‘Momentous Win’: Years of Local Opposition Defeats PennEast Pipeline

Opponents in Pennsylvania and New Jersey cheer “cancellation of this unneeded, dangerous fracked gas pipeline.”

This article originally appeared in Common Dreams

By Jessica Corbett

Environmental and public health advocates on Monday celebrated the demise of a proposed fracked gas pipeline across Pennsylvania and New Jersey after PennEast decided to cease development because of difficulties acquiring certain state permits.

“Today, water, the environment, and people spoke louder than fossil fuels.”
—Jim Waltman, The Watershed Institute

“This is a huge victory. Today, water, the environment, and people spoke louder than fossil fuels,” said Jim Waltman, executive director of the New Jersey-based Watershed Institute, in a statement. “We congratulate and thank the many local, state, and federal officials of both parties and thousands of residents for their determined opposition to this unnecessary and destructive proposal.”

Joseph Otis Minott, Clean Air Council executive director and chief counsel, said that “PennEast’s cancellation of this unneeded, dangerous fracked gas pipeline is a momentous win for the communities that have fought hard for years to defend their property and the environment.”

“Others who seek to exploit the residents and natural resources of New Jersey and Pennsylvania should take note: We are not easy-take states and we will continue to resist,” he added.

The announcement from PennEast, a joint venture of multiple companies including Enbridge, follows several years of local opposition to the proposed 120-mile pipeline as well as speculation about the project’s future last week, after a court filing revealed that the developer would not use eminent domain authority to acquire state land in New Jersey.

The decision to stop development comes despite a June U.S. Supreme Court ruling about the New Jersey land dispute, which favored the developer, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approving the project.

As PennEast spokesperson Pat Kornick explained in a statement Monday:

Although PennEast received a certificate of public convenience and necessity from FERC to construct the proposed pipeline and obtained some required permits, PennEast has not received certain permits, including a water quality certification and other wetlands permits under Section 401 of the Clean Water Act for the New Jersey portion of the project; therefore, the PennEast partners, following extensive evaluation and discussion, recently determined further development of the project no longer is supported. Accordingly, PennEast has ceased all further development of the project.

Waltman pointed out that “the proposed pipeline would have ripped through dozens of our state’s most pristine streams and bulldozed through more than 4,300 acres of farmland and open space that has been ostensibly preserved in perpetuity.”

“From the beginning, it was clear to us that this PennEast proposal was in severe conflict with the state’s strong environmental protections,” he said. “As we and others have urged, through two administrations, the state of New Jersey has consistently held PennEast to the Garden State’s strict environmental laws.”

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy also welcomed the development. In a statement, the Democrat highlighted his administration’s opposition to the “unnecessary” project that would have destroyed acres of conserved land and threatened species, and reiterated his commitment to “protecting our state’s natural resources and building a clean energy future.”

The New Jersey attorney general and the Delaware Riverkeeper Network had challenged FERC’s approval of the project in federal court. Maya van Rossum, the network’s leader, said Monday that “we knew we would get here eventually, it was just a matter of time.”

Applauding the opposition efforts ​​of frontline organizations, community leaders, property owners, and environmental advocates, van Rossum declared that “we have advocated, litigated, conducted critical scientific ground-truthing, and been clear throughout that we would accept nothing short of cancellation!”

“Today is a day to celebrate,” she added. “Tomorrow we battle on to end the fracking that spawned this evil pipeline project as well as the other LNG, pipeline, and compressor projects that are part and parcel of the devastating and dangerous fracking industry advancing the climate crisis and putting the health and safety of our planet and future generations at such consequential risk.”

The Ohio River Speaks: White Jesus and the Gray Seagull

The Ohio River Speaks: White Jesus and the Gray Seagull

The Ohio River is the most polluted river in the United States. In this series of essays entitled ‘The Ohio River Speaks,‘ Will Falk travels the length of the river and tells her story. Find the rest of Will’s journey with the Ohio River here. Featured image: White Jesus photographed in the home of the author’s grandparents.


by Will Falk

In my grandparents’ house in Owensboro, KY, the Ohio River spoke to me through Jesus.

After the incident with my grandfather in the hospital parking lot, I returned to my grandparents’ home with my mother and grandmother. One step through the front door and I counted no less than six Jesuses staring at me from the wall. Three different crucifixes hung over three different doorways. Dozens of prayer cards and placards my grandmother couldn’t bring herself to get rid of littered table tops and shelves. And, a statue of a blonde, blue-eyed infant Jesus, dressed as a Renaissance princeling, stood guard over the centerpiece of my grandmother’s cluttered little living room: a massive Bible.

