When Abigail peeks out from her roost — a wooden pulpit dangling high-pitched in a tree on a elevation bank in West Virginia — she sees a nearly picture-perfect landscape.

She points out ranging farm animals and watches cars drive the few country roads that frontier the Jefferson National Forest. “The sunsets are staggering, ” Abigail describes. “And it’s moderately peace when the winds aren’t too strong.”

The 22 -year-old Virginian( who questioned us not to disclose her last name because of the risk involved in her objection) has called this broad landscape around Peters Mountain — and this one tree — dwelling since she and others descended up its divisions on a goal on Feb. 26, 2018.

She chose the tree she’s for a reasonablenes: It sits right where the Mountain Valley Pipeline is slated to carry natural gas through the tenuous limestone area beneath its roots.

The construction of this grapevine would intend the ruin of this countryside, and Abigail is determined to stall that as long as possible.

The Mountain Valley Pipeline was first considered in 2014 and has been met with community fighting each step of the way.

The route moves from north of Clarksburg, West Virginia, down to just southeast of Roanoke, Virginia — where it’s been proposed it will continue another 70 miles south into North Carolina. The 42 -inch-diameter pipeline will carry fracked natural gas, and inhabitants like Becky Crabtree — who lives along the itinerary and whose sheep Abigail can see from her tree — anxiety for their own health, parishes, and land.

“We can’t find record of a gas pipeline of this width ever being built on such a steep point, ” Crabtree supposes. “There are so many questions we have, and no one is answering any of them for us.”

Crabtree’s property at the basi of Peters Mountain is intersected by the pipeline, and her concerns about it are endless. She concerns about sinkholes, about the qualifications of ocean tanks in the field, and about the construction traffic projected on her little one-lane road. She worries about the fencing around her sheep land that she’ll have to pay to rebuild once MVP increases that superhighway for their utilize. She concerns about the effect the pipeline will have on the Appalachian Trail, which it will traverse under really a marry hundred paws from Abigail’s tree.

Armed with many of similar concerns as Crabtree, over 400 owners along the pipeline’s superhighway refused to grant MVP easements on their belonging. These proprietors were indicted by MVP in 2017 for access to the property; eventually, a federal law will concede the private busines access by denouncing each person’s arrive through eminent domain, claiming that the pipeline provides a public good.

Upworthy reached out to MVP for specific comments, but has not heard back.

Just a few dozen miles from Abigail, a 60 -year-old woman nicknamed “Red” has also taken to the trees to stop pipeline construction on her family’s Virginia land.

“When I accompanied the tree sits on Peters Mountain, ” Red Terry supposes, “I knew what we had to do.” Her husband’s family has lived on the Roanoke County land for generations, preserving the creek, wetlands, and a historical orchard that the pipeline will move right through.

“Everyone wants MVP’s money, ” she quips. “But there are some things in life worth a blaze of a lot more than money.”

Red’s tree-sit, like Abigail’s, has been surrounded by tree-felling in recent weeks. But the presence of the tree-sitters — along with dozens of supporters on the sand — has prevented MVP from chipping numerous trees in the pipeline’s path. Although all levels of society supporting these declarations is vast, the risk of being legal outcomes has kept countless, like Abigail, from disclosing personal information.

As construction ramps up, Red and Abigail aren’t the only ones making direct war.

In Giles County, Virginia, a blockade was made by grapevine rivals on an MVP access road. A single opponent has been roosted atop a 50 -foot log targeted vertically in the road for three weeks and check, effectively halting interpretation of both the access road and the pipeline. She has not come down once, despite the continued presence of law enforcement thwarting supporters from replenishing her give of meat and liquid. The flag hanging with her competently reads: “The fire is catching: No pipelines.”

Back in West Virginia, Crabtree speaks she was “jumping up and down delighted” to learn about the tribes who clambered into the trees on Peters Mountain.

“We hadn’t showed them until we read about them, ” she reads. “But the more parties that learn about them, the more admiration there is in the community. The more sense there is that we support beings that’ lay it down’ for our environment. That takes fearlessnes and wherewithal. It makes some extra teeth.”

Local allies have been so grateful for the tree-sitters that really a pair weeks ago, they maintained a spaghetti dinner fundraiser in endorsement.

That evening, dozens of tribes gathered in a religiou vault to eat, talk with pals and neighbours, and contribute to the reason on Peters Mountain. Crabtree’s granddaughters ranged a table terminated with markers and construction paper where well-wishers could write thank-you memoes to be delivered up the ridge.

Up in her oak tree, Abigail recites falsehoods of the past three years, which she has depleted opposing this pipeline.

“It got to the point where we had tried all these options to fight this, ” she reports. “We talked to our representatives. We tried extending our own candidates. We wrote letters to the journalist. We had parties signed petitions. Didn’t work, didn’t make, didn’t office. This is the only circumstance I feel like I have left.”

This fight develops at a time of widespread and increasing fighting to pipes and other destructive fossil fuel assignments around the country and the world.

Just east of the MVP route, folks are fighting the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a natural gas pipeline that — among a multitude of other issues — has a compressor depot planned for Union Hill, Virginia, a community built by the successors of freed slaves.

Down in Louisiana, the Bayou Bridge Pipeline were any plans to cross 700 bodies of liquid, including a supply that supplies drinking water to the United Houma Nation and 300,000 Louisiana residents. This is the tail end of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which thousands protested last year at Standing Rock.

The list goes on: Mariner East 2, Rover, Line 3, Trans Mountain. But so do the histories of beings rising up in the face of this ongoing ruin of land and communities.

“I don’t have a lot to lose being in this tree, ” Abigail shares, as she adjudicates into her sleeping bag for another light on the mountain. “But as a young person and person from this region, I do have a lot to lose with this pipeline.”

For modernizes from opposition to the Mountain Valley Pipeline, follow Appalachians Against Pipelines and Farmlands Fighting Pipelines on Facebook. To learn about some of the other grapevine crusades mentioned here, follow No Bayou Bridge, Makwa Initiative, and Camp White Pine . em>

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