Mountaintop removal is a sin, like slapping the face of God.
If we believe — as so many Tennesseans do — that the natural world around us was wonderfully and fearfully made by the hands of a creator, then mountaintop removal may be the most insulting, disrespectful, turn-your-back-on-the-Divine act we could imagine.
Mountaintop removal is the practice of dynamite-scalping tops of Appalachian mountains and ridges and cracking open the land like a ribcage in order to extract coal from inside.
More than 1.5 million acres of Appalachia have been destroyed in the process, and 13 ridges in Tennessee are affected by current mining.
Mountains are like miniworlds, green mysteries, home to more diverse life and species than there are hairs on our head. Mountains are ever present in literature, religion and poetry as the places where this life and the next seem to dance together.