way I see it, the natural gas industry and the public are arguing about how we should perceive and thus use north-central PA, and the argument is evolving. The industry wants people (locally and nationally) to see this area as a resource. Many locals want people (locally and nationally) to see this area as a place people call home, that is, as more than, or something different from, a resource. (Of course, locals’ desires are complicated. Many locals want what the industry wants. Many want something else. I see locals as categorized loosely into three groups: pro-frack, anti-frack, and sorta-frack.)  This “conversation,” if you will, has involved websites, press releases, lobbyists, TV and print advertisements, letters, contracts, phone messages, billboards and signs, news coverage, blogs, art (see here), protests, books (see here and here), bills, policy statements, scientific research, list-servs, public meetings, etc. That’s a lot of words being thrown around. In all the reading I’ve done, it appears that these groups are using words to shape attitudes in ways that point toward PA-as-resource, PA-as-home, or PA-as-something-else.

Think about the times you eat out, read the paper, watch TV, talk with your friends and family, sit in the dentist’s office, walk down town (wherever that is), ride your bike, tend bar, slam some beers at your favorite watering hole, whatever. Got it? Good. Now, what moments, words, phrases, images jump out at you when you think about natural gas? Got that? Awesome. Now, what would you say those moments, words, phrases, or images incline people to think about natural gas development? Put another way, what stands out to you about a) the way the gas industry has used words to shape people’s attitudes toward Marcellus shale development and b) the way locals have used words to shape people’s attitudes toward the Marcellus shale development? I realize this is a huge question, and it’s one I’ve been thinking and writing about for almost three years. The way I see it, there’s a constant give-and-take between all the concerned parties as we argue for and struggle toward our vision of what this place is becoming. We, industry and locals alike, are working toward a competing, but connected, reality, a reality constructed largely by words, but that has very real physical effects. What will north-central PA look like? What does it look like now? How did we get here?

I’m also wondering, as much as it pains me to say this, whether words can really make a difference. I believe that they can, and I believe that they have been. Witness some of the timid but nonetheless steps in the right direction taken by our politicians in asking the gas industry to pay to play here. But when I see stories about places like Cogan Township in Lycoming County, where the Township Supervisor cut down trees to stop Range Resources from using a road, I can’t help but wonder why the industry has such a hard time working with people at times.

What has stood out to you about the way the industry has characterized and continues to charaterize the development of the Marcellus shale and the way that locals have responded and continue to respond? I look forward to hearing from you.

The Distraction of Natural Gas

Madalene Murphy's quilt "Fracked" is a great reminder of the beauty that exists despite the current industrialization. And that art is one of the best ways to help gain focus in the midst of distractions of this magnitude.

By Lilace

Typos can be revealing. A couple days ago a friend and I—she happens to also be my priest—were putting the finishing touches on a grant application, for which the funds will be used to renovate a church building to include a separate rental apartment. One of our points is that affordable housing is desperately needed here because of how the influx of gas workers has caused rents to soar and availability to plummet. We were frantically typing away at different sections (any of you who have written grant apps have guessed that it was due the next day), and later when I put the pieces together and was proofing I noticed she’d written “the distraction of natural gas,” instead of “extraction.” I laughed. Then I stopped to think.

The monster now had a name. I don’t mean to be melodramatic or cute, but naming things is important for reasons other than conquering or claiming. Terry Tempest Williams, a Mormon nature writer, once said that if we didn’t know the names of trees then they’d all just be “trees” and we’d never realize when some species—elms, for instance—were disappearing. She was talking to a bunch of us artsy writers, some who claimed natural history or the science side of things was a hindrance or unnecessary to our task.

I’ve also learned from psychology and counselors I’ve known that naming the thing I fear and making it clearer to see does not make it more powerful, rather it gives me the ability to isolate it, take aim, and gain whatever level of control or power is possible under the circumstances. I had been lumping the psychological effects of natural gas under one label—anxiety. I assumed my stress was all from my worries over what will happen.

Yet even when I’m not actively worrying I am less present in what I am doing and where I am than before Marcellus Shale reared its ominous head. And then I forget things, lose things, miss appointments, and speed by the turn I take every day going home. So I run late, snap at my family, growl at the dogs. Bad mama.

The other day Jimmy and I were in the car heading to his first appointment with an orthopedist since his bike wreck a little more than a week earlier. He was found by strangers blacked out in the middle of the dirt road he rides home, and couldn’t remember anything about what happened. I felt sure he’d been avoiding a gas truck barreling down the road (it was just past the turn off for a well pad), or maybe a deer. Hours later in the ER, having been diagnosed with a concussion (duh), broken collarbone and maybe some broken ribs (turns out three), his memory suddenly returned. “I hit a hole,” he said, his eyes widening as he watched the scene in his head. “Wasn’t paying attention, just hurrying downhill, didn’t have my hands wrapped around the grips. They bounced off and underneath the handlebars. I don’t remember anything after that. Damn rookie mistake.” My first response was to tease him that he couldn’t get a blog post out of that. It’d have been much better if he’d had a hit and run from a residual waste truck.

