Essays from West of 98: the Power of Roots
📷 : Lauren Decker
“The provincial who cultivates only his roots is in peril, potato-like, of becoming more root than plant. The man who cuts his roots away and denies they were ever connected with him withers into half a man.”
--John Graves, Goodbye to a River
I have been re-reading “Goodbye to a River” recently. I need to do a full essay on it, but I have been thinking about this line since I read it on Friday night. Sometimes when I think, I tweet. The results can vary.
My friend Seth Wieck from Amarillo is a much more talented and prolific wordsmith than I am. When I tweeted this line from Graves, Seth sent me a good read. It is a Front Porch Republic conversation from early 2021 between authors Matt Stewart and Grace Olmstead. It was released shortly after publication of Olmstead’s book “Uprooted: Recovering the Legacy of the Places We’ve Left Behind.” In that book, Olmstead examines her family’s multigenerational home of Emmett, Idaho, the factors that drew her family and others like them to Idaho’s Treasure Valley, and the economic and societal forces that are slowly driving away younger generations and agricultural producers, to see them replaced by retirees and suburban sprawl. Emmett’s story is all-too familiar. Olmstead’s examination is important for the whole of rural America, not just Emmett, and I highly recommend her book.
In this conversation, Olmstead and Stewart dive deeply into the topic of roots. It’s a thoughtful conversation. Roots are a complex topic. As Graves vividly illustrates in the line that opens this essay, obsession with one’s roots is just as harmful as a lack of roots. I strive neither to wither rootlessly nor to become potato-like, more root than plant. Healthy humans and healthy communities are like healthy plants. Their roots sustain them so long as they flower and blossom into something healthier with each successive year and generation.
In that conversation, Olmstead shares the story of an amazing scientific finding. The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens caused enormous devastation. For miles around, a wide plain was rendered practically a moonscape, devoid of life. In 1982, federal scientists spotted a lone flowering lupine on the wide plain (if you wonder, our own Texas bluebonnet is a member of the lupine genus). The scientists marked off a 200 square-yard plot around the lupine. Within four years, they identified 16,000 lupines in that plot; three years later, there were 35,000 plants! A 2005 Smithsonian Magazine interview with the scientists revealed that in 25 years since the eruption, 27 different plant species and 11 small mammal species had been identified in that single plot alone. It likely all stemmed from the lone lupine in 1982. That plant established roots, enriched the soil, propagated itself, and deposited organic matter. Life flourished from there.
It’s a powerful example of the resilience of nature. Olmstead raised an equally powerful idea: what about the human equivalent of the prairie lupine? What about the people who root themselves in communities that are broken and scarred from the devastating effects of economic consolidation and rural decline? What about these people who enrich the soil of local culture and community with their talent, zeal, and energy? They invest themselves, but they also propagate others to do the same. They create an environment where new energy and new life can flourish.
Rural communities will not again flourish without strong local roots. Many of our communities have a healthy rootstock—memories, history, and culture, and the generations of people who hold them dear—but roots alone are insufficient. Those roots should be the basis for something that blossoms and grows healthier over the generations.
That requires a lot of work, time, and energy. But maybe it just requires the human equivalent of that lone prairie lupine. When we root ourselves and invest, new life flourishes.
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and podcast. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to West of 98 wherever podcasts are found.