Teacher brings costs of mining to the surface

Over the course of a year, it was blasted away to mine the seams of coal running through it, with its rocks and topsoil, its pulverized oak and beech trees, dumped as ''fill" into the surrounding hollows and creek bottoms.

Erik Reece, who teaches writing at the University of Kentucky, prowled through the vanishing wilderness surrounding the Lost Mountain mining operation during 2003 and 2004, recording its progressing destruction.

Reece's report is a powerful indictment of the lax oversight of mining regulations and their scuttling by political allies of the mining industry. He also studies the mining companies' habit of forfeiting bonds intended to fund reclamation of their sites -- even if it were possible to reclaim what Reece describes as ''America's rain forest," an ecosystem home to some 80 species of trees and 700 miles of streams that have been buried by mountaintop removals (a topographic map would have been helpful for readers unfamiliar with the region).

It is an indictment made even more powerful by Reece's warm-hearted accounts of time spent with the Perry County families whose health and homes have been threatened by the mine's operations, and by his graceful descriptions of the natural splendor of eastern Kentucky.

A field trip with University of Kentucky students to observe Southern flying squirrels in flight conveys the delight of discovery, but also includes a warning about the loss of their forest habitat.