Rose ClementsThis story was originally shared with us during out Story Contest by Southeast Conservation Corps crew member Rosa. The contest has ended, but you can still share your stories with us for possible publication on The Field Guide! Please email your stories to communications@conservationlegacy.org.
On an afternoon in August, I was working with two other members of my crew to spread sand over a recently finished campsite. As we carefully smoothed out the sand, my crewmate Emily made a startling discovery. A turtle had laid its eggs in the pile, and Emily’s rake had accidentally broken the soft shell of one of the eggs. The tiny baby turtle was revealed inside, its shell already formed, waiting to hatch into the world. Emily is a zoologist, and she knew it was too late for the turtle. Once its egg has been disturbed, a turtle will not survive. We put the broken egg at the base of a tree by the campsite and returned to our work spreading sand. When we left, I placed a jewelweed flower on the broken egg to commemorate the loss.
For the past month, my crew (a Southeast Conservation Corps Women’s Conservation Crew) had been constructing campsites at Bee Rock campground in Kentucky’s Daniel Boone National Forest. At the time, I was reading Braiding Sweetgrass, a beautiful book by Robin Wall Kimmerer about the teachings of plants in both scientific and Indigenous knowledge systems. I enjoyed reading the book while on hitch because I could spend the workday thinking about the chapters I had read the night before.
Braiding Sweetgrass gave me a heightened sense of responsibility in my work. As we worked to fit together the timbers that frame the campsites, Kimmerer’s words about birch baskets returned to me: “It’s thirty years of a tree’s life you’ve got in your hands there. Don’t you owe it a few minutes to think about what you’ll do with it?” I started thinking more deeply about the work we were doing and the responsibility we had for the land.
I learned from our Forest Service partners about the popularity of Bee Rock, and we met many people who were impatient to have it reopen, so I understood the value for the community of the campground and our work on it.
But as we displaced plants, toads, newts, and baby turtles as we worked, I could not help trying to balance the value of what we were creating against that of what we were destroying.
Kimmerer has the same dilemma in Braiding Sweetgrass as she tries to clean out the pond behind her house so her daughters can swim in it. As she pulls algae from the pond, she is aware of the insects and other small creatures she is killing in her efforts. She writes of the experience , “it challenged my conviction that all lives are valuable… As a theoretical matter, I hold this to be true, but on a practical level it gets murky.”
The section of Braiding Sweetgrass that shifted my perspective on Bee Rock the most was the chapter on maple syrup. Kimmerer explains the process of boiling sap to sweeten it and then explains, “The responsibility does not lie with the maples alone. The other half belongs to us; we participate in its transformation. It is our work, and our gratitude, that distills the sweetness.” Nature’s gifts come to us half-finished, and it is up to our work to complete those gifts.
After reading these words, I thought about them the next day while digging trenches for yet another campsite. Maybe, rather than disturbing this place, we were completing it. The river formed the valley with its gently sloping sides and beautiful views, but without access to it, people would not be able to appreciate that gift. With our labor we took the gift of the valley and sweetened it into something that countless people can enjoy.
Making the valley accessible to other people was one way to recognize the land’s gift and make our disturbances worthwhile. Another way was gratitude. I was left thinking about the gifts we had received from Bee Rock and how we could acknowledge them. On days spent drilling holes through compacted rock under the hot sun, I did not feel very appreciative of the place we were working. But when I took a moment to walk in the shade and cool down, I would be suddenly struck by the beauty and growing familiarity of the plants and hillsides around me. On the last afternoon, after so many cloudless, burning-hot days, it started to rain, and it felt like a gift.
Even though the work we do is for people, there’s a place for the animals here too.”
I asked my crewmates what they were grateful for about the place where we spent so long working, and everyone had a different answer. For me, it was the plants, five of which were new species that I learned to identify during the project. For Alexa, our crew leader, it was the people—the members of our crew and the many U.S. Forest Service employees we got to meet and work with at Bee Rock. Annisa mentioned the rocks—not the ones underground, but the big mossy boulders that stood between campsites. I hadn’t thought of the rocks until she mentioned them, but they also had a role in creating the gift of the valley.
Finally, Rhiannon spoke of the newts, toads, turtles, and other animals we had seen in every campsite. Our disturbances to them were what first concerned me about the work we were doing, but she saw them with different eyes. She looked forward to future interactions between campers and animals, noting that the campsites we built left plenty of room for reptile habitat. “Even though the work we do is for people,” she said, “there’s a place for the animals here too.”