A Soft Sell in the Hardwoods

In April 97 the Logan Daily News (the last daily newspaper for Hocking county but currently being printed in a neighboring county) reported an interesting story of a young couple who had purchased a relatively priceless piece of land in Ohio's Hocking Hills. Priceless, we can say, because the rugged, pre-glacial terrain had only been logged once in the last hundred years . . . by mules---and not very good mules either considering that one had slipped and fallen into a ravine so deep, so steep that the animal, being somewhat hurt or more stubborn from the fall, would only be guided down the comparatively even slope of the canyon to a distant road. Stories like this make priceless the terrain, the wild ruggedness of the Appalachian foothills of southeastern Ohio, this and the very commercial fact that rock canyons and hollows in this state park region hold some of the very last stands of native hardwoods in the eastern U. S. Unfortunately, though,this doesn't remain a tale of a "priceless" piece of land. Far too quickly a price is made and paid.

First, of course, there was a seller from whom the young couple purchased. His or her story we are not aware of in this local paper. The fact that someone decides to sell 45 acres of property that may have been owned or in a family for generations is something kept relatively discreet. Normally, the sale involves an uncle's surgery, a grandma's death with no one to takeover the property, or Mr.-You-Know who was so crazy he wasn't aware of the"value of what he had given away." Normally, in other words, it is a local, and locals . . . well if they are not talked about all the time, then out of politeness they are rarely talked about any of the time.

The buyers, on the other hand, were not local. And so the Daily News---not having to be as discreet, and having a paper to sell---splashes the couples names across the front page. And with their name comes a haphazard story. It is a story of 45 acres. It is a story of pristine wilderness and a rock hollow. It is the story of a dream come true, an opportunity to make a storybook home . . . with one minor problem: this story needed a down payment.

Naturally, a bank comes into play here, as does a real estate agent. But maybe because of their local connections (or something to do with advertising potential) their names too remain unmentioned in the Daily News article---for the sake of fairness, then, all characters in this revision remain anonymous, although it is all a matter of public record. Anyway, between all these players, the bank approves (if not instigates) and the young couple agree to a plan of selling timber rights to 40 of the 45 acres to a fifth member of this tragedy: a logger proud of a lifetime of cutting valuable trees (hardwoods) while leaving the relatively invaluable timber (softwood pines and hemlock).

Of course, you can sense the sad end to this story and why it made the front page of a local paper. The land becomes logged; a community becomes shocked. The young couple now disappointed with their tarnished dream stand awkwardly in wide, muddy red clay wheel tracks brightly exposed beneath a patchy canopy of tenuous pine and hemlock, some of it damaged by the fall of larger trees. They admit, sheepishly that because of the previous density of the woods and the near-tragic story of the careless mule, that they had not ventured far into the forest to see just what they were buying, or rather, to see what they were signing over to the logging industry. Today, the couple insist that once they had bought the land, once they ventured further into rock and hollow, once they became aware of the unmatched beauty of the timber and the great amount of it marked to sell, that they had tried to delay the timbering date to come up with the money by other means. But the mean machine of the paper and lumber industry holds a pulse not on preservation but on pulp. And so the drama played out without delay until 40 acres on Purcell Road---in the community of South Bloomingville, only a few miles between the state parks of Old Man's Cave, Conkle's Hollow, and Ash Cave---became another open scratch of land on some of Ohio's last, most pristine wilderness. . . red clay topsoil now bleeding away in the suddenly deep furrows following spring rains.

But what in the end is the lesson, or the point, or the means by which we can go on, passing this piece of land without getting a lump in our throat? Well, one thing, I suppose, is to acknowledge that no one is innocent in this tragedy. Seller, agent, banker, buyer, forester, loggers, builders and consumer all try but cannot completely evade blame under American icons of free enterprise or blissful ignorance as the last of our wilderness which has survived hundreds of thousands of years cannot last beyond the first hundred years of the motorized vehicle and lumber mills. We live, it seems,"to have and to make" things not "to endure and preserve"those things we already have around us. Civilizations before us lived thousands of years here with generations of hardwoods grandfathering one tribe after another. Today, though, these high forested, southern Ohio hillsides---hills which as the base of the Appalachian mountains held back the last ice age---are awkwardly but easily stripped and shaved, becoming grass plots of land decorated with the monuments of modular cabins and prefab homes, a developers stained idea of opportunity.

Maybe the more immediate point, though, is how can we preserve more of the Hocking Hills? Certainly, a magnanimous entrepreneur could make large tract purchases and add Gates Rocks or Trump Hollow to Cantwell Cliffs and Conkle's Hollow State Parks . . . But, until such things happen, we might as well surrender to the idea that unless Hocking County develops some sort of land use plan or unless you or someone (whose intentions you know very well) buy up large sections of hillsides, hollows and standing timber to keep them as a woodland and natural areas (maybe with a nice timbered cabin politely placed) . . . unless this hidden Ohio wilderness is purchase for preservation, the land here is and will remain surgically open to the bidding of builders and developers.

Up on Potter's Ridge a pasture is being marked off in plots. Residents there are organizing a land use committee to protect these homestead farms. Behind Ash Cave on Chapel Ridge, a new renter of an old farmhouse say's he didn't know the owner was timbering the woods across the road and isn't sure if he will stay once the cutting begins. Within yards of Conkle's Hollow the forest service has been select cutting, and a hillside near Cedar Falls has just been dug into, it seems, to widen the road for increased traffic. And steep, private woodland next to the dam at Lake Logan is already marked for its timbering---a sure sign of further erosion on the lake's southshore.

But privately there is also hope for the wilderness. High Rock Hollow has been preserved in its natural state for eternity (a plaque on Chapel Hill expresses this). Petitioning from local residents a while back caused the removal of the amusement ride tower which had stood like a cold missile of destruction above the top of Old Man's Cave for two years. Certainly, land changes hands, and even old collectives like Deep Woods in the East Fork Gorge have separated a couple tracts for private residence. But in this case both seller and buyers remained committed to preserving the last stands of great white oak and hemlock . . . even if one buyer builds a small art studio under the canopy of her woods, or another maintains a small bed and breakfast.

In the end, maybe we cannot evade progress. And certainly it is a good thing that people are moving to live closer to nature. But what natural world will be left in Ohio if we do not direct our progress? How many more signs, how many more houses, how many more woods undone before it doesn't feel so natural anymore? Maybe it doesn't take zoning, but at least it takes common sense, appreciation, and consideration toward the thousands of acres of Hocking County already dedicated to wilderness and conservation. Being in nature, either as visitor or resident, aren't we all reaching for that one idea, that it is better to live with nature than without it? Shouldn't we remember this in our travels or our relocation to wild spaces? And may be we can also remember that when the natural world belongs to all of us, we can't blame any "outsider" for its destruction.

A Soft Sell in the Hardwoods

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