Second part of PROLOGUE
PETERS MOUNTAIN
JEFFERSON NATIONAL FOREST
WEST VIRGINIA
LATE APRIL 2019
ALL HELL WAS ABOUT TO BREAK LOOSE. It would wipe out the last of Vicki Abbott’s supporters. She watched the onslaught from her precarious perch on a three-foot square plywood platform attached to the upper part of an ancient red oak tree. The canvas tarp stretched between two limbs above her provided some shelter. Her hair was covered by a wool cap, and a denim jacket was draped around her shoulders. She wore a turtleneck sweater under a sweatshirt that had a photo of the Earth, the word HELP! printed across the front. Wrinkled jeans had holes in both knees. She looked down at the simple gold bangle around her wrist and sighed. Her sole companion was a scrawny squirrel so accustomed to her presence that she could place acorns on the edge of her platform, and it would pick them up.
A Forest Service Officer emerged from the surrounding shrubs. He rushed at the three men standing below the tree. “On the ground, all of you!” he ordered, gun drawn. Charlie Glover dropped the bottle of water and food he planned to give Vicki. He and his three companions hit the dirt. Charlie was handcuffed, put in leg shackles and dragged off along with the others. Oh my god, Vicki thought as she watched her cousin being hauled away. Poor Harry. He isn’t as tough as I am. This is going to be really hard on him.
As the arrests were made, ten law-enforcement vehicles and over a dozen officers from multiple agencies arrived with assault rifles. They searched the surrounding woods. When they were certain there were no more protesters nearby, they took off.
Vicki looked at her partially filled water bottle. She had been collecting rainwater in the tarp’s folds for days. It isn’t enough, she thought, and my energy bars are running out. The worst part was the cold. A supporter had managed to smuggle a threadbare blanket to her, but it didn’t keep her from shivering at night, especially when the wind whistled through the tall trees. I’m going to hate that sound for the rest of my life. Will I ever feel warm again? she wondered. She knew she would have to climb down soon or perish.
Fellow activists might not be able to prevent completion of the planned Mountain Valley Pipeline. It would send fracked gas from shale formations in northern West Virginia across the Blue Ridge Mountains to southern Virginia. Vicki would move on. Her goal would now be to prevent gas in Appalachia from moving through pipelines that could carry it to New England and on to foreign markets. She knew the Appalachian Basin reserves are the nation’s second largest and that fracking and natural gas pipelines are key drivers of our deadly methane emissions, trapping the sun’s heat and warming the Planet.
She would fight new pipelines back at home in Massachusetts, no matter what the cost.