Feeling the Pain

Denny, at Backwoods Drifter ,is sharing with us some intense emotion about the destruction of local flora and fauna with the practice of mountaintop removal for the purpose of coal mining. Now,it is reaching his own backyard, so to speak. It is definitely a hard thing to pass through when EVERY thing familiar is going to be rearranged,scarred, and have no rhyme or reason for years to come, maybe never. Trees,animals,rivers,buildings, and people all take a beating in situations where the practice of dynamiting away huge rock surfaces becomes the norm to reach an end result. Human nature has a way of ignoring the situation when it doesn't want to face the facts. Either on the side of the commercial entity - turning a blind eye to the people's lives that are irrevocably damaged, or the residents of the affected areas that shove it under the rug in the backs of their minds - telling themselves it "won't happen to us." My hope is that big business can start being up-front with the populations in the areas where they plan their next excavation. Or is that EXplosion ? In closing, there are many issues that can lead us to become proactive about the spaces that we live in. I hope that somewhere along the mountain road each group involved can find a solution that will satisfy the needs of both...