But in the car he said to me, “No wonder I had a bike crash this semester. I’ve been so distracted.” We’d been talking about how busy we are, how we hate to rush and it feels like that’s all we’re doing. Sure there’re issues at work that contribute, but on top of all the normal aspects of the world that’s too much with us, there’s the dozens of emails, warnings, and queries concerning the natural gas boom here. Which to read? Which to act on immediately? Which are overreactions by others? A friend calls us one morning to say he has information from a watershed meeting about something the PA DEP is considering that could result in brine being spread on roadways. Can we help get the word out? Today? The open comment period (that was never advertised) is almost over. Jimmy’s last post touched on the pressure that comes with committing to stay informed and vigilant

The monster doesn’t take a day off; nevertheless we cannot be fulltime defenders, tossing aside the daily tasks of life (although the dishes can wait a day or two if necessary) for an indefinite amount of time. Say the decade or more that our area is due to be under siege. And it’s these daily tasks that are as important as what we might consider our more “serious pursuits,” according to nature writer, activist, and Buddhist philosopher Gary Snyder.

So on the twilight of the Thanksgiving holiday and the advent of, well, advent, I want to pause and do what my priest and friend advised in a Thanksgiving service years ago when I happened to have post-partum blues. She asked us all to take our anxieties and turn them into statements of thanks. It made me realize that I can choose what to focus on. Like that monster—the distraction of natural gas—which I can turn toward and away from, not giving all my moments to it. The practice of gratitude also energizes me much more than stewing over what I can do nothing about in that moment, ultimately making me a better defender of this place.

My List of Thanks

• For the strangers who found my husband before he was run over, and called an ambulance and then me
• For early morning layers of pink through aspen branches beyond my kitchen window
• For the farmers and food-crafters in the area who help me put healthy, humanely raised food on my table and plates
• For the dirty plates in my sink, and the fact that I have more clean ones in the cabinet
• For our friend who hates public speaking but went to several township meetings to educate officials on the dangers of using waste brine on the roadways
• For my husband who wanted down time and now has it
• For my children who are visibly growing up as they take care of Daddy
• For the old fruit trees in the back acres that call the deer in to glean what’s fallen
• For the suede shapes amongst gray trunks and fallen leaves, subtly monitoring our dogs
• For the remaining places for the deer (and us) to wander
• For the flavor of the 23 pound local turkey Jimmy smoked for nine hours, and the friends that stopped by to share a beer and pass the time with the one-armed cook
• For the smell of my daughter’s hair
• For my son’s infectious laugh
• For the Saturday morning art program my kids love (during which I write)
• For the small town I live in, and the people who jump to our side when the shit hits the fan (or my husband hits the dirt)
• For all the moments. They are exquisite.

 

 

 

 

 

Brine and Impact Fees and Insurgents, Oh My!

By Jimmy

As you’ve noticed, the bloggins have been slim lately. It’s not for lack of ideas, but a lack of time, a complaint I hear often from students. But the natural gas industry keeps drillin’ along. Right now, a helicopter clatters above these hills for seismic testing, trucks haul water to the fresh water storage pit on Bullock Road, a drill rig guides a bit down to the gas near Shell Appalachia’s offices, roughnecks frack two pads within a ten-minute bike ride from our house. A breathtaking amount of work is required to get the gas, not to mention all the resources used, resources that go beyond trucks and rigs to shaping policy and dealing with communities who question or oppose the industry. There’s so much going on, I can’t keep up with it all. But that’s the beauty of the industry’s rush to drill—they can dedicate a tremendous amount of resources to keeping their industry skids greased above ground, so they can keep punching holes in the ground. In this post, I want to mention three issues that are worthy of attention right now.

Hauling brine.

