This is a series of flash interviews with people I admire, people who are doing something—anything, a lot of things—for the Earth. These folks walk the walk, each of them in their own way, using their own unique skillset. They dedicate their energy, their time, and their hearts to a crucial cause: the preservation of this precious planet we call home.
Let me say this right here, up top: Dennis Chastain is a naturalist, historian and a woodsman who has been called a “modern-day Daniel Boone.” But he’s also a storyteller—and a darn good one. So what you’re about to experience is the longest Champions of Nature I’ve published so far. Dennis has a lot to say. Get ready!
Dennis is a neighbor of mine, and he’s well known in these parts—the upstate region of South Carolina—as The Guy to Ask if you want to know about wildlife, or wildflowers, or the geology of these mountains, or the history of our native Cherokee. Dennis’ people have lived here for generations. His footprints are on every single peak in this area and his handprints are on many valuable projects that contribute to our quality of life. He helped prevent a cell tower from being placed in the prettiest part of the viewshed along Scenic Highway 11. He spearheaded the effort to restore a litter-strewn roadside swimmin’ hole back to its original, pristine majesty. He discovered and helped preserve sites of prehistoric petroglyphs. He was involved in the campaign to remove toxic PCBs from one mountain river and the successful effort to reclassify others to protect brook trout habitat. Several years ago, his decades of conservation work were honored with an Extraordinary Achievement Award from Upstate Forever and a resolution from the S.C. State House of Representatives. If you need someone to pour energy into any project that protects the natural beauty of this part of the world, Dennis is your man.
So sit back, put your feet up, and prepare to be entertained with the stories and memories of a mountain wordsmith.
Tell me about some of your early experiences in nature.
When I think back on my youth, I realize that I have been immersed in nature and the natural world since I was old enough to venture into the nearby woods.
Growing up in the Slater mill village in northern Greenville County, I was blessed to have been a member of a little gang of buddies who had an adventurous spirit and plenty of woods, fields, old homesteads, creeks, ponds and rivers to explore. We took full advantage of the blessings of liberty, roaming far and wide.
On any given day during the halcyon days of summer vacation, we might be off picking blackberries which we could sell for 50 cents per gallon (the cash equivalent of 10 Hershey bars or two balsa wood airplanes); swimming in the North Saluda River, which ran right behind the mill; building forts against some unknown foe in the woods behind the Church of God, which was next door to my house; or fishing for trout, catfish, bream and bass in any of several small ponds (most of which we never knew who owned, and it didn’t matter). We were the Little Rascals and Tom Sawyer & Huck Finn, all wrapped into one collective life of adventure. And in addition to my forays into the woods and wild places of my mill village habitat, I spent several weeks each summer at my cousin Michael’s house near Table Rock Mountain, which was part of our family’s old homeplace and within a ten-minute walk of where I live now with my wife, Jane.
Talk about the blessings of liberty: Michael’s parents both worked and we were free to roam as far as our little legs could carry us, as long as we were back by suppertime. One of our favorite trips was to Table Rock State Park. Even though it was a mile away, we would head off up there as soon as his mother pulled out of the driveway at 7:30 a.m. Bob Jones was the park superintendent and he knew our families well. Our grandmother’s homeplace (known as Grant Meadow today) included part of what is now the state park, and “Mister Bob” would let us have a rowboat, which normally rented for 50 cents an hour, for 50 cents per day.
With nothing more than our Zebco Model 33 fishing poles and a can of worms we had dug down behind the barn, we would seldom come home without a long stringer of fish, which his mother would expertly turn into a fish fry for the whole family.
We once caught a ten-pound mud turtle, which we hung on a pole to keep him from snapping off our fingers and toes, and brought him home for my Uncle Clenith to clean. We had turtle soup that evening, and it is still the best I have ever had. My aunt Edna could, and would, cook anything we brought home from the woods—poke sallet, squirrels and rabbits, the occasional grouse that we knew as a “pheasant,” along with fish of various and sundry species, ranging from speckled trout (brook trout) to catfish and bream.
How did those early experiences shape your relationship with the natural world?
I have always been an inquisitive adventurer. The more I know about something, the more I want to know. I once told Patrick McMillan after one of our botanizing forays into the Jocassee Gorges, “Patrick, you and I suffer from the same affliction: We’re both interested in everything.”
Even back when I was a towheaded, rambunctious youngster, I have always paired my diverse and extensive outdoor experiences with “book learning.” I was quite the budding scientist in my youth. I had my own “lab”—a chemistry set and a real microscope. Also, my mother bought me a number of volumes of the “All About…” books. They were All About Archaeology, All About Plants, All About Wildlife, etc. She bought me a new volume for Christmas each year until I had a pretty impressive library of All About books … plus other science and nature books.
Whenever I saw something in my outdoor adventures that seemed odd, curious, or inexplicable, I would research the subject until I got to the bottom of the matter. That’s pretty much what I do now and what I have done my whole entire life. Many of the feature articles I wrote for South Carolina Wildlife magazine for more than twenty years, and now in my biweekly column in the Greenville Journal, would fit under the heading of “how nature works.”
