Abstract

Saving the Next Tree used to be deep green. After the loss of the American chestnut and Fraser fir, yet another beautiful tree, the tree I now considered my favorite tree of the mountains, might be erased from the landscape. Also in 2004, the hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA), the insect responsible for the devastation, reached the north Georgia mountains, at the southern end of the Appalachian chain. Of course, many Georgians, and I am now one, were alarmed, and not just for sentimental reasons. This is a story of how people's disparate lives, careers, and interests can intersect, rather serendipitously, to support community action and to lead to personal growth. In the terminology of community literacy scholars, the hemlock project enabled groups to use their own situated knowledge, conveyed through both organizational and personal problem narratives such as the one above to identify wise options for action (Higgins, Long,. The project fits Jeffery Grabill's definition of communitybased research "as research that involves citizens working with professionally trained researchers [but entomologists and wildlife scientists in this instance, not writing instructors or rhetoricians] in a community-driven process to answer local questions or solve local problems []" (44). Similarly, the research is "action driven, " but the primary goal is environmental, rather than social, though "education, political and social change, and policymaking" goals do exist (Grabill 44). In the long term, all those involved in the hemlock project hope their efforts help to preserve a species, but secondary, unacknowledged goals of better understanding among stakeholders about complex environmental issues and personal and community transformation are also emerging from the process.