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Standing up for all of us

by Vicky Dickson

Compared with most writers, Jay Leutze seems fantastically lucky.

When Leutze sent an agent the first book he’d ever tried to publish, he heard the news of its acceptance within a week. That agent then sold the book in two weeks – to Simon & Schuster. And less than a week after its June 5 release, Leutze’s Stand Up That Mountain made the Southern Indie Bestseller List. Pretty amazing stuff for a first–time author.

Jay Leutze, author of Stand Up That Mountain. Photo by David Ray

But the Chapel Hill native’s not exactly a novice. He’s been writing since he was a kid – and though he took a detour into the UNC School of Law and then a job opening bookstores around the country, he wrote three as-yet-unpublished novels before getting involved in the saga he’s now documented in Stand Up That Mountain.

The saga began in 1999 with a phone call from a 14-year-old homeschooled, computer-savvy North Carolina mountain girl. Ashley Cook lived with an aunt, Ollie Ve Cook Cox; her uncle Dallas; and her cousin Freddy, and she was calling about the crack in the foundation of the new house they were building. The crack seemed to have resulted from a nearby gravel-mining operation, an operation that could be seen, and heard, from Leutze’s own mountain retreat. And, it turned out, seen and heard from one of the most scenic parts of the national park running from Maine to Georgia, called the Appalachian Trail.

The Putnam Mine case consumed four years of Leutze’s life and energy. Writing about the case took him another three, since it’s a complicated story involving a crooked surveyor; overworked and underfunded bureaucrats; a golden-throated, Harley-riding Southern lawyer; and a retired Superior Court Judge nicknamed the Heel Hound. Attorneys from the Southern Environmental Law Center and representatives from the Appalachian Trail Conference and the National Parks Conservation Association also played a prominent part, along with a host of relatives, friends and foes of Leutze, Ashley and her Aunt Ollie.

As the cast of characters might indicate, it was, in Leutze’s words, “a great story to live through. My task was to not screw it up.”

Because Leutze is “a fighter – I don’t seek drama but I’m highly attuned to injustice … [and] Ollie and Ashley were relying on me,” he dedicated himself to making sure that the Putnam Mine would not, for the next 99 years of its lease, ruin his friends’ enjoyment of their house or the majestic tranquility of the Roan Highlands. But because he’s a natural storyteller and a very gifted writer, there was never any danger of his screwing up the telling of the tale.

The view of the Roan Highlands from Big Yellow Mountain, the home of Jay Leutze’s mountain retreat. Photo by Robert Dickson

Leutze, now trustee and secretary for the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, believes that the “power to change the landscape should come with concomitant responsibility.”

Those of us who share that belief, who understand the eternal value of natural places, can only marvel at Leutze’s dedication and that of those who worked with him to fight the Putnam Mine. It was a very tough fight, one in which the outcome was precariously uncertain. So go out and get yourself a copy of Stand Up That Mountain to find out just how lucky we all are.