BOONE ON MTR

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN!!!

"Industrial greedy practices ruin things lurking along most idiotically driven fast lanes of our environmentally surrounded lives ..." appropriately details my feelings right now. My fingers splay across a digital cell aiming for readers to stretch imaginations. Please, open your hearts.

The mission?  Hooking you to a major cause in the works.

Thus, ride with me now as details pertaining to an unhappy day emerge. The day is black as pitch when I find my old pal, Clementine coming 'round the mountain.  Perhaps, you may lighten any inhibitions or apprehensions while reading this true encounter.  If you recognize my name and absolutely despise my style, then leave the premises of this paragraph.

Shall you foolishly laud the non existence of clean coal? Let's hope not. However, I know no other way to approach this horrendous problem.
Signed:Daniel Boone IV
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November 18, 2009
Place: West by God, Virginny standing on call as the next mountaintop blows.

Nigh on a one hundred mile radius awaits an encrouching sense of doom. Chill in the air spells dampness of the soul. Ever watch mankind, coal companies with impeccable credentials blow apart a mountain? No? 

Well, try it sometime.

Feelings of devastation, man made and horrendous, rock mentality akin to Hurricane Katrina, Sept 11, 2001, Pearl Harbor. Even the Galveston Flood which edges forward as comparisons.

We wonder when we'll lose our next mountain, the four hundredth, after we witness this one burst apart at the seams.

Yes, all in the crowd spread about hanging on trees, tied to the back of bumpers, wedged into the woods like mice on a slab of cheese ... we all invariably fall to our knees.  No!  NOT AGAIN!! NOT another victim, a natural part of Mother Earth, Herself.

Crying bursts out from spectators lined up like bowling pins donning protective soot gear.  Sounds of weeping are never heard.  Dynamite blasting escalates continuously inflaming echos.

Alas, when these explosions are almost rather over, while the air's still black, clouds of plumes leave the scene of the crime.  Shifting on gravel, I take a walk.

Around the far corner, from a lower road, driving six white, sooty gray horses comes my old pal, Clementine.  She'd be the one to be daringly different, at her own expense. Cheers send hope to the heavens. Clemmy's here to pick up the show.

"Clementine?"

"Daniel?"

"Clementine, fancy meeting you here.  What's it been, twenty years?"

"Climb on this rig, Daniel. Let's wind this bugger down."

Now, I'm the one with reigns in my hand when civil disobedience went straight down tubes of commons sense.

Clemmy lit a fuse, tossed out a few cherry bombs.  We keep stopping, pulling people into the wagon. Soon lines of well meaning, law abiding citizens, whose water grows extinct or contaminated hang on for dear life with devil-may-care bravery back there.  How those stampeding Morgans hold the road is a great question.

I stand, long hair blowing, observing coal truck equipment move closer and closer.  We fake right, dodge left ...
Hell no!!! We aint gonna roll over.  Believe it!  We know rock & roll ... but who really cares one tear or one lousy iota about us?  We're convinced nobody does. Nor about our Mountains which are part of the Earth itself here in the states.

We care desperately for our vast Appalachian Mountain Range. For crying out loud! We pray you do too.  Listen, Audience, Clementine driving 'round the mountain, nor I, are exactly the perpetual pleading kind. The media don't allow this either.

So, read on and on. Imagine on with friends, fans, kin.  Research Mountaintop Removal a.k.a. Valley Fill Mining at your first opportunity is one way to fly the mountain high. Like our nesting eagles once did. Remember though Bambi won't be quite alive. Ahh. One fellow wrote streams, which no longer draw the occasional tourist fishermen, those mountain brooks covered under by rock, layered by debris from mighty living forests, may in fact be longer than the Ohio River. Gone all gone.  In the wake of powering nuke plants which light the lights, generate a/c for everyone's convenience in a modern fossil burning fueled world.

After our foray into scare tactics, Clementine brings us all to her mother's cabin, located in the deepest woods on an adjacent mountain overpass. We alight, catch up, discuss the protest itself.  Welcome backdrops of tossed salad and scrambled eggs, pots of beans make their way across long wooden tables below the pines. All condemn adroit, visual devastation of another mountain blown to Hades, eradicated from the face of the Appalachian Mountain Chain. Not ours to climb, hunt, enjoy.

We curse King Coal for a few more hours, without a doubt, camp overnight. Bid each other farewell until the next time we meet again for another, awful MTR protest. 

Clemmy plans to upgrade, drive a coach and eight up Pennsylvania Avenue. She'd look fancy in her signature jodhpurs, braids flying, freckles shining. We hope she does ultimately reach White House lawns, offers President Obama and the First Lady a ride to Appalachia.

To this day, I wonder if he'd bother to attend and steadily view his nation's mountain destruction. We all wonder if he'll ever arrive, stand beside us, save our fellow citizen's home turf.

My old pal, Clementine wishes on a daily basis more jobs be returned to the miners contention as opposed to quick salary saves via Mountaintop Removal, the curse of the South.

Plus, goes without saying, if anyone reading this plea, this missive, researches onward, Wikipedia offers  detailed descriptions of this American travesty. Many fine reporters handle that part of the equation.

Our advice, dear audience, steady yourself since MTR is not a pretty picture by any means.

This brief tale's ghost written from: Daniel Boone IV, a direct descendent of an American Pioneer. Yes, they're out there.

Words:987