First, there’s Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection’s Special Conditions General Permit WMGR064 (click on the pdf), a permit designed to grant municipalities and others permission to use natural gas well brines for “roadway pre-wetting . . ., anti-icing . . ., and de-icing purposes.” I read the proposed permit and it raised a lot of questions for me, including: What studies show that using natural gas brine will not harm our surface or groundwater? Does this mean that Marcellus Shale brine is excluded from use? How will the amount of brine used be tracked? (The permit contains parameters for chemicals and heavy metals in the brine, some of which appear quite high.) Regarding the tracking of brine use, number 15 on the permit can be read to mean that brine is analyzed after it has been spread on the roads. Is that the case? Who will be responsible for any environmental clean-up, should the need arise? (The Mansfield Gazette published my letter containing these questions on Nov. 9. Since my letter was published, I’ve received an email that states the original permit prohibited use of Marcellus brine. Why doesn’t this one?) In an attempt to understand this process, I spoke with professors and municipal employees who know more about gas drilling and water quality than I do, and they thought the use of road brines for dealing with snowy and icy roads is a bad idea. While the chemical make-up of the brine may seem insignificant in the amounts listed, the chemicals and heavy metals it contains accumulate rapidly. This is a similar to the “experiment” of pesticide use that Rachel Carson criticized in Silent Spring. We simply don’t know enough about the long range effects of using brine on our roads (not to mention how much it will snow) to take a chance like this. That’s what I’m going to tell DEP by November 16, the day DEP stops accepting public comments. Contact Scott E. Walters, Chief, General Permits/Beneficial Use Section, Division of Municipal and Residual Waste, Bureau of Waste Management, P. O. Box 8472, Harrisburg, PA 17105-8472, 717-787-7381. (Does anyone have a working email for Mr. Walters?) TDD users may contact the Department through the Pennsylvania Relay service, (800) 654-5984.

Second, Governor Corbett has proposed in HB 1950 that the gas industry pays an impact fee to help compensate for their impacts. Imposing a fee on the industry is a step in the right direction, though I need to look more closely at the numbers before I get excited. More importantly, Corbett’s proposed legislation takes away the zoning rights of local governments. So, does that mean that gas drillers will pay an impact tax and be able to drill wherever they want? That doesn’t sound like a good trade-off to me. I confess I haven’t read much about this legislation yet, though it sounds like the advantage goes to the gas industry. Make your thoughts known so0n–they could vote this week:

PA State Senate: http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/member_information/email_list.cfm?body=S

PA House of Representatives: http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/member_information/email_list.cfm?body=H

While we’re on the subject of impact fees, I would like to point to a report issued by Citizens for Tax Justice. In it, researchers analyzed the amount of taxes paid by a variety of corporations from 2008 to 2010. While the federal corporate tax rate is 35%, many profitable industries paid few or no taxes during the period studied. Oil, Gas, and Pipeline industries paid an average of 15.7% in federal taxes. The report also states that Chesapeake and Halliburton paid no federal taxes at least one of those years, though they profited in the millions of dollars. Granted, these are not state taxes, but the report suggests that these corporations can surely afford to chip in a bit more to Tioga and the surrounding counties. They get plenty of tax breaks. How about a break for the people who live here?

Third, CNBC and a Dallas-Ft. Worth CBS-affiliate reported that executives at an oil industry conference discussed the efficacy of using the expertise of soldiers trained in military psy ops to help the gas industry and communities coexist and the applicability of the US Army’s Counterinsurgency manual to give industry professionals strategies for dealing with locals. I can understand the impulse on the part of the gas industry here—much successful counterinsurgency depends upon establishing relationships with locals, hearing them out, and communicating. But there are many problems with this approach. One, people who question or oppose the gas industry are not “insurgents,” as the executives’ framing implies. They are citizens with valid concerns. It’s as simple (and as complex) as that. Second, counterinsurgency techniques were designed for public governments (and paid for with our tax money), not private corporations. The Counterinsurgency manual (yes, I’ve read parts of it) defines insurgency as “an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict.” The people here aren’t trying to change things, the industry is. And I find it more than a little ironic that Corbett’s impact fee includes language abolishing the zoning rights of local governments. Corporations are not governments, and they shouldn’t be treated as such.

"Counterinsurgency . . . is the graduate level of war." From Chapter 1.

My biggest issues with the “insurgency” framing are these: the manual frames the issue in terms of war and it assumes that the counterinsurgency is in the “right” (at least in what I’ve read). In the first paragraph of Chapter 1, the word “war” or a pronoun referring to it appears eight times. Eight times in twelve lines. That’s bothersome to me. No one was causing any problems before the industry came in. The executives are talking about citizens who are voicing their concerns and complaints, citizens who are now linked, purposely or not, with terrorists. As I continued reading Chapter 1, I noticed one assumption throughout is that the counterinsurgency is always right. Maybe in later chapters, the manual addresses the possibility that the counterinsurgency may be mistaken, but I saw no room for self-reflection, which reminded me of Aubrey McClendon’s occupational psychosis. I also don’t see much room for democracy as we define it working well if the industry is allowed to write the ordinances or buy off some of the people who do. People living over the gas have a say, and it’s not always about money. And don’t start in about royalties. Many people I know haven’t seen any.

Phew. I need to work full time just to stay on top of these issues to the degree I would like. That’s a problem many of us outside the industry share. I have more questions and thoughts about these issues and others, but student essays beg for responses, committee work needs to be done, the lawn needs mowing, a book chapter needs to be written, and my son needs help building his birdhouse. As Lilace said to me earlier, it’s hard to create when we are so busy defending. And it’s not easy to understand an issue when more questions are raised than answers given. The situation reminds me of getting lost on my bike—I may be tired, the weather threatening, and the water bottles empty, but I know I need to keep turning the pedals. Eventually, I’ll figure out where I am. Likewise, I have to keep asking questions, and reading, thinking, and writing about the industry.

