Walking the Narrow Ridge (Page 1 of 4)

The path to Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center is different for everyone who travels there, but on this sunny spring morning, the country roads winding through Union County are taking longer to navigate than expected, and we are almost 30 minutes late.

It’s not a drive you’d want to breeze through, anyway — this is a beautiful back-road journey past rolling hills, fertile farmland, shaded forests and creek-side cabins. The serene rural environment is a peaceful change from the weekday bustle and traffic of downtown Knoxville that we left behind less than an hour ago.

As we arrive at our destination and are greeted by Narrow Ridge Executive Director Sam Wallace and his friendly dog Tigre, we apologize for being late, but Wallace isn’t having it. “You can’t be late here. This is a no-hassle, relaxing kind of place,” Wallace, a retired University of Tennessee ecology professor, says. Acknowledging the overgrown grass outside the Max Smith Library where we meet, he adds, “It looks like nobody lives here, but we’ve got other things to do besides cut the grass.”

At a time when the realities of global climate change are impossible to ignore and another species is lost to extinction every single day, Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center is a model of sustainable ecology and community spirit, educating visitors by providing space for them to experience the land and their connections to it.

Walking its 500 acres provides a glimpse of another lifestyle, a way to turn back the clock, reverse the damage we’ve done and enjoy the simple pleasures provided for free in the abundance of the outdoors.

Native Knoxvillian Bill Nickle founded Narrow Ridge in 1990 as part of the burgeoning earth literacy movement.

“The planet is in trouble, so earth literacy is a field of study that tries to say we’ve got a relationship here we need to take care of, that the future of the human species is completely dependent upon the viability of the planet,” Nickle says.

That concept led to the center’s name, which was inspired by the works of Jewish theologian and philosopher Martin Buber stressing the interconnected relationships between beings.

“There’s not really a narrow ridge here, I took that name from Buber who talks about the relationship between ‘I’ and ‘thou,’ so when we look at a relationship with another person, if you’re not an object, not an ‘it,’ then you’re sacred, and we extend that relationship to plants and trees and animals,” Nickle says. “So the narrow ridge is that space between the ‘I’ and the ‘thou’ and what we try to do is walk that narrow ridge. We slip off a lot, but the idea is to get back on.”

Incorporating the cornerstones of sustainability, community and spirituality, Narrow Ridge is an education center that provides training and information on sustainable practices, opens the land to visitors for walkabouts, overnight stays and meetings and hosts a Vision Quest program on adjacent Log Mountain — a three-day meditation and fasting experience to transform participants’ relationship to Earth and its resources.

Land on Narrow Ridge is also available to a community of full-time and weekend residents who hold 99-year leases on parcels and dwellings that can be passed down through generations with the stipulation that the inhabitants will honor principles of conservation and sustainability.

Visitors are invited to rent cabins for weekends or vacation getaways, and the small fees ($50 a night for a cabin that sleeps four to eight comfortably) are part of the revenue that keeps the center operating.

“We don’t believe anybody owns the land — it’s not property, it’s land,” Nickle says. “We’re trying to transform beliefs and value systems so we don’t have the domination, destruction and oppression that is so present in our society today.”

Narrow Ridge holds three land trusts, including 97 acres in the Hogskin Valley, a 105-acre wilderness preserve in Black Fox Hollow, and 60 acres of wilderness in Little Ridge. Each land trust has an association whose members share responsibilities and meet regularly for potluck dinners made of food from the center’s community gardens.