These images of Catholic Christianity filled me with a mixture of painful emotions. The depictions of Jesus as white annoyed me with their historical inaccuracy. The prayer cards invoked my wish that more people would spend more time acting to change the real world than praying. The crucifixes, with their classically Catholic goriness, displayed the broken and bloodied body of a man I had been taught was tortured and killed for my personal sins. Shame rushed in until I remembered that the Roman soldiers who murdered Jesus of Nazareth 2000 years ago could not have cared less if I missed Sunday Mass, cussed, or even used a condom while having premarital sex. But, by then, an old, but familiar anger burned within me.

I was angry about how, as a child, adults sought to control my behavior by threatening me with the eternal suffering of hell. I was angry about the guilt Catholic teachings encouraged me to feel when my behavior conflicted with arbitrary Church doctrine. I was angry about the long history of atrocities Christians have inflicted. I was angry about the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Doctrine of Discovery, and the witch hunts. I was angry about the sexual abuse so many priests have perpetrated on so many children.

I felt sorrow, too. I felt sorrow for my great uncle, a priest in his 80s, who told my mother and me about some resentment he felt over the way that his parents took him to the seminary at 13. In other words, my great-grandparents determined their son would take the vow of celibacy required of Catholic priests before their son had even finished puberty.

I felt sorrow for both of my grandmothers who, encouraged by the Catholic Church, stayed nearly permanently pregnant during the prime of their lives. My paternal grandmother gave birth to eight children. And, my maternal grandmother – the one whose house I was currently in – gave birth to seven children. To illustrate this more vividly, my maternal grandmother (93 years old and with slight dementia) recently asked me: “You know how women get periods, Will?” I, wondering where this was going, cautiously answered, “Yes, Granny, I do.” My grandmother then said, “Well, can you believe it? From the time I was pregnant with Clare until after Cecilia was born, I only had one period!” My grandmother burst out laughing, but I almost started crying.

It is funny, of course, but the more I thought about it, the sadder I got. My aunt Clare is my mom’s oldest sibling and my aunt Cecilia is her youngest, so my grandmother became pregnant and gave birth to 7 children – and only experienced one period during that entire time. As a man, I can only imagine what being pregnant and nursing for that long must have felt like. To make matters worse, each time either one of my grandmothers became pregnant, she had one more child to take care of than the time before.

Just a few hours after I had committed to learning how to treat my grandparents more compassionately, confronting the icons and imagery of Catholicism in my grandparents’ home already caused me to question this commitment. I wanted to blame my grandparents for forcing Catholicism on their children. I wanted to blame my parents for attempting to do the same to my sister and me. I wanted to direct my anger for the pain Catholicism has caused me at my grandparents and parents – people within reach. In order to honor my commitment, however, I knew I had to move past blaming my family and had learn to understand. The question was: How?

A prayer card from my grandmother’s collection.

***

Before I could begin to answer this question, I had to justify spending precious time and invaluable energy trying to understand my family’s spirituality while I was supposed to be writing about the needs of the Ohio River. Achieving this understanding would primarily be an internal process, a journey through my memories and emotions, through history books and conversations with my relatives. At a time when more industrial poisons and more agricultural pollution were pumped into the Ohio River with every passing day, could the Ohio River forgive me for taking this personal journey?

Intellectually, the answer seemed obviously no. Instinctually, however, I felt something urging me to begin this journey. I did not yet understand why, but my intuition insisted that this journey would yield answers to this project’s two central questions: Who is the Ohio River? And, what does she need?

There was something deeper contributing to my hesitation: I was afraid of my family’s reaction if I criticized the Catholic Church and their participation in it. If I was not careful, my criticisms might come off as nothing more than immature contrarianism. I could not sugar coat the pain the Catholic Church has caused me or gloss over the history of Church-sponsored genocides, but it would be disingenuous to lay most of that pain at the feet of my family. Their Catholic beliefs were rooted in generations of indoctrination, passed down by well-meaning mothers and fathers. My family’s participation in Catholicism followed a long history involving the destruction, erasure, and cooptation of the traditional cultures of Europe. A true understanding of why my family has practiced, and still practices, Catholicism would have to attend to 2000 years of history.

I faltered under the weight of it all – the battle between my intellect and my instinct, the fear of my family’s reaction, and the enormity of the history of the Catholic Church. For days, I flip-flopped between ignoring my family’s Catholic beliefs and embracing my intuition that there were useful lessons for both the Ohio River and me if I was just brave enough to delve into that history.