Defining Our Common Wealth

By Lilace

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted. See, I’ve fallen in love again and let other things slide. You remember how it is.

Taking a break at Hills Creek Lake

Me, I seem to fall hardest in autumn. I met Jimmy in September 1997, when I was 29 and knew in the first couple weeks it was forever. Last fall when my real estate agent brought me to the Whitney House for the first time, I was just as smitten. Jimmy and I bought it and were moved in by Halloween.

And this autumn, I have fallen more deeply in love with Pennsylvania. It’s not just that where we live now I have a sweeping view of hay fields and a small old cemetery against the distant hills (out front), and meadows of goldenrod and flaming sumac with winding paths mowed throughout (in back).  There’s the chickens too, of course. I could watch the chickens chase each other and the puppy in circles all day. No, it’s because I started getting out of my own yard and exploring what is just around the corner.

Hills Creek State Park is a few miles away. I was accustomed to thinking of the 407 acres in terms of my children—it has a great playground and in summer the lake and sandy beach are free. Since there’s no edge to drop off, I preferred it to the town pool while the kids were too young to swim. But recently I’ve discovered what a great playground it is for me. In a fit of determination, I registered for the annual Step Outdoors Tryathlon held at Hills Creek, thereby forcing myself to start training and get off my, er, front porch.

This Tryathlon (they spell it “try” to encourage first-timers like me) combined a 3 mile run, 2 mile paddle, and 9 mile bike ride on dirt roads. So I started riding the bike route among forests and farms, and fast walking the lakeside trail. The trail is mostly in mixed conifer and deciduous woods, with moist forest floors, gnarled roots, and seasonal creeks. Kingfishers rattled above and the prehistoric squawk of a heron made me peer through the branches to see it fly gracefully over the glassy water. I would be transported into an ancient place with a timeless sense of peace. I confess it amazed me how much more restorative it felt than walking my nice country road.

It did have a panoramic view of a drill rig on neighboring property, so close it seemed to rise out of the lake spillway. But it’s down now. And for a while a huge long swath adjacent to the park was cut open, stopping traffic and reminding me as I watched them lay the pipeline, of tendonitis surgery on my wrist. But that area is now covered, reseeded, and except for the gap in the trees where it runs through woods is not ugly or traffic-stopping anymore. Things change. It’s the lesson of the seasons, especially autumn with the leaves flaunting their transformations.

My first triathlon went well; even though I walked the “run” part, I took third place in the solo women’s category. People came from out of state for the event, and the camaraderie of folks enjoying the outdoors was as invigorating as the physical activity. Jimmy, who has a long history of competing in similar events, had been riding his bike(s) a lot too, getting away from the computer as much as possible, and training for his big cyclocross race last weekend in Carlisle, PA. It’s an autumn tradition for him.

This year as Jimmy went away for his big race, the kids and I participated in an event closer to home. Wanting to get them in on the fun, and hoping they were old enough to enjoy it, I signed us up for the Ives Run Trail Challenge. It’s a 4 mile course in nearby Ives Run Recreation Area surrounded by State Game Lands. Our seven-year-old son partnered up with an adult friend who wanted to introduce him to trail running, and I walked with our four-year-old daughter.

They both were the youngest participants, had a great time, and showed themselves what they could do. Our family turned a new leaf, one Jimmy and I have anticipated since having kids—they can now walk far enough and long enough for us to explore outdoors in the ways we love, leaving parking lots and trail heads far behind. This is why we chose to live in a place like Tioga County, where the sylvan aspects of Pennsylvania still predominate. The woods, lakes, streams, and accompanying wildlife are treasures worth more to us than any signing bonus or royalty check.

Early 1900's PA State Park beneficiaries

Intimately entwined with our state’s history of extractive industry (logging, tanneries, coal mining), is its history of state parks and recreation lands. Joseph T. Rothrock, the first Commissioner of Forestry in the early 1900’s, was a medical doctor as well as forester and developed camps in forest reserves for tuberculosis victims and others with respiratory illnesses. Later in the 1950’s, the new head of the Department of Forests and Waters (departments always morph and change names) set a goal of having every Pennsylvania resident no more than 25 miles from a state park. Though Maurice Goddard fell short of his goal, Pennsylvania now has one of the largest state park systems in the nation. And today the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) and Tioga County Partnership for Community Health sponsor events in these public lands such as triathlons, trail runs, and other outings to improve the quality of life for Pennsylvanians and visitors.

