Keeping the Mountains

Larry Gibson began the Keeper of the Mountains Foundation many years ago to educate people throughout the nation about mountain top removal coal mining. Only a few years before, he himself had led the battle to save his family's mountain from destruction as coal companies set their sites upon the millions of dollars worth in coal that lay beneath. While Larry could have stopped once his mountain was preserved, his heart couldn't. He knew that other mountains and other streams needed saving for the future of our children. He continued caring--continued fighting--until he collapsed on the mountain he loved nearly two years ago and we lost him to be forever with his mountain.

Today, Larry's legacy lives on thanks to the efforts of many people who knew and loved him for his amazing kindness and his steadfast resolve in protecting the mountains. The Keeper of the Mountains Foundation continues to keep Larry's memory alive by spreading the word about mountain top removal both here and abroad.

An important stop on this journey we embarked on over a month ago was to join friends and family atop Kayford Mountain for the 4th of July Festival. After leaving the PNC action in Pittsburgh, we drove down to stay with Steve and Wendy Johnston on their farm and prepare for the festival.

So often when fighting against fossil fuel extraction, against such enormous odds, we can become lost, embittered, fatigued. Events like the festival serve to rejuvenate us in the fight, to bring us back together and to consider the next steps. While I sat listening to music, watching friends eating and talking, I realized how much more than it festival it was. It felt more like a family reunion

When I started working in the mines, I was searching fore more than financial stability. I was searching for a sense of community that had been lost to us since the United Mine Workers fell. To my surprise, where I thought I would find the last remnants of Appalachian bonding, I instead found the source of all our problems. I witnessed how the coal industry worked to divide and conquer, to pit miners against one another so they would never question the company and ensure high production. The coal companies encourage individualism and the wage coupled debts causing miners to become concerned with their own family's own survival and less that of their neighbors or even the person working beside them.

In all the years that I was searching for that old sense of family and community in Appalachia I found it not in the depths of a mine, but within the thousands of "outsiders" who band together to fight the environmentally devastating practices of corporate greed. In the years since I left the mine we have found our true family, living in community houses in Philadelphia, working in Boston, going to church in Pittsburgh, working on farms in Northern Mississippi, coming together within the forests of Southern Illinois, and shaking hands, hugging, and talking atop the mountain a man worked so hard to save.

Larry Gibson, we dedicate this tour to you, remembering all of your work, all of your travels and sacrifices and for showing us how important our family is.