Finding Extraordinary in the Seemingly Ordinary

Okay so let’s face it, my poor student lifestyle is encouraging me to be a little creative in my “awesome tree journey.” But the blog must go on! Lucky for you all…creative, I am. So here I am, sitting in the middle of the southeastern Piedmont. Seemingly ordinary, right? Just you wait and see…

I guiltily admit it. I openly and outwardly covet that quintessential southern red clay, spreading across the land like a gorgeous horizontal sunset. Back home in Virginia, before our fields became thick and lush with fescue, I used to rock on my porch and gaze at the beautiful sight. I was a modern-day Scarlett O’Hara, sitting atop that beautiful dirt, that legendary red Georgia clay.

Much to my horrified dismay, I recently learned that this seemingly beautiful ecological phenomenon was actually not so environmentally desirable. The red clay sweeping across the land is actually a product of 400 years of soil exploitation to the extent of total topsoil erosion. It only took the early Jamestown settlers a few years to realize the potential of tobacco production in the New World (though undoubtedly an auspicious discovery for the struggling settlers themselves). John Rolfe’s 1611 cultivation success doomed the fate of southern soil almost instantly. From there, plantations spread like wildfire, with early Americans abusing the land, ruining the soil, and moving farther West where land was unclaimed and abundant. Very few landowners practiced soil conservation strategies, except for a few unique renaissance men like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. The result was devastating. Upwards of 15 inches of rich, fertile soil have since been lost to the Southern Piedmont. The rate of soil loss far exceeded the painstakingly slow process of soil production, leaving behind a land far less productive and ostensibly devoid of potential.

What is perhaps even worse, today’s proud Southerners know nothing of this tragedy. I myself, an environmental student of more than five years, was oblivious to this ecological catastrophe. How is this even possible? How can this calamity be largely unknown by a country historically plagued by oppressive incidents like the Dust Bowl?

Fortunately, we have been given another chance. The land is healing itself, slowly but surely. When famed explorer John Lawson first roamed the Carolinian unknown, he experienced an entirely different countryside from what we see today. Hardwoods and longleaf pine savannas dominated the landscape, intermittingly speckled with open, fertile fields. Today we see the coniferous loblolly pine at nearly every turn, largely a result of timber market drivers, but also a product of the tree’s biological greatness. This species is remarkably hardy and fast-growing and has subsequently settled the broken land where vegetation seemed an utter impossibility. Organic matter is returning to topsoil layers and the red clay (although beautiful in its own way) is disappearing beneath the much more desirable dark, coal black soil. The loblolly pine is bringing the Piedmont back: initiating the lengthy succession toward Lawson’s forests of the past.

So here I dedicate this entry to a remarkable tree: a tree mitigating yet another anthropogenic disaster. The loblolly is all too often overlooked and underappreciated. Truly something extraordinary in what may be disguised as ordinary. What, perhaps, does this mean? There’s a lot to learn from this natural healing process. And there’s certainly a lot to keep in mind when we weigh our potential impact on the environment. And maybe, just maybe we all have the potential to be extraordinary.