Recently, Governor Corbett has talked of privatizing the state parks, taking a core part of our common wealth—one residents have supported with bond referendums and avidly utilized for over a century—and stripping it of protections meant to guard the long-term benefits of mental and physical health for state residents, as well as the value to wildlife. I don’t share some people’s faith in a free market; I feel sure that putting state parks in the for-profit sector will quickly degrade the resource, as economic values trump all others.

Corbett also quickly repealed former Gov. Rendell’s policy to limit gas drilling impact in state parks. Corbett says the policy was redundant; supporters say it allowed the state to manage (not ban) the drilling impact on tourism and recreation. An article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette outlines the situation:

Pennsylvania has 117 state parks, 61 of them in the two-thirds of the state lying above the Marcellus Shale, a 380 million-year-old formation that might contain more than 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

The mineral rights — including Marcellus gas deposits — under 85 percent of that park acreage are privately owned. Courts have ruled that the so-called “mineral estate” rights are superior to surface rights in Pennsylvania, and that the owners of underground mineral rights must be given reasonable access to develop those holdings, even when they lie under parks or other publicly owned land.

So even without privatizing state parks, Pennsylvanians must struggle with what the Marcellus Shale rush will mean to our public lands heritage. We must all be flexible as well as vigilant during the shifting season of this Marcellus Shale autumn. And when I get anxious about the changes, I head for the woods and wildlands that so many people have worked to conserve and protect. Ironically, in these stressful early years of the gas boom, we need the peace of deep forests and the negative ions produced by clear running streams more than ever as places to recharge.

Words We Drill By

by Jimmy

The Man Himself

I recently read an interview with Chesapeake’s CEO Aubrey McClendon where he characterized the people at a protest outside a gas industry conference in Philly as anti-drilling extremists. He said: “Remind me: What value have the protesters outside created? What jobs have they created? You know the answer and so do I. So it’s time that we contrast what we do for a living with what they do for a living. . . . What a glorious vision of the future: It’s cold, it’s dark and we’re all hungry.” Talk about painting with a broad brush. I mark those kinds of comments in my students’ writing all the time.

For the record, I wasn’t at the protest in Philly. I identify with the protesters, though, because I was labeled a “vigilante” by industry lobbyists for training to be a Pine Creek Waterdog. The lobbyists painted with the same broad brush, and amid an outcry, retracted the label. But using the term “vigilante” was motivated in part by the same thing that motivates McClendon’s statement: looking at the world from the perspective of a gas driller.

What fascinates me about McClendon’s comment (other than it sounds a bit hysterical) is the way it shows how important natural gas drilling is for him. The key word is “value.” If you are not creating jobs or working for the gas industry, his comment suggests, then you create nothing of value. It’s a limited definition of value, framed in economic terms, and it suggests that anything else one might do has little or no value. So much for teaching people how to write. So much for raising kids. So much for supporting my community. So much for riding my bike. Damn! I guess I’m not worth much. Thanks, Aubrey. You’ve made my day.

Last I checked we live in a democracy where people are allowed to voice dissenting opinions. (This appears to be changing, but that’s another subject.) Protest itself is valuable—think Civil Rights, Vietnam, women’s voting rights, Wisconsin and Ohio governance, gay marriage, Keystone Pipeline. Protests are driven by values just as much as values drive those who slam the protesters. That’s how we move ahead as a society—by raising issues based on what we value, arguing about them, and reaching a compromise.

Let’s face it, though: no matter what your values are, if you don’t have clean water and air, your values won’t matter. Values are a distinctly human thing. So we could say that everyone is linked by the need to live in a clean environment. I don’t see that as a value as much as a right. But then again, I’m not Aubrey McClendon. My view of the world is shaped by a different kind of work.

That we look at the world in terms of our work is something McClendon and I share. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s worth remembering that a way of seeing is also a way of not seeing. McClendon looks at the world from the perspective of a gas industry CEO; I look at the world from the perspective of a college professor trained in rhetoric. We can’t help it. In fact, I’ve been dying to use the term “occupational psychosis” the entire time I’ve been writing (there, I used it), jargon that in my field basically means our work, whatever it is, shapes the way we see the world. That’s the academic in me. But the problem with looking at the world in terms of one’s work occurs when we let those terms hide other issues or possibilities. At best, our work-tinted views are a partial view of the world itself. His use of language (in this quote and elsewhere) seeks to limit possibilities. By making such statements, he tries to turn very real concerns about the here and now into an obsession with the past (the Dark Ages), rather than an interest in the future (progress). His quote creates a sense that, “OMG, without gas, I’ll be like the cavemen trying to start a fire in Night at the Museum. Save me, Aubrey, save me.”