Finally, one of the most influential events in my young life occurred when I was about seven years old. We went to Hamilton, Ontario to visit with my grandfather’s long-lost brother, Harold. We didn’t know until we got there that Uncle Harold was an archaeologist and avid outdoorsman. He had an extensive collection of Native American artifacts. My newly discovered “grand-uncle” apparently sensed my unquenchable thirst for knowledge and sent me home with an impressive collection of not only Native American artifacts but gems and minerals, as well. Long story short, that sent me off on what I describe as “my rockhound period.” As my rock collection grew more abundant and sophisticated over the years, it became something you could display in a museum. Several years it won the science fair. I also embarked on a lifelong study of Native American culture.
How do you connect with nature now … through your work or leisure or both?
I think I can answer this in one sentence. I have spent most of my adult life in the woods; either hunting, hiking, fishing, botanizing, or just exploring to see what’s over the next ridge.
If you want to know how nature works, ask a hunter. Hunters spend thousands of hours sitting or standing motionless in the woods, dressed in camouflage from head to toe. We are perennial watchers in the woods. When you have done that long enough, you become keenly aware how various species of wildlife go about their daily lives. You develop a heightened sense of the pulse and rhythm of the daily dramas of wildlife that play out, from the first crack of dawn to the last light of day. You attain a sharper focus on the changing of the seasons, the diurnal cycle, and the breeding seasons of diverse woodland creatures.
For example, I have spent hours and hours watching squirrels, the most abundant and most active of all the animals who live in the woods. During their two breeding seasons, in fall and again in late winter, they do something I call the “Squirrel Olympics.” It’s hilarious to watch. A female in estrus will attract a cadre of suitors, ranging from two or three to a half-dozen or more. They spend their days following her every movement, as she goes about her daily routine.
At some point, one of the potential mates will try to mount her and she will go running off on a wild and crazy obstacle course to elude him. The pair will go racing up a tree, swirling around the tree trunk like the stripes on a barber pole, with the whole gang of suitors following in close pursuit. She will run out to the twig end of a limb and make a daring leap to the next tree, some distance away. The testosterone-powered gang follows suit and each one in turn makes the leap, then they scurry down to the ground, where they then race along the trunk of a fallen tree, and back up another tree. Rinse, wash and repeat.
Then all of a sudden, as if some unseen gym coach had blown a whistle, it all comes to an end. I suppose, from a strictly biological level, it is a test to determine the relative physical fitness of a potential mate. Somewhere, Charles Darwin is smiling.
I have spent so much time in the company of these entertaining rodents that I speak squirrel. Yes, it’s true. They have, for example, a specific call that means only one thing: DANGER !!!! If a hawk soars overhead, or a coyote or fox shows up, they make a rapid, chattering alarm call that gets passed on to squirrels in the adjacent patch of woods and continues until the danger has passed. I can mimic this sound so perfectly that it sends the squirrels scurrying off to safety.
Don’t get me started on black bears. I have had more bear encounters in my life than most wildlife biologists. I guess I’ve witnessed just about every behavior that a black bear has in its repertoire. I’ve watched male bears clawing older age-class pine trees to mark their territory and leave a scented signal to all female bears in estrus that they are available for a date. I’ve experienced the bluff charge, at close range and several times, in the dark of night as I was heading to my hunting stand farther up the mountain.
Black bears are not complicated creatures and they have no finesse whatsoever. They just bulldog their way through life by the sheer power of their physical strength. If you have something a bear wants, there is virtually nothing you can do to keep them from getting it, or at least trying. They will tear down a storage shed just to get at a bag of dog food, or they’ll break into a car to get a macaroni pie left there overnight.
If a human committed either of those crimes, someone would call the sheriff, who would issue a warrant for the guilty party. Maybe we should put the local sheriff in charge of scofflaw bears instead of bear biologists. Or we could just learn to live with bears. This requires that the moment a bear shows up in the neighborhood, you take down your bird feeder, secure all cat and dog food and household trash. Then call, text or IM your neighbors to do the same. Is that so hard?
What are your biggest fears for the future of our planet?
Back in the 1980s I was asked to serve on a discussion panel at a meeting of the S.C. Wildlife Federation at Furman University. The panel consisted of two people: the legendary conservationist Tommy Wyche and me.
Someone asked what concerns we had about the future of the South Carolina mountains. Of course, Tommy focused on the need for preservation of the wild lands now known as the Blue Wall, which he was so instrumental in preserving.
When my turn came, I gave an impromptu speech about something I had thought about and fretted over for a decade. It was basically this: The three greatest threats to our mountains were: No. 1, second-home development in every nook and cranny of the mountain wilderness. I had seen this same thing happening in North Carolina, and it had advanced to the point where you had to go out of your way to find a place to look out over the landscape without seeing the heavy hand of humans spoiling the scene.
