Something's Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal

Bev May: Little Acts of Greatness

Bev may Little Acts of Greatness Did you really think that God got it wrong when he put that mountain right there? Do you believe Mother Nature had no clue when she populated it so fair? And what was the crime of Father Time who set it all in slow, slow motion? Still, you know best, don’t you, little man? Now where’d you get that notion? —Kate Larken, “We All Live Downstream” When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the world. —John Muir Bev May moves up the steep mountain much like she must have as a little girl growing up here on Wilson Creek, Kentucky. Her trusty dog, Rufus, a mixed breed with a noble profile, is barely able to stay ahead, although he seems intent on doing so. May’s climbing is steady, her steps wide, and she never stops talking, eager to introduce us to the place she loves so much, the place she is terrified of losing. Like that young girl, May is conscious of everything. She points out deer tracks, a single red leaf decorating the otherwise summer ground of the woods, a blue jay feather that has drifted down and come to rest on a rotting log. She runs her hand over the broad trunk of an oak, glances up at the sky, and comments on its deep, aching blue. In an unfamiliar patch of the woods May gasps aloud and runs forefinger and thumb over a bluish-green teardrop-shaped Bev may, Floyd County, kentucky. Photo by Silas house. BEv mAy  leaf. “Why, it’s a mulberry tree!” she says, laughing with joy. “I didn’t know we had a mulberry tree up here. I love mulberries.” She is also very conscious of others, always holding the stinging limbs she passes through at the front of the pack so they won’t fly back and hit whoever is hiking behind her, pointing to low clots of briars that might grab at our socks. This woman is one with this mountain. They know and respect each other. This is apparent not only in the way May talks about the mountain, but in the way she moves up it with ease and grace, stepping lightly so as to disturb the least amount of earth as possible. Even though she often says, “I can’t get up here as fast as I used to,” this is hard to believe. She reports that on Easter weekend she climbed this trail (which takes at least an hour) three times in two days. May is a woman who is used to being in motion ; she is a medical professional, an old-time fiddler, and an activist . She moves with determination, her arms pushing at the air, her legs intent on their purpose, her feet on a mission. Today she is on her way to the High Rocks, her favorite place in the world, and although she wants to take her time and enjoy the walk up, she is also eager to reach the ridgetop, where she will once again encounter this natural castle of rocks, a secret world that only the inhabitants of this holler know, one they’ve been frequenting since the early 1800s. When she does finally take a break, May sits on a scattering of small rocks on a steep bluff halfway to her destination, where she can see the tops of the opposite mountains, a blue haze through the trees. May is quickly joined by Rufus, who back-tracks to zoom in behind her and nudges his head into the crook of her arm. She took Rufus in after someone put him out in the nearby community of Maytown and her nephew found him. “He became sort of the living football of Maytown,” she says, rubbing Rufus’s head so that he turns to face her. She looks him in the eye. “And we can’t have that, now, can we, buddy?” May points to a mess of dead pine trees, most of them leaning SOmEthIng’S RISIng 0 or already fallen, victims of the recent beetle infestation that took most of Eastern Kentucky’s shortleaf pine trees. “You see them?” she asks. “My daddy planted them back in the sixties, after they broad-formed our land. They came in here and auger-mined this mountain, and those pines are standing...