ABSTRACT
Life is full of peaks and valleys, triumphs, and tribulations. As George explains, the amazing natural legacy of the Appalachians is endangered: "a splendorous spread of rolling hills and green mountains mirrored nowhere in the world is being systematically destroyed so than an unsustainable way of life in our cities may continue". Coal is one of earth's great gifts. But mountaintop removal means that fewer and fewer people work in mining, because it is so heavily mechanized. Unlike other Appalachian tour groups who have visited at Morgan's home, the people were not able to make it up the mountain in their bus. When mass media offers representations of poor mountain folk, all the negative assumptions are intensified and the projections exaggerated. Ecologists and conservation biologists recognized an important relationship between cultural diversity and biological diversity.
