Confessions of a Tree-Hugger

Submitted by John Lane on Thu, 05/26/2005 - 4:00am. kudzu telegraph

This week I was reading that classic of Southern thought and literature, W.J. Cash's The Mind of the South. It should be noted that Cash has a direct Spartanburg connection: he spent several semesters as a student at Wofford College. In his first chapter, "Of Time and Frontiers," Cash analyzes the settlement of the agricultural South in the first half of the 19th century. Cash describes the time as a frontier.

Substitute "King Development" for "King Cotton" and it could be argued that we in the Upstate live, once more, in a frontier culture. The frontier is now to be found in the transition zone between the dead agricultural and industrial South and the emerging I-85 sprawl south from Atlanta to Richmond backed up by the World Wide Web.

Cash outlines the characters that appear on a frontier: the boomer, the shark, and the horse-trader in particular. "In theory," Cash writes, "the frontier is the land of equal opportunity for all. In theory, its rewards are wholly to industry, to thrift, to luck… In practice, they are just as often to cunning, to hoggery and callousness, to brutal unscrupulousness and downright scroundrelism. In practice, on any frontier which holds out large prospects, and where, accordingly, men congregate in numbers, where events move swiftly and competition is intense, there invariably arises the schemer—the creator and manipulator of fictitious values, the adept in spurring on the already overheated imaginations of his fellows—and, in his train, a whole horde of lesser swindlers and cheats."

As a character on the new frontier I would add the tree hugger. As one I've watched with great interest the public life of my community over the past few years, and I've seen plenty to suggest that the frontier is alive and well in the upstate— both the industry, thrift, vision and luck and the callousness and cunning. Tree huggers, unite! We have nothing to lose but the trees, this 500 year war against the world which has been carried on, up to this point, by dollar huggers, deed huggers, road huggers, strip-mall huggers, market huggers and clear-cut huggers. This book is dedicated to the hope that in fifty years there will be plenty of trees left to hug.

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Navigation Home Forums Links Event Calendar Contact John my flickr photosets News from the Web Books by John Lane Downloads Sections Kudzu Telegraph Cornbread and Sushi Poems in Progress Essays Op-Ed Alpha Index Press Kit Extended Bio Publications Selected Reviews Publicity Photos		Home Confessions of a Tree-Hugger Submitted by John Lane on Thu, 05/26/2005 - 4:00am. kudzu telegraph This week I was reading that classic of Southern thought and literature, W.J. Cash's The Mind of the South. It should be noted that Cash has a direct Spartanburg connection: he spent several semesters as a student at Wofford College. In his first chapter, "Of Time and Frontiers," Cash analyzes the settlement of the agricultural South in the first half of the 19th century. Cash describes the time as a frontier. Substitute "King Development" for "King Cotton" and it could be argued that we in the Upstate live, once more, in a frontier culture. The frontier is now to be found in the transition zone between the dead agricultural and industrial South and the emerging I-85 sprawl south from Atlanta to Richmond backed up by the World Wide Web. Cash outlines the characters that appear on a frontier: the boomer, the shark, and the horse-trader in particular. "In theory," Cash writes, "the frontier is the land of equal opportunity for all. In theory, its rewards are wholly to industry, to thrift, to luck… In practice, they are just as often to cunning, to hoggery and callousness, to brutal unscrupulousness and downright scroundrelism. In practice, on any frontier which holds out large prospects, and where, accordingly, men congregate in numbers, where events move swiftly and competition is intense, there invariably arises the schemer—the creator and manipulator of fictitious values, the adept in spurring on the already overheated imaginations of his fellows—and, in his train, a whole horde of lesser swindlers and cheats." As a character on the new frontier I would add the tree hugger. As one I've watched with great interest the public life of my community over the past few years, and I've seen plenty to suggest that the frontier is alive and well in the upstate— both the industry, thrift, vision and luck and the callousness and cunning. Tree huggers, unite! We have nothing to lose but the trees, this 500 year war against the world which has been carried on, up to this point, by dollar huggers, deed huggers, road huggers, strip-mall huggers, market huggers and clear-cut huggers. This book is dedicated to the hope that in fifty years there will be plenty of trees left to hug.