Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere
Earlier this week, I was asked to attend and shoot photos of a community gathering in northern Stokes County. The people there are concerned about the possible closing of the elementary school there. To them, the school is an important part of their community. To the school board and the county commissioners, the school is a budget problem in an era in which the county (like many rural counties) actually is losing population.
While attending a community event recently in the little Stokes County community of Francisco, I sneaked into the fire station to get photos of their vintage Mack fire truck.
From time to time, when I think it is of general interest, I will post here about what I’m up to as a local political and environmental activist.
When I bought land in rural Stokes County, North Carolina, and built the abbey here, I did expect to have some involvement in the county’s civic life. I never guessed, though, that at times it would seem like a full-time job. I’m now chairman of the county’s Democratic Party. Three years ago, Ken and I helped start an environmental group called No Fracking in Stokes. This group has had its hands full, and many people say that it is the most effective grassroots environmental group in North Carolina.
The scenic Dan River runs through the foothills of Stokes County. Its headwaters lie in the Blue Ridge Mountains, in Meadows of Dan, Virginia. After weaving southward into North Carolina, the river meanders north again toward Danville, Virginia. (The river is about two miles from the abbey.) A shale basin lies underneath parts of the river, and geologists think that some (though probably not much) recoverable shale gas lies in this basin that could be gotten out with fracking. This was on no one’s radar screen until 2012, when North Carolina’s newly elected Republican legislature, stimulated largely by banking money out of Charlotte that found its way into Republican pockets, became hell bent on dragging North Carolina kicking and screaming into fracking.
Last night at a public meeting in the little town of Walnut Cove, people were too polite to kick and scream. But they were mad as hell, and they fired high-calibre volleys across the bow of the Walnut Cove town board, which at its previous meeting had voted to allow geologists from North Carolina’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources to do sample core drilling on the town’s property. Though it’s true that the issue had been on the board’s agenda and was posted on the town hall door or something, the larger truth is that the board was trying to sneak it through in the dark of night. A reporter for our local weekly newspaper reported it, and people were quickly up in arms. The next meeting of the board was packed. In fact, the town’s fire marshall had to prevent more people from entering the building. A bunch of windows were opened in the old frame building (which used to be a school for black children), and the overflow crowd was allowed to stand outside and look in.
A retired schoolteacher told me that, as a nervous mayor was opening windows, the mayor saw a sheriff’s deputy standing outside and said, “Are you the only one here?” The deputy replied, “I’ve got backup.”
There is a well established African-American community in Walnut Cove. They live mostly in two neighborhoods. The test well is to be drilled in one of those neighborhoods. The African-American community is angry because they weren’t consulted.
To make the situation even more dangerous, if fracking comes to the Dan River shale basin, it would be dangerously close to a huge coal ash impoundment at Duke Energy’s Belews Creek Steam Station. A breach of the 130-foot dam there probably would wipe out the nearby community of Pine Hall, and the ash would certainly spill into the Dan River.
Few things warm my heart more than people talking back to government when government does what big money wants rather than what the people want. It’s unclear at this time whether the Walnut Cove town board will — or even legally can — rescind its decision. But one thing is for sure. The people will pay them back at the next election, and the county’s Democratic Party will do everything possible to help them with that payback.
For those who would like more information on our environmental battles here in North Carolina, below are some newspaper links. You also are invited to join our Facebook group, No Fracking in Stokes.
Last year, No Fracking in Stokes produced a video, aimed at our rural constituents, to help them see how fracking would threaten their rural lifestyles by turning rural areas into industrial zones. This week, that video won first place and audience favorite at the Sustainability Shorts Film Festival at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
You can watch the video on Youtube through this link.
Most of the readers of this blog are not from Stokes County, or even from North Carolina, so I need to explain what Vade Mecum is and why people in Stokes County are so concerned about it.
A hundred years ago and longer, Stokes County was a tourist destination. People would come into Walnut Cove on a train, then travel by wagon to one of the resorts. The resorts were clustered around what is now Hanging Rock State Park. There are cool-running springs there, particularly on the shady north side of the park. It was a cool place to be in the summer. Most of the old resorts, which were built of wood, are gone. Only one remains: Vade Mecum.
