A SUNNY SUNDAY AFTERNOON                  ABOVE OCEANA

    The air was squeaky clean, brisk and sharp, so rare. The sky was deep, deep blue all around, but the blueness was greatest just above the top of the mountains. Several times as the 4-wheeler sped up a hill on the gas well and logging roads, I looked up and tried to imprint on my brain the sense of the blueness.

    Bob Gates and I had come to Oceana this Sunday afternoon, Nov. 4, for a long-delayed on-the-ground look at some timbering sites above Clear Fork, which drains from Bolt Mountain to Oceana. Jim Toler of Kopperston and Darrel Adams were our guides--and drivers of the two 4-wheelers. Toler, who has taught high school and college classes in Wyoming County for nearly 30 years, had written a letter to the Charleston Gazette in August about the lack of attention to the contribution to the flooding from timbering and mining. Toler has also encouraged a couple hundred Wyoming County residents to join one of the several lawsuits that have been filed over the flooding.

    As we drove down the mountain to Kopperston, both Bob and I stopped to take a picture of timbering on the mountain along the road. It was too obvious to ignore. Toler later told us that the logging contractor had left the job because he refused to clear cut the entire hill.

    Much of the land around Toler's home in Kopperston had once belonged to his great grandfather. In 1937, he had borrowed $140 from the coal company store to timber a small area, using the land as collateral. In the depths of the Depression, he was unable to repay the loan and lost the land to Norfolk Southern, which was one of the largest landowners of the time. To this day, Toler regards it as his land.

    Perhaps that is why Toler and his wife Connie, who grew up in the coal camp of Kopperston as well, are unafraid of speaking their minds about the timbering and mining. Others, Connie said, are still trapped in the coal camp mentality: "The coal company took care of me--And the coal company destroyed me." The paternalism is very hard to overcome, Connie said.

    Also difficult to surmount, is the pervasive fear of losing jobs. Toler said the threats are subtle, but men and women are afraid that they will lose their mining and timbering jobs if they speak out. Even some of his own relatives are mad at him.

    The floods have emphasized the need to revitalize southern West Virginia, Toler believes. "West Virginia has no idea where it is going. Politicians have no vision. Each generation destroys some of the land. The next has no idea of what was there." He believes the environmentalists have to stop trying to halt mountaintop removal. Instead, they need to help restore the environment of the southern part of the state. Wouldn't it be great to make Kopperston Mountain a tourist attraction, he suggested. After all, it's the highest mountain in southern West Virginia.

    Toler believes that Oceana should not have flooded so badly. It was caused by unscientific timbering and timbering on high slopes. The timber companies go in without a plan and slash many trees in order to collect a few choice specimens. Toler has heard that the timber companies are now taking poplar trees for pulp. If that practice becomes widespread, much of the hills will be stripped, since there are so many poplars. Toler fears the consequences.

    We set off on our tour from the base of a mountain up Clear Fork, about 10 miles northeast of Oceana. The 80-something man who lives in his homeplace at the left of the photo once drove General Patton in WWII. He had left home at 15 for a singing career in Texas. From there he traveled across several continents.

    I climbed on behind Darrel, while Bob rode with Toler. We climbed up the mountain, cutting back and forth across on timber and gas well roads. The one thing we saw on this trip, which isn't as visible from the air, was the slides that occurred on hills where about half the trees had been cut a few years earlier. The Division of Forestry maintains that studies show that most of the runoff from timbered sites occur on the logging roads. In the photo below, there are four major slides on one hillside where there are no roads.

    We saw another slide on the mountain across the valley. This slide seemed to be from both a timbered area and a road:

    We found another slide on a mountain about a mile away. This seemed to come from a logging road that went straight up the mountain:

    Toler was dismayed to find a large pile of mature trees on the edge of the road where we stopped to look at the slide on the opposite mountain. "So much waste," he said. "There's enough here to build a house. It's this way all over the mountain. It's just adding to greenhouse effect."

    We finished our three-hour tour with a visit to a new timbering site. The logger, who had been a student of Darrel's, had told him that the investors in New Hampshire wanted it clear cut. And that's what was happening. This was a new job, mostly done after the floods. But it could play a part in the next heavy rain. The roads come nearly straight down the mountain with no drainage controls (below left). One section of the timbering is adjacent to two ponds used to treat water from an old mine. (below right).