A Mountain

I have always loved watching the Waltons. My Mother said that it was just like her family when she was growing up so I watched it trying to get a glimpse of what life must have been like for her as a girl. Later I have watched it and found such parallels with my personal understanding of ecology. In the episode, The Chicken Thief, Ben writes a poem and gets it published. Here is the poem.

A Winter Mountain

by Benjamin Walton

Our mountain in winter is something to see.

At times it is just like a person to me.

A giant in white all covered with snow.

It changes each day as the heavy winds blow.

And when I am alone and I go for a walk

It’s almost as if that old mountain can talk

It seems to say. “Welcome my winter friend;

I was here in the beginning, I’ll be here at the end.”

In the time when the TV show was written mountains would be there in the end. But in all our wisdom we have found a way to change reality. Mountains are now torn apart, blasted into dust for cheap energy in a mining operation called mountain top mining. More than 450 mountains have been destroyed in Appalachia as a result of this method. Once leveled a mountain cannot really be reclaimed. A lot of the dirt and rock is dumped in the streams which run down through the hollers in Appalachia.

I grew up at the foot of Mill Mountain in Roanoke. It is now a park with a neon star on top; not what you would call a mountain of magnificence. Never the less, Mill Mountain was my playground and it felt like a protector. Last week my granddaughter was visiting and we would go into the back yard and look up at the top watching the star come on. "I just love it here," she said. We both consider our Mill Mountain our friend. I want it to always be here for her.

From the Mouths of Babes

My 6 year old granddaughter has been telling us that we aren't to eat meat during lent and not eat much at all on Ash Wednesday. She learned this in school. We are to give up something and also do something good. She said that she had given up candy and would be taking care of the earth. Her Dad said, "Was that what you were doing when I yelled at you not to touch the trash along side the road?" "Yes, I was taking care of the earth." Of course, I beamed with pride; she has gotten the message.

We are doing Lent 4.5 at our parish this Lent. The program is a series of bulletin inserts each week on a topic that challenges us to care for creation by the way we live, what we eat, drive, and consume. www.earthandspiritcenter.org/lent45/ There is also an in-depth program that may be offered and a blog. It's one of the best organized and clearly read series I have ever seen. There is also a non denominational series.

The message has gotten through to one six year old!

It's Raining!

You may have snow in your neck of the woods; we have rain today. My pasture is ever sooooo happy. It's perfect. I got out early to plant some strawberries and to put some herbs and flower seeds in the window boxes on the deck. They said that it would rain starting at 10:00 and at 9:45 this morning down it came just as I finished my planting. We think we are so smart to know the time the rain will start, the day is predicted a week ahead. Rather than a news channel I am finding myself turning on the weather channel for news; there's as much news about our climate and weather as there is about the political climate. Has it always been this way? I remember my mother after she retired watching the weather carefully. She could tell you what was happening where ever her daughters or relatives were living. Perhaps it just my age that I seem more interested in the weather. Or perhaps it is that I am becoming more "grounded", more in tune with the earth itself.