Bird Droppings February 7, 2026
Mountains offer a clearer view if you care to look.

“I have a pretty fair education, but I would hate to be turned loose in these mountains right now and be told to put food in my belly, clothing on my body, shelter over my head, and provide protection from my enemies, both two-footed and four-footed, and all that without having a beast of burden or the wheel and axle. And yet they did it for thousands of years. So, I think they were pretty smart.” Dr. Tom Lumsden, M.D., Resident of the Nacoochee Valley and author of Nacoochee Valley, Its Times and Its Places

I was in Demorest, Georgia, about 15 years ago, and the following day I was in Cleveland, Georgia, at the foot of Mount Yonah. Demorest was a trip to get my youngest son enrolled in the Piedmont College Nursing program, which went along great until a snafu here and there with class times. The Cleveland trip was to pick up food for the critters, frozen and live mice, and rats at the largest mouse breeder in the US. It is always a fun trip and great scenery.

While at Piedmont College, I went to the bookstore and found a book titled Distant Voices by Emory M. Jones. It is a history and collection of stories about the Nacoochee Indian Mounds located in the Nacoochee Valley of Georgia, just a few miles from where I was yesterday. Dr. Tom Lumsden is a local physician and a historian by hobby of the Nacoochee Valley, and the author recognizes him for his work in this regard.

But close home, we come under the influence.
Of the Great Bear, Yonah Mountain,
Circumference is where creeks,
Branches, ground waters from their
Deep springs tumble to join.
So, we were given two related manifestations.
One man-built artifact,
The other is the longing nature of man.

A few lines from the poem Confluences by Mildred Greear, a renowned local poet and wife of Professor Emeritus at Shorter College, Dr. Phillip F. C. Greear.

I always take pictures wherever I am, be it at my grandchildren’s home, my herb garden, or sunrises and sunsets from my porch or backyard. I will drive around until I find a stump from a clearing of power lines, an old cedar tree, and then watch a male cardinal sit there, waiting for me to take a photo of his brilliant red feathers and the deep red heart of the cedar tree. As I walked about the farm where we went to get mice yesterday and around Piedmont College on Wednesday, I found images that were significant to me and, who knows, might impress someone down the line. Standing at the base of Yonah Mountain, looking out over the Nacoochee Valley with great patches of clouds interspersed among the surrounding mountains, I was in awe of the beauty and took dozens of shots. I find it so hard to sympathize with people who want to tear down wilderness for profit. Once it is gone, it cannot be the way it was. My own philosophical meanderings to an Indian understanding of the world about us, perhaps, led me to this.

“A Wakan (holy) man is wise…. He can talk with animals, trees, and stones. He can talk with everything on earth.” Little Wound, Oglala Sioux

I by no means claim the title of Wakan, but I have known how to talk while sitting, meditating on the trees and animals around me. Many days, I will sit watching the sunrise, whispering to the wind or breeze, lifting a bit of smoke from some white sage or sweet grass through the pine needles.

“As a Nez Perce man passed through the forest, the moving trees whispered to him, and his heart swelled with the song of the swaying pine. He looked through the green branches and saw white clouds drifting across the blue dome. He felt the songs of the clouds. Each bird twittering in the branches, each waterfowl among the reeds or on the surface of the lake, spoke his intelligible message to his heart; as he looked into the sky and saw the high-flying birds of passage, he knew their flight was made strong by the uplifted voices of ten thousand birds of meadow, forest, and lake. His heart, in tune with all of this, vibrated with the songs of its fullness.” Chief Joseph, Rolling Thunder, Nez Perce, from Indian Spirit, edited by Michael and Judith Fitzgerald

In a recent article in the current National Geographic, arguments for and against mining gold in Alaska’s wilderness watersheds and headwaters of major salmon-spawning streams are presented. Conservationists and indigenous peoples want to leave well enough alone. A consortium of mines wants to open-pit mines in an area and use impoundment ponds to contain water contaminated by gold and copper mining processes. Both sides present the number of people employed and income. The gold mine would add nearly 2,000 jobs to the area, which does need jobs. The gold mine would generate upwards of $500 billion over 25 years. The salmon fishery supports 11,000 jobs and over $150 million in income each year, as well as subsistence fishing, which provides food for many tribes in the area.

There are what-ifs regarding gold mining. What happens if any of the tainted water spills into or leaches into the spawning waters? Would it destroy the salmon fishery? The main mining would take place in the headwaters of many streams in this watershed, potentially impacting the entire area. Two thousand jobs would be created, and some of that five hundred billion would stay locally. How much is uncertain, since neither of the mining companies involved is based in Canada. However, if the mine does go through and destroy the fishing, eleven thousand jobs will be lost, as well as a traditional way of life and food source for many more thousands. So, do we go for profit or for listening to the trees and wildlife?

“The Lakota loved the earth and with all things of the earth, the attachment growing with age. The old people came literally to love the soil, and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power.” Standing Bear, Oglala Sioux

It has been some time since gold mining was a mainstay in north Georgia. Now, it is primarily a tourist attraction. I have seen pictures of the mining process back in the day. Huge water cannons would blast dirt from the sides of mountains, causing severe erosion and polluting streams and creeks. It was all for a profit. We live in a time when it is hard to be self-sufficient, and we need to purchase food and services. Perhaps my concern is the point at which we humans get greedy, go beyond what we need, and hoard and accumulate so we can have more than anyone else. I am bad with books, as I sit here looking at the shelves of texts, articles, books, and magazines around me.

But I wonder if we could break away from that human desire to be more than and perhaps slow the process down, if only for a while, to be able to hear the trees again and listen to the streams and birds. It has been nearly forty years since I first went to the grave of Geronimo, located in Lawton, Oklahoma, on the Fort Sill Army Base. I was standing, looking at Geronimo’s grave, which was a pyramid of river rocks topped by a now-cement eagle. The original eagle, gold-covered, was stolen. Almost out of nowhere, a breeze picked up, and along the river, a faint whisper of bygone days as I gazed across the prairie facing beyond Geronimo’s grave. I was mesmerized as I listened to the rustling of the cottonwood trees and the rolling of the creek. I seemed to stand transfixed for hours till a carload of Boy Scouts jumped out, hollering and running about, and broke my silence. So, I finish up my droppings and continue to ask you to please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your heart’s namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,
Mitakuye Oyasin
(We are all related)
docbird