For many, rhetoric is a bad word, the equivalent of bullshit. But actually all language is rhetoric, the good, the bad, and the Aubrey. My discipline teaches people how words can shape attitudes which, in turn, shape behaviors. For better (think Martin Luther King) or worse (think Hitler). My field teaches people that words are powerful, and words can use us just as much as we use them. My field also teaches people that words can be used for seeing multiple possibilities or solutions to any issue. That’s the cool part, because it opens up a world of choices, negotiation, connection, compromise. Because of my work, I’m suspicious of any language that simplifies complex situations like gas drilling. That’s my own occupational psychosis. The more possibilities I see, the higher the likelihood of making decisions that will help me create the world I want to live in. On some level, McClendon understands this when he questions the value the protestors “outside” have created. (“Outside” is another important word carrying literal and metaphorical meanings–you’re either with ‘em or agin’ ‘em.) By framing “value” in such narrow terms, he creates a difficult atmosphere in which to have a conversation about genuine concerns, and it works in the industry’s favor. He knew he would be quoted, and he knew that his words would divide people (insiders and outsiders) that, in a different context, like raising kids or drinking beer, probably identify with each other. My discipline has trained me to recognize that things change over time, and what might work in, say, the California oil boom of the early twentieth century, might not apply now. McClendon doesn’t want things to change (except in ways that ensure his company and industry has unfettered access to land for drilling), because it works well for him and the industry. Other concerns aren’t worth bothering about.

Signal Hill, California, 1920s

More than anything, I find McClendon’s comment amusing, and I doubt that he fully believes it. He appears to be reacting in part to the growing mistrust of the industry. I think that mistrust is growing because the industry hasn’t done a good job of actually talking with—rather than at—the people who live here. That’s the industry’s fault. People around here are intelligent—they talk to each other, they learn, and they expect (and deserve) respect. Many people want the industry to see this place as more than a resource, and comments like McClendon’s don’t do that because the only value he will acknowledge is economic. In the world his rhetoric creates, the economics of gas constitute the only meaningful value. That probably satisfies many people, but not me. I value many other things besides money. Of course, McClendon has the right to try to create any world he wants, even one driven primarily by economics. But his is not the kind of world I want to live in, so I’m going to join the conversation and offer other possibilities, like the protesters were (and are) doing. The world created by McClendon’s rhetoric is a real world, but it’s only one version. Lilace and I are working to create another version. It’ll be partial, like McClendon’s, but it will align with values that extend beyond economics. Rhetoric enables us to do that.

When I worked construction, I bought a 28 oz. Estwing framing hammer that I loved to use. I’d swing that hammer all day if I could, but it wasn’t always the right tool for the job. Not everything is a nail. Likewise, just because there’s gas under these hills doesn’t mean their only value is as a resource. And there is absolutely no reason why the land cannot be an economic, environmental, public health, and recreational resource at the same time. It takes compromise, creative problem solving, and conversation. McClendon might get a lot further with his work if he’d acknowledge that there’s more to the world than drill, baby, drill. I might have listened to him then.

Tioga Fragmentation

By Lilace

A red eft on the rocks on a rainy day. The terrestrial adolescent stage of a red-spotted newt (newts are salamanders). Photo by Jackie Schlitzer.

One of the things that concerns wildlife conservationists is the process of habitat fragmentation—when an organism’s preferred environment is interrupted or discontinuities are introduced. This can happen slowly though geologic processes, or abruptly through human activity. Think of a salamander minding its own moist business on the forest floor. Then, suddenly, where there was once shade and dampness there is only a dirt road. A wide, dry, sunny expanse interrupting its ideal habitat and introducing stress and danger.

Some salamanders will cross and live, some will cross and die, and some salamanders will choose to stay where they are and not cross at all. Thus, habitat fragmentation can cause population fragmentation.

Here in Tioga County we are witnessing the start of some serious habitat fragmentation—and not just for the salamanders. Have you tried crossing Main Street in Mansfield? We two-legged creatures are now risking our lives regularly. And we have a traffic light.

More roads, pipelines, and smaller swaths cut for seismic testing are criss-crossing fields and woodlands everywhere you look. If you’ve talked with someone who works for a company involved with the natural gas industry you’ve heard them say how much more the landscape here will change. How we won’t even recognize it. And I never understand how they can smile when they say that.

Here, then, is where one can see population fragmentation kicking in. I don’t understand him, and he doesn’t understand me. If the gasman is from Texas or Oklahoma, I chalk it up to his lack of love and loyalty for this place. But that’s not always the case.

Let me back up.

Since we’ve been writing this blog, I’ve had some interesting conversations with friends and acquaintances that I wouldn’t have had before. One friend whose advice I ask on many topics and projects, said to me, “We agree on lots of things, and you’ve made your decisions and we [he and his wife] have made ours. So, can you tell me what made you decide not to lease?” It was an honest question, and I can’t say I know exactly what motivated him to ask it, but it occurred to me that I never hear people asking each other this type of question. I never hear that because whatever decision a person’s made, that’s the obvious decision and you just can’t talk to those other people. Or maybe it’s just not worth wasting your time. Or you just don’t want to get into a messy discussion.