***

I retreated to the little cabin the Troutmans had been letting me use in Potter County, PA. With very little writing to show for my confrontation with my Catholic upbringing, I had just about convinced myself to ignore my family history and head down to Pittsburgh to write about how that city has affected the Ohio River when Melissa Troutman invited me to come with her to run a few errands in Olean, NY. (She probably noticed the squirrelly look that had grown over me while I debated my family’s spirituality during my self-imposed isolation and figured I could use some time outside of my own head.)

Olean sits on the river the indigenous Seneca call Ohi:yo’. To the Seneca, the Allegheny and the Ohio Rivers are one and the same. And, as I’ve explained in earlier installments of this project, I follow the Seneca’s lead. Melissa needed to get her oil changed. So, we dropped her car off and took her terrier Runo for a walk in Olean’s Franchot Park, on the banks of Ohi:yo’.

The river is not visible from most of the park because of a massive earthen flood control mound. Runo, proving the wisdom of his species, took off over the mound, forcing Melissa and I to follow. I crested the mound to find the Ohio River flowing from east to west below me, curling through the curves formed by the hills’ shoulders. Despite knowing I would find the Ohio River, I was stunned once again by the realization that no matter how much time I spend thinking about her, there is no substitute for being in her presence. And, I found the clarity that had eluded me while I had contained my search to the round confines of my own skull miles from the main stem of the Ohio River.

The Ohio River turned the gray, October sky into silver. She glittered under the russet leaves of autumnal oaks, the golden bursts of aspens, and the brash crimsons of changing maples. Emerald feathers flashed where mallards, reminded by the chill breeze of the need for winter fat, tipped their tail feathers up and fed on underwater plants and insects. Honking Canada geese carried, once again, the voices of my ancestors.

Ask the river what to do.

So, I did. Out loud. A few moments later a single seagull caught my attention, descending from the clouds. She took her time, making slow, wide circles above the water. On that overcast day, all the colors of the sky –  the spectrum of whites and grays – settled in her feathers. When she reached my eye-level, she made three or four circles without making progress towards the river’s surface. I got the impression she wanted me to notice her. The gentle repetitions in her circular flight-paths hypnotized me. Memories flooded through me. This was not the first time a seagull had carried me a message.

***

It’s the fourth day after I tried to kill myself the first time. The St. Francis psyche ward is on the seventh floor of an eight-floor building. For exercise and because there’s nothing else to do, I brave the fluorescent lights outside my room and pace the long hallway that connects most of the seventh floor.

At each end of the hallway are wide windows. One looks west into the rows of old company housing for the Milwaukee Iron Company. The other looks east over the waters of Lake Michigan.  Patients are not allowed off the seventh floor and there are rusty bars outside the glass in case we were tempted to take that route to fresh air. I try to open a window facing Lake Michigan anyway. It will not open. A heavy snow begins to fall surrounding the hospital in more white. I press my forehead against the cold glass pane. The cold feels good.

It is not long before I see an old spotted seagull awkwardly wheeling and diving through the falling snow. I am mesmerized by the odd gracefulness in his seemingly drunken turns through the snow. His circles bring him closer and closer to my window. I wonder why he is flying through such treacherous conditions. He is the only bird in the sky. As he flies closer, I am stricken with the beauty of his grayness against the white.

I begin to believe the drunk old gull is braving the snowstorm to speak to me. When he lands on the sill of the window I’m watching from, I know he is. He pauses on the window sill, makes eye contact with me, dips a wing, leaps, and wobbles back toward Lake Michigan. The waves on the lake ripple gray, too. The wet snow falls slowly, gingerly over the waters. They hesitate, hanging a moment in the air, before they are swallowed by the lake. White becomes gray. I drink up the colors following one gray wave after another from their birthplace on the horizon until they wash not far below me onto the shore.

While still in the hospital, I begin trying to write about how the seagull showed me color again. I do not know why. I just feel I should. It is instinctual. There is no articulable rationality that I can come up with. Writing about the seagull is like choosing a path when you are utterly lost. I see a path and go.

While trying to dress the memory in words, the experience cements in my mind. A place – neither completely concrete nor completely abstract, neither completely within me nor completely without me – begins to form. My heart and my memory meet my paper and my pen and the gull’s spotted gray wings flap on. He navigates spiritual planes, physical spaces, the long distances of memory, and fat snowflakes to lead me out over Lake Michigan.

My contemplation intensifies.

While I seek the right words, find them inadequate, scratch them out, and write new ones, the meaning of the gull’s visit grows. Color bleeds from the tip of my pen and begins to trickle to the edges of my memory. Though I cannot make out their tunes, faint songs reach my ears from far away. Voices in strange languages enchant me. I feel hair stir on my head, a twitch in my leg, water collecting on my tongue. I feel small sensations after a long numbness. My memory begins to stretch. The blood returns. It feels good.

