Building the roads, bridges, and trails for Kentucky

Stairway at Cabin - Cumberland Falls State Resort Park, Kentucky

Kentucky once suffered from the Depression era damage to the countryside.  The landscape was worn out from over cultivation and forest clearing. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built service buildings, water reservoirs, roads, and campgrounds. Near Carrolton, Kentucky the CCC built the terraces, walkways and roads that became the General Butler State Resort Park.  The CCC planted trees.   The CCC restored damaged woods and pastures.  It ended up that the New Deal agencies planted 3 billion trees.  The CCC was at the forefront of the tree planting effort.  The landscape of Kentucky benefited from this work.

 

Franklin Roosevelt had the vision that that the landscape could be restored.  He had a confidence about him that made people want to be involved with him in making things better. He could speak in a way that proved to be enduring.  He set forth the concept that the land could be restored.

It is perhaps fitting that the words of a President could cause change for the good.  By contrast the words written by a person in a monastic order are little heard and quickly forgotten. One exception is a man that lived in a monastic order for twenty-seven years at a location south of Bardstown, Kentucky.

The monk and writer Thomas Merton lived in that monastery. Merton has produced challenging ideas that have been communicated around the world.  Merton wrote that the “plague” of the “modern age” was “intolerance, prejudice and hate.” Merton said the counter to this intolerance was rooted in personal and community labor; “the Christian must labor with inexhaustible patience and love, in silence, perhaps in repeated failure, seeking tirelessly to restore, wherever he can, and first of all in himself, the capacity of love and understanding which makes man the living image of God.”

It is that “capacity of love and understanding” that we want to have. This is that process that we work. 

As Kentuckians we are fortunate that the forests and pastures were restored from the awful situation of the Depression era. It took a long time for that process to have the look of a restored land.  As Kentuckians we are fortunate to have a world-renowned writer that produced his work while living in rolling green hills south of Bardstown. 

It is about the land and the people.