Pipeline construction in July off Orebed, er, Pipeline Road 7. It is re-seeded now.

I have been guilty of this without realizing it. By assuming every conversation with someone who has another perspective on drilling will be a debate rather than a discussion, I have often closed myself off from people in my community. Even if only avoiding this topic, it divided me from the people I need to work with, brainstorm with, disagree with, and problem solve with. Population fragmentation.

I was reading GoMarcellusShale.com , which is an online forum for anyone and everyone interested in the issues. It’s done by region and is one of the best clearinghouses I’ve seen of information on the ground from various perspectives. There are questions and concerns about legalities, seismic testing, risk factors, the reputations of different companies, and so on. A lot of discussions are about leases and how to get the best deal and what things to watch out for. There is some serious sharing going on here.

One thread got my attention when I read a commenter say, “I don’t understand why someone wouldn’t lease!” It stunned me that someone honestly wouldn’t know. In the same way my instant reaction to my friend (in my head) was it’s obvious why we didn’t lease. Yet because he was a good friend with whom I agree on so many social and environmental issues, I knew it couldn’t be obvious. So I thought before I spoke.

There are many things I’ve learned in the last year that make me glad we haven’t leased. And one that worries me—rule of capture/forced pooling. But the question was why, with what we knew then, did we choose not to lease, and I think there were some basic things it came down to for Jimmy and me.

We’re pretty content with our simple life. We aren’t the type to dream of getting rich quick. We lived in Reno six years and didn’t even play the slots in the grocery store. And we don’t trust corporations, especially ones that take advantage of people with less experience or education. The two of us certainly don’t have any experience in the gas scene or OGM leasing, so trying to stay on top of things would be stress we didn’t need. And we have studied and taught environmental issues. We see the certain and possible consequences of this gas boom all too clearly.

But perhaps the main reason was property value. There were so many red flags, and the market was starting to show signs of splitting—unleased properties increasing in value and leased ones losing ground. We didn’t like the thought that, down the road if we needed to sell, a lease might be considered a lien against our property, or the gas company could pay off our house and become the primary mortgage holder (it’s happened).  If something should contaminate our water due to drilling around us, we have a better legal standing because we are not benefitting monetarily.

That’s our story. We know folks who were ecstatic to lease, ones who are waiting and hoping for the landman to call, ones who were locked in by their old leases, ones who leased reluctantly because they felt it would give them more control over their fate, ones who never considered it and are sure we’re all doomed to poisoned water and air, ones who’ve moved away or are trying to, ones who don’t own land but are glad to have a job fracking because it pays their bills, and townspeople who resent the traffic and changes they are footing the tax bill for with no compensation. And I’m sure there are other perspectives too.

This is my community, my population. And one of the biggest tolls of the Marcellus Shale boom is how fragmented we’ve become. Not that we all agreed on everything before. Rural people (been heres and come heres) are feisty and independent. But rural people, especially farmers, also know that we are strongest when we help each other. It’s the fastest way to get that truck out of the ditch.

So share your story and concerns by commenting here and/or talking with neighbors. No matter how different our perspectives are on the industrial changes occurring, all of us who live here want the gas companies to do right by the people, land, and wildlife. We all want to drink deeply and breathe easily. That’s enough common ground for us to meet on, don’t you think?

Reading Home

by Jimmy

I read a lot. Given my job as an English professor, this is not surprising. I read around fifty books a year (I know, because I keep count), hundreds of student essays, academic journal articles, popular magazine articles, political and cycling blogs, and on and on. For the past couple of years, I’ve read a tremendous amount about the Marcellus Shale, ranging from scientific articles to news reports to blogs and list-servs. Much of my week is dedicated to reading. Withholding reading from me is like withholding beer or bikes—I get twitchy, irritable, and uneasy.

From all this reading, I begin to understand who I am as an individual, who we are as humans, and what sort of world I want to live in. In other words, I begin to understand where I am—my place—in this forest of words we walk in.

I also think of reading in terms of riding my bike. For me, reading is like riding through Tioga State Forest at Asaph. Up, down, right, left, trees, meadows, creek crossings, log crossings, gravel roads, swoopy singletrack, deer, turkeys, grouse, the occasional bobcat or bear or hiker or car. I encounter all sorts of stimuli that tweak the way I ride in that moment and that change me. When I finish a ride, I’m never the same person that started it. Likewise, when I finish a book or essay, I’m not the same. That’s the point.

Tom riding in the woods.

Over time, I’ve realized that riding a bike is not merely a metaphor for reading, but an act of reading my place. Like any book, there are limitations to what I learn while riding my bike. But pushing the pedals certainly helps me read my place. Let me explain.