The beginnings of a new understanding are planted within me.  I sense mystery. I sense possibility. My world was pain, anguish, and the certainty of more pain and anguish. Now, whispers kiss my brow speaking rumors of something new.

***

Runo dropped a stick, his favorite kind of toy, on my feet. The seagull splashed down next to the mallards and geese. And, I came back to the present.

Seven years after the old grey gull led me to writing in the mental hospital, I knew the Ohio River seagull was urging me to write, too. But, was I supposed to write about my family history and Catholicism? I stood watching the river for a few more minutes and no answer seemed apparent. I turned to catch up with Melissa and Runo. And the first thing I saw was two towering church steeples: The Roman Catholic Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels.

[The Ohio River Speaks] In My Grandfather’s Words

The Ohio River is the most polluted river in the United States. In this series of essays entitled ‘The Ohio River Speaks,‘ Will Falk travels the length of the river and tells her story. Find the rest of Will’s journey with the Ohio River here.


The Ohio River first spoke to me through my grandfather.

I was at my parents’ house in Castle Rock, Colorado. It was August, 2017 and my mother’s aging parents were visiting as part of their last major trip away from their Owensboro, Kentucky home. I was scrambling to finish a draft of the first document we filed in a federal lawsuit seeking rights for a major ecosystem, the Colorado River, and my grandfather asked me what I was working on.

I wasn’t sure if I should tell him the truth. My grandparents are devoutly Catholic. They pray the entire rosary at least once a day. They never miss Sunday Mass – though, they would prefer to go every day. My grandmother spent a year and a half in a Poor Clare convent before it was determined that being a nun was not her vocation. And, ever since they learned I no longer believe in Catholicism or their version of God, they’ve never missed an opportunity to remind me that all I need to do to avoid hell and return to a state of grace is to go to confession and then receive the Eucharist. So, I didn’t know how a conversation with my granddad about respecting the rights of the Colorado River as a living, sacred being would go.

There was something else behind my hesitation to engage my grandfather in a conversation about my radical environmental perspective: a fear of my grandfather’s disapproval.

My years in psychotherapy have taught me that I am particularly vulnerable, addicted even, to a need for my family’s approval. This fear often leads me to avoid sharing too much about my work with them. If there’s a chance my family will reject my work, I prefer not to broach the subject.

Meanwhile – excepting a few times when I want to talk about Notre Dame football or my favorite band, Phish – all I ever really want to talk about is how to protect the natural world. This combination of my fear of disapproval and passion for protecting the natural world has, too many times, caused me to simply refrain from interacting with my grandparents for long stretches of time. And, this makes me feel tremendously guilty.  But, something – or someone – urged me to tell the truth. And, to my surprise, my grandfather listened intently as I explained why I was fighting for the rights of the Colorado River.

When I finished, my grandfather sighed and told me the following story:

In 1952, my grandfather was 17 years old and the United States was embroiled in the Korean War. To avoid the hand-to-hand horrors he likely would have faced if he had been drafted into the US Army as an infantryman, my grandfather convinced his father to sign waivers allowing my grandfather to enlist in the US Navy before he turned 18. After serving for a year and a half, and fortunately with no experience of combat, my grandfather returned home to Owensboro.

Not long after he got home, and with fond memories of fishing for catfish on the Ohio River as a boy, my grandfather asked his father if he wanted to go fish with him on the river. My great-grandfather, however, told my grandfather not to go fishing on the Ohio River because the river was now “so nasty, you couldn’t hardly enjoy being down there.” But, my grandfather wanted to see for himself. So, he took a rod down to his favorite spot along the Ohio River. One cast was all it took for him to learn that his dad was correct. My grandfather recalled that when he reeled his line in, “it was so covered in tar and gunk from that one cast that I had to go home and boil my line if I was ever going to use it again.” That was in 1953. In my grandfather’s words, “The Ohio River has been filthy for ages.”

A few moments passed as he reflected on his memories.

Then, my grandfather told me, “I sure wish you’d do some work for the Ohio River, Will.”

This statement stirred something deep within me. For the first time in my life, I saw a chance to connect with my grandfather through the work I was most passionate about. I still had a lot of work to do for the Colorado River, but I knew I had to do something for the Ohio River.

While I was traveling with the Ohio River in Pennsylvania, my grandfather had a stroke at his home in Owensboro, KY. My mother made the trip from Castle Rock, CO to help her siblings take care of my grandparents. Following her example, I made the trip from northern Pennsylvania to western Kentucky to offer my help.

The day I arrived, my mother, my grandmother and I, went to the hospital my grandfather was in to transport him to a stroke rehabilitation facility. With COVID-19 restrictions in place, the short ride from the hospital to the rehab facility was likely the only face-to-face time I’d have to see my grandfather for weeks.

