Tricia Shapiro

<p>I live on a small, remote mountain homestead in western North Carolina, near Tennessee. I hope that this will be my home for the rest of my life.</p> <p>But while this patch of garden and forest is my home in a narrowly literal sense, my wider home is central and southern Appalachia, home to America&rsquo;s most biodiverse and productive hardwood forest habitats. Together, forest and mountains, sweet air, and plentiful streams make this an intimate, homey landscape that&rsquo;s easy to love.&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>It&rsquo;s also a landscape whose forest and water resources and biodiversity have been stripped, polluted, and diminished by industrial activities ranging from careless logging to strip mining to, most recently, Marcellus shale hydrofracking.</p> <p>While the natural habitats here are hurting, so are the people. From my home life in North Carolina, from my work throughout central Appalachia reporting on and supporting efforts to end mountaintop-removal strip mining, and from my family connection with what has become Marcellus shale country in Pennsylvania, I&rsquo;m keenly aware that opportunities are far too scarce for people in rural Appalachia to make a decent living without harming their home landscapes and communities.</p> <p>I believe firmly, with Wendell Berry, that &ldquo;You cannot save the land apart from the people or the people apart from the land. To save either, you must save both.&rdquo; Mountainhugger.com aims at &ldquo;both.&rdquo;</p> <p>In addition to taking the lead in organizing and launching Mountainhugger.com, I intend to be a vendor on the site myself, selling a limited line of tinctures and salves made with herbs harvested here at my mountain home.</p>

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