This past Saturday, Tom, Josh, and I rode our cyclocross bikes. For those that don’t know, cyclocross, or cross, bikes look like road racing bicycles with the curved bars, but cross bikes have relaxed geometry (which makes them more comfortable and forgiving of mistakes), knobby tires, and a type of brakes that stop you in wet, muddy conditions. Cross bikes are perfect for the sloppy conditions around here, and we spend a lot of time on them in the fall and winter riding the dirt roads and trails that cut through Tioga County.

On this ride, we headed north out of Mansfield up Kellytown Road to Pickle Hill Road toward the Tower Hill Road area. We climbed Painter Run, a five-mile stretch of gravel road through farm houses and hunting camps that gets progressively steeper toward the end, reaching 10% grades just before the stop sign. A right on Tower Hill, and then we plunge down Maple Ridge Road and Warner Road toward Highway 328, losing in minutes the elevation we gained. We turned west on 328 for about two minutes, turned left onto Button Hill Road, and worked our way over toward Mitchell Tree Road and Tower Hill West. Along the way, we passed more farm houses, gas pipeline construction (it occurred to me that I could ride the right-of-way back to my house), and an elderly farmer out on his Farm-All tractor shaping cut hay into rows for bailing. He grinned and wave when he saw us. I waved back.

We were out for three hours of mellow riding, disproving the adage that three cyclists together means an outbreak of racing. We filled our bottles at the spring on Painter Run. On the way back up Mitchell Tree toward Tower Hill West, Tom saw apples hanging out of reach on a tree and we spent a few goofy minutes trying to get one down.

We're a little older than this, but you get the idea.

First, Josh lifted his bike above his head and tried to knock the apple out of the tree, but bikes don’t swing well. His bike is light, but not that light. Then Josh and I cupped our hands for Tom’s feet and heaved him up to grab the apple that taunted us. We laughed at the absurdity of three lycra-clad adults thrashing after apples like kids stretching for the cookie jar on the fridge, especially when the apple turned out to be so-so. But that stop started a trend.

As we pedaled up Tower West, a long, gradual climb through fields and forests, we stopped at nearly every apple tree. Some apples had a nice texture but no flavor, others combined nice texture and flavor, others were too tart. Tom tried one so tart it nearly turned him inside out. Josh and I laughed and moved on to the next tree. Josh thought it would be a good idea to do an apple tour on the bikes each year, a mellow ride that involved trying all the apples you saw. “That’s a good idea,” I said. After several more stops, we reached the top of Tower Hill West, decided to bomb down Painter Run, and head back to Mansfield. In the end, we rode about 35 miles, gained and lost about 4100 feet of elevation, and tried apples from ten or so trees. A great way to spend three hours on a Saturday.

Multiply rides likes this one times 150 rides a year (I know, because I keep count) on cross, road, and mountain bikes which means differing terrain and speeds, differing weather depending on the season, and so on. You get the idea. I learn a lot about the place. Over the course of each ride, I pedal thousands of revolutions that adapt to the terrain—pedals resisting going up, spinning easily going down. My breathing deepens when my legs labor under the pressure of pushing up 10 percent grades and slows when I lose the elevation I gained. I read the landscape, choosing when to brake, when to accelerate, when to turn my head to follow five turkeys flying into the trees, where to stop and pluck an apple dangling from a branch, where potholes lurk that might send me or my compadres sliding down the asphalt, where I might spy a scarlet tanager when I fill my water bottles at the spring on Arnot Road. (While Lilace is out riding, a thunderstorm has arrived ahead of schedule. Another kind of lesson.) There’s constant variation on the roads, calling to my mind the choices a good writer makes as she unrolls the words on the page like a ribbon of road or trail, the pace changing as the story builds suspense or plunges toward the climax. On the bike, I read through my eyes and legs and lungs, feet and hands and butt, and I learn about the shapes and contours of the land the way a book teaches me about the contours of living.

Last post, I mentioned that I’m a strong believer in commitment. Both bike riding and books show commitment to things like truth and knowledge. Riding bikes has helped me commit to this place because I know it. I know where the back roads are, where the red efts most likely hang out, when and where I’ll probably see deer, and now where the tartest apples are. Paradoxically, I read the landscape and at the same time I am inscribing my own story on the landscape. That’s what humans inevitably do. And as I ride, I read the changes inscribed in the landscape by the gas industry—the huge swaths of trees and fields cleared for pipelines (many already buried and re-seeded), well pads, holding ponds, compressor stations; orange extension cords snaking along the roads and plugged into yellow boxes for seismic testing; and even the new additions to houses, new cars and trucks, new roofs, new barns, new tractors, and new businesses.

We change, and we change things. But the gas industry doesn’t care about this place the way I do. And they won’t stick around for the end of the story. So I find myself lingering over this page, frustrated as all hell, wanting to tear it out.