As I was helping him into the car, halfway between the seat of his wheel chair and the car seat, my grandfather’s legs gave out. With my arms in his under pits, I quickly realized I was not strong enough to lift him into the car and he started to slip from my grasp towards the parking lot concrete. My father’s father had died two-and-a-half years earlier after slipping on ice in a parking lot and hitting his head, and scenes from my other grandfather’s death flooded my imagination.

I overreacted. I jerked my grandfather close to my body while my mom ran for help. My 93-year-old grandmother, who suffers from dementia, forgot her age and lunged in to try to help.

My grandfather panicked as he felt himself slipping towards the concrete. His breathing stopped. He slumped against my chest. And, his eyes rolled back in his head. I thought my grandfather was dead. Oh my God, I thought, the last words my grandfather heard in this world were the ones I frantically said to my mother: “He’s just too heavy…”

This moment will always be frozen in my memory.

My realization that my grandfather was utterly dependent on me as his body slumped against mine was deeply unsettling. The natural order of things had been disturbed. Generational roles were reversed as I cradled a man who had cradled my mother who, in turn, had cradled me.

Fortunately, hospital staff quickly arrived and helped me lower my grandfather to the ground. He wasn’t dead; he had just passed out. And, he quickly came to a few moments later with the hospital staff surrounding him. When a nurse asked him his name, he coherently answered “George Taylor.”

My mother was busy asking the staff if they really thought my grandfather was ready to leave the hospital. A nurse had her arm around my grandmother, speaking softly, calming her down. I stood in a daze. What if the last few moments had been the last few moments I ever got to spend with my grandfather?

Just a few days before, I struggled with a part of me that did not want to make the 11-hour drive to Owensboro. I was tempted to rationalize my reluctance by telling myself the needs of the Ohio River were more important than the needs of my family. If the needs of a single human family are great, how much greater are the needs of the Ohio River, the mother of all life within her basin? Then, I tried to justify my reluctance with a lukewarm insistence that there really was nothing I could do in Owensboro, that my mother and my aunts and uncles had everything under control, and that the best thing I could do for my grandfather was to continue the work he had urged me to do.

This felt wrong. It felt worse than wrong. It felt downright shameful. What kind of a grandson doesn’t want to help his grandparents at a time when they’re incapable of helping themselves?

As I drove through the Ohio River basin from Pennsylvania to Owensboro, I continued to ask myself why a part of me didn’t want to make the trip. Hot, frustrated, and impatient from 7 hours of driving, as I was stuck in traffic on the Brent Spence Bridge, which crosses the Ohio River between Cincinnati, OH and Covington, KY, I rolled down my window and asked the river:

“Are you trying to teach me something through my family?”

A few moments later, I saw what appeared to be, from about half-a-mile away, a grandfather fishing with his grandson in a small aluminum boat. I remembered the way the Ohio River first spoke to me through my grandfather. I recalled the stirring deep within me that accompanied my discovery of the means to make my grandfather proud while also helping the natural world. I also remembered that arriving at this discovery required that I overcome the fear of my grandfather’s disapproval.

Two days later, squinting in the sun reflected off the hospital parking lot’s white concrete, dazed by what I thought was my grandfather’s death, and profoundly grateful to be given more time to heal my relationship with him, I realized what the Ohio River was trying to teach me.

For years, I had insisted that we fail to protect the natural world because we fail to treat the natural world like family. But, I said this while interacting with my own human family in problematic ways. How could I continue to say “we must learn to treat the natural world like our family” with a straight face if I was treating my family with fear, anger, and guilt?

I came out of my daze to hear my grandfather trying to get my attention. He said, “Thank you for being here, Will. If you hadn’t been here, I might have really hurt myself.” As feelings of pride welled up within me, I committed to learning how to treat my grandparents with compassion – not fear, anger, or guilt. And, if I was understanding the Ohio River correctly, I hoped that I just might find a glimpse into how, as a culture, we can learn to treat the natural world like family.


Featured image: Ohio River via Pixabay

You can access the original publication and the whole series here:

https://www.theohioriverspeaks.org/ohioriverjourney/2gvdav3lpkom5q9cjdm7uwxyhgn28f

[The Ohio River Speaks] When History Becomes Hallucination

[The Ohio River Speaks] When History Becomes Hallucination

The Ohio River is the most polluted river in the United States. In this series of essays entitled ‘The Ohio River Speaks,‘ Will Falk travels the length of the river and tells her story. Read the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth part of Will’s journey.


