Some Things Are Worth More Than Money

Mountain people have always been a little suspicious of outsiders, but I don’t think that came from nowhere. Poor mountain people have a long history of watching people with more money and power come into Appalachia, figure out what was valuable, take what they wanted, make their money and leave. Mining companies, logging companies, land speculators, developers… the details change with every generation, but the fear underneath them is pretty much the same. Somebody from somewhere else looks at something we have lived beside our entire lives and sees a dollar sign. By the time the people who actually live here understand what has happened, the damage is done.

When I was a kid, I remember the influx of what everybody just called “Floridians.” They weren’t necessarily all from Florida, but that was what mountain people called them. They came here with money, bought mountain property, built big houses and moved into gated communities. Locals complained about them, but looking back, I don’t remember feeling like they fundamentally threatened our way of life. Most of them bought their piece of the mountain and stayed on it. They weren’t buying every little house they could find. They weren’t competing with a local family for a starter home while earning a salary from a company three states away. They weren’t buying an old family farm because they had calculated how many short-term rentals they could build on it.

Then COVID happened, and I’m not really talking about the virus. I think COVID was the catalyst for something that changed Western North Carolina forever. Suddenly millions of people learned that where they worked and where they lived didn’t have to be the same place. If you owned a house in California or another expensive part of the country, you could sell it for an amount of money that sounded almost imaginary to people here. Then you could come to a little Appalachian town where our land looked unbelievably cheap by comparison, buy a beautiful mountain property and bring the big-city paycheck with you.

I want to be careful about how I say this because I don’t think someone is bad simply because they weren’t born here. Some of the people who moved here became part of these communities in every way that actually matters. They became our neighbors, started businesses, volunteered and helped after the hurricane. They fell in love with these mountains for the same reasons we did. I don’t care where somebody’s grandparents were born if they come here wanting to be part of the community instead of figuring out how much money they can extract from it.

But there is a difference between becoming part of a place and looking at a place as an investment. Other people looked at these mountains and saw an opportunity. They could buy an old farm for what seemed cheap compared with where they came from, subdivide it, cut roads through it, build houses or short-term rentals, or turn large pieces of rural land over to commercial development, warehouses and data centers. Once they made their profit, they could sell everything off and move on to the next town, but the consequences couldn’t leave. The roads are still cut into the mountain. The farm is still divided. The people who actually have to live with what was created are the people who remain.

And I don’t blame the local families who sold nearly as much as people probably expect me to. A lot of families here have been land-rich and cash-poor for generations. Maybe your grandparents left you a hundred acres, but they didn’t leave you a hundred thousand dollars to maintain it. Fences cost money. Equipment costs money. Roads wash out. Barn roofs need replacing. Then somebody offers you more money for that mountain than your family has ever had at one time. You can sell it, pay off your debts and finally feel financially secure. I understand why somebody does that. I can’t sit here with land of my own and pretend I know another family’s financial situation.

But the trade isn’t equal. The money is only temporary, but the decision about the land can be permanent. That money might change one generation’s life, but once the farm is divided into twenty pieces, the next generation can’t decide they want the old farm back. Once roads are cut up the mountain and houses cover the fields, nobody is putting the soil back where it was. We keep trading something that could belong to generations for something that can be spent in a few years.

Then Hurricane Helene hit us. Western North Carolina already had a housing problem, and then we had a disaster that literally took homes away. Houses were destroyed. Roads disappeared. People who were barely hanging on before the storm suddenly had even fewer options. Every single-family home that becomes a short-term rental matters when there weren’t enough affordable houses to begin with. Eventually, you can end up with beautiful little mountain towns full of people serving tourists who can’t afford to live anywhere near the town they’re working in.

I don’t have some giant solution to any of this. I can’t stop someone from selling land they inherited, and I can’t tell another family what they should do with their property. I can’t stop people from moving here. I can’t solve the housing crisis or rebuild the homes Helene took away.

I also don’t think protecting these mountains means pretending progress can be stopped. I’m certainly not against technology or growth. I use technology every single day to make a living, market my cattle and make enough money to pay for the land I’m talking about protecting. The answer isn’t trying to freeze Appalachia in time or pretending nothing should ever change. I think it’s being willing to ask whether every kind of progress is actually worth what we have to give up to get it.

What I can do is decide what happens to the land that passes through my hands. That’s becoming one of the most important things in my life. I want to pay off my land. I want to buy adjoining pieces of the original farm that were sold off over the years and put as much of it back together as I possibly can. I want to restore it. I want cattle grazing these fields. I want to find the right agricultural or conservation protections so that long after I’m gone, somebody can’t look at this mountain and calculate how many houses or rentals they can fit on it.

It’s great to leave your children money, but I think leaving them land may be one of the greatest things you can give them. And maybe part of leaving them land is protecting it from them too, because someday somebody may put a number in front of them that is very hard to turn down. Money can disappear remarkably fast. Once the land is gone, getting it back may not be an option.

I don’t really believe this land belongs to me in the way we normally talk about ownership. My name happens to be on the deed right now, but that’s temporary. This land was here before me, and hopefully it still will be here long after me. I just happen to be its caretaker for this little sliver of time.

Maybe mountain people were right to be suspicious. Not suspicious of every person who comes from somewhere else, but suspicious of the idea that everyone who offers us money is doing us a favor. Suspicious of the idea that the highest dollar amount automatically represents the highest and best use of a piece of land. We’ve already sold so much of what can never be replaced. At some point, somebody has to remember that some things are worth more than money.