ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 10, 1996 TAG: 9601100093
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JUSTIN ASKINS
I HAVE BEEN an environmental activist for more than 20 years, starting with the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire and continuing to the ``smart'' highway in Montgomery County. I've fought against logging in British Columbia, toxic spraying in Nova Scotia. I have fought for greater stream flows in the Catskills, and more wilderness in the Jefferson National Forest.
My usual method when I begin to get interested in an issue is to talk to people, read what's available and then get actively involved. I'll join a committee, attend some meetings, speak at a hearing and write an article or two. I try to be fair with an issue, though my opponents often see me as aggressive and abrasive.
Recently there have been a number of letters and editorials in your newspaper about the smart highway. Here, I don't want to get into a major discussion of the merits of the various arguments, except to say that the only real fact about the highway isn't projected economic assets or estimated traffic flows - those are clearly made up, by definition. It's that the highway will severely affect the Ellett Valley. My purpose this time is to be a little more personal, with the hope that by showing some of my heart, perhaps other hearts will be affected.
As a member of the Smart Highway Citizens Advisory Committee, I've been struck by the attitude of some of the pro-highway members. One fellow seems more in touch with his beeper, and must have gone to Capitalist Elementary School in his early days. I'm sure he believes the highway is a good thing, but I wish I could take him out to Iron Mine Hollow and have him spend a few days in touch with the Earth, not with his cellular playthings. A couple days of hiking around the area and a few nights beside a fire might really do some good to his heart, and perhaps I could show him how much the Earth means to me - and should mean to him and others who so desperately want this highway.
Montgomery County is going to grow whether or not we have a smart highway, but what path that growth takes is the big question. And that is a question that must be felt instinctively, not with projections and estimates.
People laugh when I tell them I speak to trees, but trees do listen, and will communicate - in subtle, nonverbal ways - if you spend enough time around them. Native Americans have known this for thousands of years, as have many traditional cultures.
In present-day America, we spend too much time away from the Earth, away from the only force that allows us to survive, a force that provides us with air, water and food, and spiritual comfort that's as necessary as any of our other requirements. Having a healthy Earth is smart, not building another highway.
When I read in The Roanoke Times that the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors had reversed their 4-3 vote against the highway, I was stunned. But I was even more shocked when I found out that the supervisors hadn't reversed anything. According to the supervisor I spoke to, the board was simply going to gather more information and then vote again, and none of them had decided to reverse the 4-3 vote.
A knot built in my stomach because of slanted reporting, and because I felt that the Ellett Valley had come one step closer to tremendous negative change. I couldn't sleep that night because I was so upset. I thought of the Agricultural and Forestal District program being gutted and the county's lack of an open-space plan. I thought of the trees cut down and the mountains slashed open, the animals disrupted, and the endless highway noise and pollution.
This highway is wrong. I know it in my heart. That's where the decision about whether to build it should come from.
Justin Askins is an associate professor of English at Radford University.
LENGTH: Medium: 69 linesby CNB