On the Tidioute Bridge, where forests accompany the Ohio River through the round Pennsylvania hills, I fretted over my responsibilities as a writer to tell the truth as I experience it. So far, on my journey with the Ohio River, I had experienced beauty, but this beauty was always tempered by the horrific reality of the Ohio River’s abuse. I had experienced moments of peace, but this peace was eventually always drowned out by my anxiety over the river’s future.

Whenever I felt myself on the verge of accepting these contradictions in my experience, the words of a mildly famous environmental writer I had asked to review my book How Dams Fall about the Colorado River flashed in front of my eyes. This writer told me: “I feel your pain acutely and vividly – but it’s so overwhelming that I can’t find the countervailing balm and hope I need to write a decent endorsement.”

I didn’t want my writing about the Ohio River to overwhelm my readers to the point that they couldn’t muster the courage to act in her defense. At the same time, however, the reality of the Ohio River’s pain is overwhelming. Unable to resolve these contradictions, I asked the Ohio River for help.

Rain fell on white pine, hemlock, silver maple, and black willow trees. It dripped from leaf to leaf and branch to branch. It brushed over evergreen needles, washed over bark, seeped into soil, splashed into puddles, and blended with mud. Streams, strengthened by the rain, trickled melodically over stones, down the hills, and poured into the river. Below me, rising river currents turned over themselves and created a thousand little waves singing a thousand little tunes. The Ohio River hummed cheerfully and quickened her pace downstream.

In these sounds, I heard love songs. The forests and the Ohio River were celebrating their ancient friendship by singing ballads to each other.

As I listened, the Ohio River taught me about the role trees play in this cycle. My attention drifted across the river to where exposed tree roots clung to, and held up, the river’s banks. Like the water those trees drank from the Ohio River, my gaze was pulled up trunks, through branches and leaves, to the tree tops. As the trees sang with the rain, their breaths rose from the hills as fog to join heavy, low-hanging clouds. I followed the falling rain back to the river. And, one rotation in a cycle that’s been turning for time immemorial was complete.

Then, a truck carrying a pile of pine logs rattled over the bridge I stood on. The fragrance of freshly cut white pine competed with diesel fumes in an olfactory juxtaposition of beauty and horror. Fumes filled my lungs and scenes from the history of logging in the upper Ohio River basin filled my mind.

In the 1790s, men with muskets destroyed Seneca, Delaware, and Shawnee villages throughout the upper Ohio River basin. They slaughtered and scalped men, women, and children and burned crops and other food sources. With native warriors murdered and native governments crippled, men with saws flooded the region. Sawmills were established in the upper Ohio River basin as early as 1800. Contemporary accounts describe whole hillsides along the Ohio River stripped clean of trees. They started with the hills along the Ohio River and her tributaries’ banks because the loggers could easily drag timber into the waterways where they could be transported to distant city markets.

Words like ‘logs’ and ‘timber’ are dishonest words that fail to describe the full cruelty the Ohio River was forced to endure. These logs were the dead bodies of trees the Ohio River had helped to grow from saplings. This timber was the corpses of trees whose families the Ohio River had lived with for generations. So, not only did the Ohio River witness the murder of her friends, she was forced to carry her friends’ dead bodies away.

At first, the loggers came for the long, straight, and strong eastern white pines. When the easily accessible white pine stands were exhausted, the loggers came for the hemlocks. Hemlock bark was used in tanning leather, but the logs were often discarded and left to rot in the woods. Around 1860, railroads allowed even the most isolated timberlands to be destroyed. I found a story in the Warren Times Mirror and Observer newspaper, dated May 26, 1973, that reported:

“In 1903, the Central Pennsylvania Lumber Company installed a big steam and electrically powered band saw mill at Sheffield. It had a rated capacity of 130,000 board feet of lumber daily. But its all-time production record was on March 14, 1923, when 337,000 board feet of lumber were sawed in a ten-hour period. Between 1908 and 1941, when the C.P.L. closed down because of lack of timber, some one and a half billion board feet of lumber were sawed there.”

As I pondered this on the Tidioute Bridge, history became hallucination. Images of those I’d lived my whole life with joined me where I stood. I saw my mother’s eyes – a half shade of blue paler than mine – gleaming with the specific light that fills them when she tells me she loves me. I felt my father’s hand ­– a half shade of tan darker than mine – with the specific weight his hand carries when he tells me he’s proud of me. I heard my little sister’s laughter when we share an inside joke we’ve shared for longer than either of us remember.

I saw all the people who have helped me become the person I am today. I saw childhood playmates and grade school teachers. I saw football coaches and college professors. I saw my teammates on the University of Dayton football team. I saw old lovers and failed romances. I saw the friends who visited me in the hospital after I tried to kill myself. I saw my activist comrades struggling so hard for a better world.

