Between July 9th and 16th, my wife, Sharon and I had the blessing of attending the Starwood Festival at the Wisteria Event Site and Campgrounds in the Appalachian foothills of southeast Ohio. The Starwood Festival is an interesting event in terms of the people and workshops, but this blog post focuses on the story of the grounds; the land, and the rich depth of life that I discovered there.
What is Wisteria? It is a a nature preserve, a venue for private and public events, and a campground. It is more than that, however. Wisteria's true uniqueness arises from the vision of its resident shareholders. They see this 620 acre parcel of land as a sacred living entity, and many of them devote their lives to lovingly tending it and healing the damage that was done to it in the 1950s, which is where I will begin the historical background. In the ‘50s the area that is now Wisteria was rich with coal and its hillsides were strip mined. With the view of natural resources as existing to exploit for corporate profit and consumption that was very prevalent at the time, the land area was left in ruins after about ten years of mining. Locals who lived in the area during the time have described the area as being covered in rocks and devoid of any life. Soon, erosion began to occur alarmingly close to the main roads in the area. The state of Ohio implemented coal taxes, and administered "reclamation" of the land. Over $1 million was spent on this work.1 Fast forward now to the mid 1990's. I was unable to locate any details on exactly what the state - administered reclamation program that occured in the 60's did for the land, but founding shareholder Charlene Suggs stated in an interview with Southeast Ohio Magazine: “When we came here it was a field—there was nothing—we had the remnants of the logging roads that we threw gravel on and used, but everything we did—every time we had an event,we just piled that money back into the land, and after a while it should give us dividends. We’ve been free labor because that’s the only way we could afford it,”.1
Charlene Suggs and her husband at the time, Todd Alan, together with 20 other like - minded individuals, established the business entity known as Wisteria in 1996. Unlike so many corporations over the year which have tapped a land resource for the profitable festival business, the shareholders of Wisteria have a less common mission and vision. As hinted at in Suggs' quote in the previous paragraph, the goals of the shareholders and their event business are about healing this beautiful land from the strip mining destruction sixty years ago rather than being concerned with profit - seeking ventures.1
I was fortunate enough to seek out and participate in two Starwood workshops led by author and teacher Adam Davis. You can learn more about Adam's work here. He was the first to tell me some of the story of the land of Wisteria, and point out the amazing resilience of the trees and other vegetation that have grown up over the reclaimed ruins that were so evident just a little over twenty years ago. Here are a few photographs of the "classroom" where I sat with other people in Adam's first workshop on how to learn to live in greater harmony with nature:
It would be after this workshop with Adam, on my own private wanderings, that I felt the sacred life in Wisteria in a very visceral way. The trees spoke to my soul and provided me with some needed emotional healing as I walked among them. The longest trail that I covered was roughly two miles long. The images that I have shared in this post were from the woodlands connected to the Wisteria campground and event site. There are over 200 acres of of undeveloped greenery and wetlands at Wisteria that are designated as a permanent nature preserve, "allowing reclaimed strip mine areas to heal as naturally as possible." This nature preserve is presently not open to event visitors, however, the Wisteria site says that there are plans to build a few longer trails for select visitors.2
I look forward to it! I felt the ancient story in the trees and the rocks, and realized that the unnatural disaster visited by humans on this place in the '50s was just a blip in that ancient story.
I arose from our campsite pretty early each day, and sometimes meditated from inside the woodlands, seeing the rising sun as the forest floor and the trees did.
I want to leave you with an image of a striking American Beech I came across on one of the trails I traveled. At the lower left is the larger of two broken limbs, and you can see the limb stub pointing slightly to the left off the stump of the tree. The scale of this tree and that limb here are deceptive as I was using an ultra wide - angle lens which makes things appear smaller than they are. The broken limb on the ground is roughly the size of a small RV. That isn't a new wound; there was a fair amount of decay at the break. Despite that huge, now - missing limb, this beautiful Beech shows great health and vitality in her canopy.
I was left with the feeling that whatever we humans do on this planet we call home, Mother Nature is going to be alright. I'm not as sure about humankind. I think that we are not as resilient as she is. It is my hope and prayer that we will learn to receive and appreciate her unconditional love for us a little better, and recognize that we have a choice to live in harmony with her.
1 http://southeastohiomagazine.com/2017/05/01/wisteria-reclaims-corporate-buisness-model-abanonded-mine-land/
2 https://www.wisteria.org/about-us/nature-preserve/
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