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Book Review
| Mount Mitchell and the Black Mountains: An Environmental History of the Highest Peaks in Eastern America. By Timothy Silver. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. xxii + 322 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. Cloth $39.95, paper $19.95.
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| Let's begin with the verdict: this is a fine book and a good read. |
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In his preface, Silver suggests that nature should receive equal time with people in an environmental history of the southern Appalachians, and thereby avoid heavy focus on human events at the expense of overlooking (or not knowing) the rhythms of nature on montane landscapes. The landscapes here are twofold: the eastern deciduous forest and the boreal extension of spruce and fir that reaches deep into the southern Appalachians of North Carolina and beyond. Silver regularly visits the Black Mountains ("the Blacks") and, to prepare for this book, he kept a journal to preserve his impressions that appear in brief sections throughout the text. |
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Silver initially covers the geologic and natural history of the Blacks, a fishhook-shaped range in western North Carolina that includes Mt. Mitchell. Glaciers didn't reach North Carolina, but their march pushed the biota of northern forests into the higher reaches of the southern Appalachians, where many components remain today (e.g., snowshoe hares and red spruce). Fraser fir, common in the higher Blacks, is a regional counterpart of a species that flourishes in Canada. Surprisingly, when discussing those who shaped the ideas of plant communities, Silver overlooks Lucy Braun, the somewhat cranky grand dame of the eastern forest. The topics then turn to the peopling of the Blacks and their enterprises, including the European market for deerskins and a thriving livestock industry that utilized the enigmatic grassy areas—balds—sprinkled on the otherwise timbered mountains. Asheville in fact became a leading cow town long before that distinction befell Dodge City or Abilene. All the while, the region's rich flora attracted botanists such as Andre Michaux. Tourism and, of course, logging played major roles in the Blacks. Creation (in 1915) of a state park saved at least a core of the disappearing woods, but devastating invasions of a fungus (chestnut blight) and insect (balsam woolly adelgid) nonetheless ravaged the uncut forests. Air pollution ("acid rain") apparently has contributed still further damage. |
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Chapter 3 will provide much of the book's meat for many readers: determination of the highest peak in the eastern United States. Elisha Mitchell, late of Yale, joined the faculty at the University of North Carolina in 1818 and eventually directed a survey designed to assess the state's geography and natural resources. In 1828, he "began the work that made him famous. He started measuring mountains" (p. 83). On various trips to the Blacks, Mitchell calculated several elevations that exceeded the height of New Hampshire's Mount Washington, then regarded as the highest of the Appalachian cordillera. Unfortunately, he could not later match his measurements with site-specific locations along the Black's humped ridgeline, which appears to the eye as of equal elevation. The plot thickens when Mitchell's former student, Thomas Clingmen, argued with his mentor over which of the peaks was indeed the highest of the lot. The saga is complicated (including a parade of changing place names), but Silver keeps the story interesting. In the end, Clingmen retreated but not before Mitchell fell to his death (in 1857) while trekking in the Blacks; his grave lies atop what is today unequivocally designated as Mt. Mitchell. |
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Silver uses the Black Mountains to address the complex interactions between humans and nature. What goes right and wrong—and why—and can we learn from these experiences? How much human intervention ("gardening") should be employed in the future? Silver, like Aldo Leopold, argues that people in a modern worldcan be responsible stewards of the environment, but only if we recognize nature as an equal partner. |
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Silver's clear prose will appeal to just about any audience, and scholars will find full documentation in the endnotes. Slips are few and far between—e.g., copperheads are venomous, not "poisonous" (p. 30); "golden-crested kinglet" (p. 129) should be golden-crowned kinglet; the "red-breasted vole" (p. 254) is correctly the southern red-backed vole; and Gifford Pinchot likely coined "conservation" in 1907, not in 1903, as implied on page 135. These trivialities aside, Tim Silver has given us a benchmark of environmental history for a fascinating part of North America. |
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Eric G. Bolen is professor emeritus in the Department of Biological Sciences, University of North Carolina at Wilmington. His books include Ecology of North America (Wiley, 1998), and Wildlife Ecology and Management (Prentice Hall, 1995). |
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