Then, I saw them murdered.

Each of them.

All of them.

By men with axes, saws, knives, and machetes. Cut down, cut up, and piled in front of me by men who thought only of the price my dead friends’ bodies would fetch at market. The men who murdered my loved ones then slapped a rough harness on my back and snapped a whip over my head. But the load was too heavy to bear.

The sounds of the local water cycle brought me back to the present, but the music was angry. Lightning cracked across the sky with shrill staccato notes. Rumbling thunder added ominous bass notes in a minor key to the music’s low end. Where once they sang, the rain, the trees, and the Ohio River hissed.

Cold and trembling, I asked the Ohio River: “What do you need me to do?” All I heard was more hissing. So, I decided to trust the truth in my experience.

Rain on a River’s Face

Rain on a River’s Face

The Ohio River is the most polluted river in the United States. In this series of essays entitled ‘The Ohio River Speaks,‘ Will Falk travels the length of the river and tells her story. Read the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth part of Will’s journey.


As the bow of my kayak slid into the Ohio River at the Buckaloons Recreation Area boat launch, on a cloudy morning in late July, all I wanted was a quiet mind. I was full of an anxious, noisy din produced by several sources.

After eight weeks of listening to and writing about the Ohio River, the stories the river was telling me – stories about mass extinction, the practice of scalping, and massacres – were emotionally exhausting. Meanwhile, national news was generally terrifying. COVID-19 surged while many humans believed the pandemic was a conspiracy designed to restrict their personal freedoms. Police brutalized citizens protesting police brutality. Reports from cities including Portland and New York described federal agents arbitrarily grabbing citizens off the streets and detaining them in unmarked vehicles. And, president Donald Trump, trailing Joe Biden in the polls, floated the idea of suspending the presidential election for the first time in American history.

I was also running out of the money I saved up to travel with the Ohio River. I spent a week and a half with my head buried in a computer screen while I created and shared an online fundraiser. Guilt accompanied my request for money. I felt guilty for not saving enough money. I felt guilty for not using my money more efficiently. Then, I felt guilty for feeling guilty because I wondered if the Ohio River thought my guilt in requesting money for her suggested I didn’t think she was worth requesting money for. To top this cup of self-loathing I brewed for myself off, I also felt guilty for spending time creating an online fundraiser when I could have been listening to the river.

My journey with the Ohio River was taking much longer than I originally planned for. I knew the Ohio River could speak. But, I was unprepared for how much she had to say. In eight weeks, I had only traveled the first third of the first third of the Ohio River, the part most commonly known as the upper Allegheny. Her answers to my two questions – “Who are you? And, what do you need?” – were rushing past me in a torrent profoundly more powerful than the proverbial firehose.

There were topics I sensed she still wanted me to write about before moving on. Truck engines hauling radioactive fracking wastewater throughout northern Pennsylvania and the ubiquity of their screeching brakes whined for me to investigate how dangerous that wastewater truly is. Pennsylvanians’ proper sense of pride in the dwindling, clean streams that still run through the state conflicted with Pennsylvanians’ misplaced pride in the role the state played in America’s first oil boom. The iron taste these conflicting prides left in my mouth wouldn’t wash out no matter how hard I tried to spit it out.

Black and white photographs in county historical society buildings haunted me. They showed hundreds of logs, the corpses of towering trees, floating down the Ohio River. They showed the eerie, bare hillsides those trees were stolen from. When I saw these photos, I felt the agony and anger the Ohio River still carries for being used to haul her forest friends, the old growth white pines and hemlocks that once grew along her banks, away. Once I felt this agony and anger, ghosts climbed from the shadowy photographs and cried out for attention.

Competing voices in my head struggled to be heard. One voice said, “Quick look away. Forget you saw it.” Another voice screamed angry obscenities. One voice asked, “Where’s my beer? Where’s my weed? What’s on Netflix?” My constant companion, the unwelcome guest in my head, the one who always tells me my writing sucks, acquired a bullhorn somewhere and was testing its volume against my ear drum. I despaired and thought maybe he was right that I had neither the time nor the talent to tell these stories adequately.

A few minutes before I pushed my kayak in the water, I saw a sign posted on the door to the Buckaloons men’s restroom. The sign warned visitors that “WE are STILL IN A PANDEMIC” before asking restroom users to keep the area clean and to adhere to social distancing. The sign concluded with: “We know that this place feels different, and it is! It can be a nice change of pace from the world; please help us keep it open.”