Vade Mecum was never exactly abandoned, but it was a bit of a white elephant, and no one knew quite what to do with it or how to deal with the expense of keeping it up. It belonged to the Sertoma Club for many years, and for that reason it’s often known by another name, Camp Sertoma. In recent years, it has been managed by N.C. State University. However, N.C. State was losing money on the property and abandoned it on short notice last year. The Stokes County commissioners scrambled to figure out what could be done with the property. Interested citizens floated a business plan, but the plan never flew. But at present, the North Carolina General Assembly is considering a budget bill that would include some money for Vade Mecum and attach Vade Mecum to Hanging Rock State Park, which is just a stone’s throw away. It seems likely that the bill will pass and that Vade Mecum will be saved for the people of North Carolina. But people in Stokes County aren’t counting their chickens yet.
Yesterday there was a tour of Vade Mecum. Many people who are very interested in saving the place had never been inside, including me.
The dining room
The kitchen
Just inside the main door
Robin, superintendent of Hanging Rock State Park
Friends of Vade Mecum and leaders of the tour
A bedroom on the third floor
The chapel
The chapel ceiling
The gym, which has a stage at one end…
… and a fireplace at the other
The big porch in front of the gym
A vast swimming pool behind the gym
Some of the cabins
The main building
As regular readers know, I’ve been involved for the last two years with No Fracking in Stokes, a grassroots group fighting fracking in Stokes County and in North Carolina.
Our group has released a new video, filmed here in Stokes County (except for the shots of actual fracking in the Marcellus shale area of Pennsylvania). The actor is a retired schoolteacher, and the farm where this was shot is just a few miles from the abbey.
That’s the abbey’s garden in one of the photos near the end of the video, and the chicken perched in the Jeep window is an abbey chicken, Fiona.
The original music is by Rex McGee, a Stokes County musician.
A concerned citizen speaks to the Stokes County commissioners.
Though I certainly enjoyed my 17 years in San Francisco, rural life is far from boring. One of the good things about backroads places such as Stokes County is that the American system of government operates at a small scale. People know each other. It’s easy to get involved. A few people can make a big difference.
In my political activities against fracking, I’ve gotten to know a good many people. Often the same people who show up to work for one urgent cause will show up to work for another urgent cause. In Stokes County, the newest urgent cause is preserving an enormously valuable 19th-century resort and keeping it in the hands of the public. The resort, Vade Mecum, belongs to the state of North Carolina at present and has been operated at a loss by N.C. State University. A few weeks ago, N.C. State informed Stokes County that they’re closing Vade Mecum, which had been used mostly as a seasonal camp for young people. Very quickly, the county’s leadership — both elected and unelected — have gone to work to come up with a plan that would get Vade Mecum and its pristine 900 acres into county hands and keep it open. Tourism is increasingly important to this county, and Vade Mecum adjoins Hanging Rock State Park, which is the most visited state park in North Carolina. So Vade Mecum and its land could become an important part of Stokes County’s tourism master plan.
The room was packed at a meeting Monday of the county commissioners. A retired farmer, in a 30-minute presentation to the commissioners that was simply the most entertaining and most effective presentation I have ever seen, outlined to the commissioners a plan for preserving Vade Mecum that was developed by a group of concerned citizens. The commissioners seemed to like the plan and have promised to act soon on preserving Vade Mecum.
Though dramas like this certainly happen at the state and national level, here at the county level everyone is up close to the action. There is a real sense of working together. I like it. And at this stage of my life, I’d rather live here than even in a place like Paris.
The main lodge at Vade Mecum
A neighbor out on the paved road recently finished renovating one of his tobacco barns. He used high-quality board and batten siding. The siding was sawed on-site by one of those portable sawmills that I have written about. The trees that went into the siding were trees that he had cut to build a house.
It’s really nice to see people valuing, and taking care of, the outbuildings on the old farms in this county. Many have already fallen in and disappeared, and many others are in different stages of decay.
This neighbor also displays a No Fracking in Stokes sign.
Click on images for high-res version
The Stokes Stomp is Stokes County’s biggest annual party. It happens every September in Danbury. I was there today to work in the No Fracking in Stokes booth and to take some pictures.