No. 2 was introduced, invasive species. I had seen the first fire ants arrive in Pickens County, and coyotes (which I have on good authority arrived in the 1960s in a cage in the back of a pickup truck) were becoming more and more common. I had been asked by the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources to attend a seminar at the Webb Center near Estill, S.C. to hear a speaker from APHIS, the arm of the USDA concerned with invasive species.
At that seminar, I sat next to Mark Bara, the DNR regional wildlife biologist for the coastal region. I knew Mark to be an especially well-informed guy, so during a break in the session I asked him to make a list of invasive species he knew were already in South Carolina. When he finished, the list ran five legal pad pages, single-spaced. And that did not include microbes and viruses. Think Coronavirus.
No. 3 was climate change. The public was not really dialed in on climate change in the early ‘80s, but scientists were quietly sending out alarm signals to those of us in the environmental community.
Of the three factors, climate change is now clearly the greatest threat to the environment and quality of life all around the planet. Unfortunately, while progress is being made, it falls far short of what is needed to avert a literal disaster. It is now to the point where not only are there local impacts like so-called “sunny day flooding” in Charleston, but there are early signs that global climatic systems are being affected.
Glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, far in excess of earlier predictions. Species such as polar bears are in very real danger of being on the endangered species list. There are signs that global climate-driven systems such as the Arctic Oscillation and the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean are being affected.
My greatest fear is that we have already passed the point of no return on adoption of climate-friendly policies and practices around the world. Nothing profound will happen until the majority of the voting public understands the consequences of inaction. Back in the 1970s I was a big fan of Buckminster Fuller, the honest-to-goodness genius who invented the geodesic dome. Fuller once observed, “It seems that Americans will not get off the railroad tracks until they actually see the train coming.”
What is your biggest hope for the future of our planet?
It is my fervent hope and desire that we will eventually learn the fundamental principle that it is easier and smarter to work with nature than to fight it. It honestly seems that virtually every aspect of modern civilization is designed to overcome nature and somehow set ourselves apart from the natural world.
For example, maintaining manicured lawns is one of the most unnatural things we do. We waste huge amounts of fossil fuels for lawn mowers, weed whackers and leaf blowers, while sending tons and tons of Co2 into the atmosphere, along with millions of tons of pesticides and selective herbicides into creeks, streams, rivers, and ultimately into our oceans.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to landscape with native, regionally compatible species of groundcovers and landscape plants? As the late great Jimmy Buffet one said, “It was so simple, it plumb evaded me.”
We would also do ourselves and the environment a great favor if we could move beyond the idea that fruit is only marketable if it is blemish-free and perfectly shaped. An orange that has some greening on the skin is just as tasty and nutritious as one in Old World paintings. An apple that has a spot or two, and is maybe less than perfectly symmetrical, is as good as any of the waxed, perfectly-shaped fruit in the supermarket. This horticultural obsession with perfect produce puts tons of unnecessary chemicals into the environment. There is a better way.
One aspect of working with nature, as opposed to swimming upstream against it, is learning the lessons of nature. For example, nothing is wasted in nature. As soon as a tree falls in the forest, whether anyone hears it or not, beetles, grubs, microbes and fungi go to work breaking it down into its component parts, enriching the soil at the same time. As soon as an animal dies in the woods or along a roadside, nature’s clean-up crew shows up to recycle the carcass into vulture, coyote or crow.
Finally, it is my greatest hope that we will somehow find a way to reverse the current self-destructive trends of anti-intellectualism and tribalism. I hate to sound like a grumpy old man yelling at clouds, but the anti-intellectual movement is leading us down the road to ruination. I can remember reading an article in some magazine when I was in graduate school in the 1980s. The title was “Can Science Save Us From Ourselves?” The answer in the 1980s was a resounding YES.
Today, I’m not so sure. We are in very real danger of allowing measles and smallpox, diseases that until recently we were on the verge of eradicating, once and for all time, to once again become the scourge of civilization. Climate scientists and virologists are shouted down and accused of spreading “fake news.” This is not good. Science is the only thing we have going for us in our struggle to find a path forward in dealing with climate change. Time will tell.
The pervasive and scary, almost cult-like, trend toward tribalism in our political discourse is literally killing us, and will not serve us well if we allow it to grow and metastasize. Tribalism, the most primitive form of civilization, takes us back to our primitive past, not forward into the future. We must learn the fundamental lesson that there is no more powerful force on earth than the combined, collective power of people working together toward a common goal. As Abraham Lincoln famously said, “A house divided cannot stand.” What we are experiencing now is not sustainable and will take us back into those dark periods of our checkered past if not contained and reversed—and soon.
The most optimistic spin I can put on our current situation is that we are the masters of own souls, the captains of our own fate. The future is for us to decide.
Thank you, Dennis, for being a Champion of Nature!
What a passionate, inspirational character. Fantastic write-up!
Thank you, Dennis Chastain, for being a true champion of nature. And thanks to RX Nature for introducing us to him.