Polly Campbell: Common ground

We all have a stake in preserving the living land

My parents had a lot of kids and not a lot of money, at least at first. But an admirable thing about my mother and father is that they spent the money they did have according to clear values. No luxuries for them, no Disneyland for us. We wore second-hand clothes, timed our showers, had one car and no TV. But they did spend money on things that really benefited us as a family: travel, culture, time in the woods and mountains.

I don’t know how much they paid for 27 acres outside of town in the hills of southern Indiana. Not much, probably. It wasn’t “useful” land, just an overgrown farm field and a patch of ravined woods with a creek running through it. They ”improved” it with two picnic tables. We’d go out and picnic, follow the creek, find geodes and wildflowers. We’d swing out over the creek on a grapevine and sled down a hill that took a 90-degree turn just before a steep dropoff. If we left late, Dad might stop the car on the gravel road so we could hear the whippoorwills. 

When I was junior-high age, I’d sometimes find a spot halfway up the hill, gather fallen leaves into a little fort and hide there, breathing in the smell of those leaves slowly turning into dirt, thinking my thoughts and wondering if anyone missed me. 

It left me with a love for the hills and woods, drawn to any place where the trees are tall and the wildflowers pop up overnight. I learned how to find a place for peaceful solitude. 

Later, after we’d left home, my parents did another good thing: They donated the land to The Sycamore Trust, a nonprofit that acquires and preserves special spots of nature in southern Indiana. It’s now the Campbell Preserve, and the salamanders and geodes are still there. I hope the creek still runs clear.

 I don’t have land to give, but I do like to contribute modestly to a land trust myself, in accordance with my values. The environment has always been my No. 1 issue (though I’m exhausted these days by the competition for that top spot). I donate to organizations fighting for the environment through legislation or the justice system. Which is important to do, but it’s a bit of a gamble, isn’t it? They might win, they might not. So, there’s a satisfying, resonant note I can hear, knowing my money is going to preserve a piece of living land that provides habitat and oxygen and protects the climate, to set it aside from the always-greedy world.

There are many such trusts or conservancies around the world, the country and locally. The one I have connected with most is the very impressive Arc of Appalachia. This nonprofit has preserved 13,000 acres of ecologically important land in the Appalachian edge of southern Ohio, and recently in West Virginia and Kentucky. They started in 1995 by buying land along the Rocky Fork in Highland County, now the 3,000-acre Highland Nature Sanctuary. 

They have since preserved 13,000 acres of what Executive Director Nancy Stranahan likes to call The Great Eastern Forest, which once covered the entire eastern third of the continent. 

“We preserve communities,” she said. “Communities of living creatures have covered the earth for millennia, until just recently.” 

Their goal is to add the most intact communities. “We go for the best of the best, but every acre counts,” she said. 

Some of the land is donated, some is funded by grants. Some funding comes from nature-loving donors. “It’s a pretty simple proposition,” said Stranahan. “It’s the only thing where money actually solves the problem. Or at least the current endeavor. The area a wood thrush needs for breeding is 1½ to 2 acres.” 

Your money could buy that. 

I have hiked many of their lovely preserves. I’ve seen a delta-shaped hillside by the Rocky Fork covered in white trillium, glowing in the early spring evening light. I’ve become giddy on the hillside preserves thickly covered with bluebells and miniature larkspur. Each preserve hike is different: Some go along streams and by waterfalls, others through prairies and edge or along karst formations sprouting little gardens of ferns. A few, like Fort Hill or Tremper Mound, keep Mound Builder sites safe. 

Recently, The Arc bought 1,200 acres in West Virginia, and are still raising money for it. Land is cheaper in West Virginia, so they can save a lot more. They’re eyeing a purchase in Kentucky. Three states, but all patches of the same forest to knit back together.

When you feel you want to help the world, but are overwhelmed, I recommend helping make a purchase of land. It’s a good feeling. And when you need even more of a good feeling, or a counter to bad ones, visit the land, walk the trails, rest on a moss-covered rock or in a pile of leaves all by yourself. You can’t feel like you own it – you don’t. But you can feel, for a bit, part of its community.

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Polly Campbell covered restaurants and food for the Cincinnati Enquirer from 1996 until 2020. She lives in Pleasant Ridge with her husband, and since retiring does a lot of reading, cooking and gardening, if that’s what you call pulling weeds. 

She writes monthly on a variety of topics, and she welcomes your feedback and column suggestions at editor (at) moversmakers.org