By Ethan Hollifield
Anyone from the Southern Appalachians is born with a natural sense of place: a strong connection to the land in one-way or another that draws us back home. My connection to this place was brought on by a love of the rivers, streams, and branches that meander their way across these ancient mountains. I channeled this early fascination for rivers through fly fishing growing up, but even before that, I was taught with an understanding to have an undying respect for these places. Fly-fishing, in a sense, was an act of communion with God, for me. To better understand his creation was to be knee deep in cold mountain water on a summer afternoon, watching a trout swim out of the grasp of my hands in a cooperative understanding between man and nature. As I got older, leaving the mountains for college was a difficult decision. With each passing year, my longing for home only grew stronger. The rivers and streams of my youth would echo through my mind like the old time hymns that radiate through the hollers on Sunday mornings.
I came back with a more sophisticated understanding of how our rivers and streams give life, not just for us but the rest of the world. I was also met with a sense of a resilient anxiety about the state of our water and our mountains. Southern Appalachian streams and ecosystems are some of the most fragile, and yet diverse places on the entire planet. Our rivers hold not only trout, but also a myriad of other species that are each ecologically significant to the other’s survival, as well as providing clean water for our use. This same water also keeps our forests alive, which help to provide us not only with food and lumber, but also remove massive amounts of carbon from the atmosphere in the form of CO2, a prominent greenhouse gas. The positive effects to our local biosphere alone, is outstanding, but we are on the precipice of losing everything due to a lack of understanding of nature and how interlocked its processes can be.
I watch now, with unrest as our mountains and rivers are treated like amusement parks as opposed to receiving the reverence they deserve. I realized, through my homesickness in college, that my dream was to help protect this place, but I had no clue how I could even begin or even, for that matter, what I was going to do with my life, in general. I conveyed these feelings to a college professor who advised me to “start with what I know.” I knew rivers, and I knew the trout in them very intimately. So, I started small through guiding. Taking the time to pause and explain how these rivers act as ecological lifelines for our mountains, and to a greater extent, our world. Through hard work and by chance, I eventually became an environmental science teacher at my old high school. Through each venue I am able to teach (I must give my entire family credit here, I was raised by teachers) others the importance of these places, why they matter, and to a lesser extent, my purpose in all of this. I can only pray that my efforts may one day, even as just a part of a greater whole, make a difference. However, whether guiding or in the classroom, I’m reminded of those moments as a kid, casting into a mountain stream, waiting for a fish to rise. Hopefully, through my efforts, another mountain boy like me can do the same for years to come.
Ethan Hollifield is an Environmental/Physical Science Teacher and is also a guide for Southern Appalachian Anglers.