The realities underlying the sign’s rhetoric frustrated me. I knew the reason “that this place feels different” is because relatively undeveloped sections of rivers like the one at Buckaloons are becoming more and more rare. The reason a place like Buckaloons “can be a nice change of pace from the world” is because, for most people, “the world” is primarily human. “The world” is an office, a city block, a suburban house. “The world” exists online and onscreen, in headsets and TV sets. “The world” is no longer forests, rivers, mountains, and seas. The real world has become “a nice change of pace.”

 ***

Noise carries over water. And, just a few minutes after I pushed my kayak into the water, a family of nearby canoers began blaring Kenny Chesney from portable speakers. Someone asked the woman in charge of the music, “You like country music, huh?” And, the woman responded, “Yeah, there’s a time and a place for it.” I suppressed an urge to tell her this was neither the time nor the place.

Melissa Troutman accompanied me again. She graciously offered me one of her family’s kayaks and help with shuttling vehicles between the put-in at Buckaloons and the take-out fourteen miles away at the Bonnie Brae boat launch, just outside of Tidioute, PA. We originally planned to float about three miles down to Thompson’s Island where we would spend the day and camp for the night. We would float the remaining eleven miles the next day.

I was excited about Thompson’s Island because the island is home to some of Pennsylvania’s last remaining old growth forests. These forests were protected from the loggers by the relative inaccessibility posed by the Ohio River surrounding the island.  But, when we stopped on the island, the skies darkened and the clouds released a downpour.

The noise in my mind must have been so loud while I was preparing for the trip that I neglected to listen to the voice that suggested I bring rain gear on a day the weather services virtually guaranteed would rain. In addition to ignoring the need for rain gear, I left my phone in my car. Melissa, fortunately, had hers and checked the weather. Thunder storms were approaching and would likely last well into the next day. Not wanting to chance lightning while on the water, we decided to hustle the eleven miles down to the takeout. As our plans turned from a leisurely day resting on a beautiful island into a long day of paddling in a rainstorm, the noise’s volume increased.

Back in our boats, I was disappointed to find that houses and even a few mansions were built along much, if not most, of our route, despite the fact that it ran through the Allegheny National Forest. I had heard that this section of the river was one of the most well-preserved sections of the Ohio River basin. That may be, but my definition of “well-preserved” was different from what I found between Buckaloons and Tidioute.

There was beauty. I saw my first green heron. And, then my second and third. The last two looked like brothers with the big brother constantly running away from the little brother who really wanted to play. The joy I felt in seeing these green herons was undermined by my fear that encroaching development for vacation homes and fishing lodges would destroy the herons’ nesting grounds.

I saw half a dozen or so bald eagles. I even saw one make a successful dive for a fish. But, I soon lost myself pitying bald eagles for being chosen as the mascot for the American Empire. I hoped no one in the future would blame bald eagles for the sins of a nation they never asked to represent.

A couple of hungry ducks followed Melissa and I around for half a mile, quacking at us for food. Melissa gave them some bread and I wondered out loud whether diets high in carbohydrates could give ducks diabetes like those diets do to humans. When I saw a great blue heron silhouetted against invasive knotweed, I worried about the plants the knotweed was crowding out instead of admiring the heron’s legendary grace.

As the mental noise intensified, I began to ask myself: What sort of neurosis prevents a person from enjoying the sight of playful green herons? What kind of person worries that tossing ducks a few bites of bread would give them diabetes? Why can’t I silence this angst and simply enjoy the trip?

I thought about asking the Ohio River for help. But, each time I considered asking, I shot the idea down, chiding myself that the journey was about the river’s needs, not mine. Regardless, with a mile left to go and my surgically repaired shoulders screaming with every paddle stroke, the Ohio River gave me what I longed for.

I don’t know how she knew what I needed. Maybe her intuition is so strong she hears thoughts and emotions like humans hear the spoken word. I was paddling hard and sweating. Maybe the water forming my sweat rolled off my skin, fell into the river, and shared my secrets with her.

I sat in a strong current, resting with my paddle across the kayak’s bulkhead. I let the river do the work of pulling me to the dry warmth of my Jeep parked at the take-out. My physical weariness tuckered out the petulant voices in my head. I heard the rain falling on the Ohio River’s face. The infinite sound of individual rain drops joining the river in a communion of life-giving water created a murmur. The river and the rain hummed softly. A whisper shimmered in the air. The Ohio River said, “Shhh, shhhhh, shhhhhhhh.”

Then, a dark, majestic shape lit from a white pine branch hanging no more than twenty yards above my head. A golden eagle! She flew a wide arc over the water. And, as she turned upstream, another golden eagle lifted into the sky from another branch to join her. Their wings pulled the noise away from me. As the golden eagles disappeared in the distance, the Ohio River whispered, once again, “Shhhhh.”

And, my mind was quiet.