November 10, 2006

Environmentality

by Terry Taylor, Creative Guide

Chris Moore is an ex-champion wrestler and a doctor and a hiker and a canoer and a biker and a fisherman and a camp leader and an environmentalist and family man and somehow, he has ended up smeared with the title of "developer." He doesn't like that word one bit and tries not to use it as we eat lunch at Porkers Barbeque in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee.

"I never wanted to be a developer in the first place," says Chris. "I respect the land too much to do what developers do to the earth all too many times." He pushes his salad around the plate, knowing that a man who eats salad at a barbeque joint in apt to be looked at askew by some people. "I wanted to do this differently."

He has. Through conservation easements and environmentally friendly techniques, Chris has turned 400 acres into a different kind of place to live: a place that allows humans and Mother Nature to exist together without having a neighborhood throwdown. He has put 300 acres into a

land trust that legally protects the land forever. Those stunning cliffs and lakes and streams surround 20 homesites, and you have to look hard to even see the homes being built there now.

"We don't have to destroy the earth to live on it," says Chris in his Southern drawl that vaguely masks a sharp wit and a deep love for the land. "Every neighborhood could be like this place."

He talks about his environmentality like most people talk about their kids.

"The best way to show you is to just show you," he says. And we get in his old truck and head toward the Long Branch Residential Preserve about 20 minutes away.

We head south into Georgia. The sky is crushed blue. Leaves crinkle across the folds of hills and burn on the trees in an autumn glow of yellow, orange and red as we begin our ascent up the mountain. The vast plateau atop Lookout Mountain stretches across the horizon in peak fall

crispness. We pull up, get out and walk the trails and pebbled road that weaves and curls and fits the contour of the terrain like a natural vein. A lake is tucked into the woods just like the home up in the trees on the ridge. We crunch up the hill.

Camouflaged in the woods is a bark-sided, rock-stacked, stunning wooden dream with giant windows that bring the magnificent landscape right into the home as if the inside and outside are blurred together. The deck is fringed by branches woven into a guardrail. Natural wood is everywhere. Bark from poplar trees has been pressed and treated and used to cover the walls. Rocks cup the base of this example of what Mother Nature might build if she decided to give up her day job and be a "developer." Again, Chris flinches at that word.

"I guess that's the only word we have right now to call what I'm trying to do up here," he says. "But I'd sure like to call it anything but a development. Maybe it's an antidevelopment." He smiles and looks off into the distance where the river cuts a gorge between the mountains, and rubs the bark on the wall. "Smell this place. Does it smell like a development?" No. And he is no developer, either. You can tell he'd rather be in those woods than talking about them.

We spend the next three days shooting amid the trees and valleys and cliffs and water. Horses roam and chortle. Birds look at us like trespassers. We are trying to capture the experience of this place on HD. We are trying to recreate the feeling with pictures and words and music. But it's been a few weeks now. And I have seen the video. And while it is beautiful, what I saw when I was there and how I felt in that place defies our frail attempts to subdue it and condense it into mere

communication. I don't think we have captured what Chris is trying to do down there on that mountain and in those woods. Maybe he hasn't captured it, either. And that's exactly how it should be.

Chris looks amused when we admit such a thing. His squint and smile reminds me of Roy Rogers. "You just have to be in such a place to feel that way. It wasn't meant to be captured. If we could capture it and package it, it wouldn't be that special, now would it?"

He smiles and walks into the woods toward a tree house meant for children - this anti-developer and his anti-development. Go to www.odysseylandco.com to read more about Chris, his ideas about preservation and the Long Branch Residential Preserve.

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