flash fiction: [[2021-07-21 Cat and Wolf (FF)]] # Analysis *Cat and Wolf* is an urban fantasy story with a premise along the lines of Ilona Andrews’ _Kate Daniels_ series. It takes place in an “alternative future” version of the Appalachian region, after a cleansing fire passes over the world and brings out latent mythological & folkloric characteristics in existing populations. It’s flash fiction, so I wasn’t able to get into a ton of the underlying details for the Neith universe, but I’m particularly proud of detail about the chestnut tree Fannie climbs. I first learned about the [trials and tribulations of the American chestnut](https://acf.org/the-american-chestnut/history-american-chestnut/) from [Dr. Sara Taber](https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/1416459899098238976), a crop scientist who tweets a lot of “did you know” stuff about American agriculture. She’s very skeptical of the pop culture narrative of the American farming and writes a lot of useful stuff about why the “ugly fruit” trend is ridiculous and why farming infrastructure matters. One of her [threads](https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/1333422645828870144) talked about (budgeting for) the American chestnut, which suffered a major blight about a hundred years ago that wiped almost all of then out. Evidently they’re a really great tree (and we know how I feel about [[All the Things That Trees Can Be|including trees in fiction]]) that produce excellent timber for housing and furniture. Plus, apparently one chestnut tree could produce over ten bushels of nuts during harvest season – a year’s supply for a family of four. They ripen around the winter holidays and chestnut forests are a great place to fatten up livestock like pigs and cattle (which do just fine in forest environments, by the way). They’re also an important source of food for game animals like squirrels, turkey, and deer. One year, at a Thanksgiving dinner in West Virginia, my brother got up from the dinner table and shot a twelve-point buck from the upstairs window. He donated the carcass to some local families and mounted the head above his fireplace. Although deer are basically suburban rats where I live, they’re an important source of food in rural areas, and one deer can feed up to 200 people. The one time I had a chestnut, I didn’t like it, but I’m curious if that was because of the packaging. Fresh, home-grown tomatoes taste *way* different from store-bought, and pre-packaged sundried bear little resemblance in flavor or texture to either. Apparently, the American chestnut is “smaller and sweeter” than other varieties. I’m from Maryland, and I can _definitely_ taste the difference between a blue crab caught in the Chesapeake Bay the same day I eat it, and the ones imported from the Gulf or Asia. For that matter, the difference between the Gulf shrimp I got when I visited Louisiana a few years back and the shrimp I get from my local grocery store have some pretty stark taste and texture differences. The thing I find most fascinating is the economic impact the chestnut blight had on Appalachian families. Since chestnut lumber is straight, easy to work and rot-resistant, it was used for everything from fence posts to building construction to instruments. Chestnuts themselves were an important cash crop, not just because of the holiday season but also for feeding livestock. Aside from that, chestnut tannins were used for the tanning industry; the southern Appalachians produced half the U.S. supply. The loss of the American chestnuts literally destroyed the self-sufficient Appalachian mountaineer way of life. Yet, the loss of these trees never seems to get mentioned in political conversations about the economic problems facing the Appalachian region. I hear a lot about anger at environmentalists for wanting an end to coal-mining, and how vital coal-mining is to the identity of people in Appalachia. If we’d had better environmental awareness back in the early 1900s – if we’d managed to keep the invasive *Cryphonectria parasitica* fungus out of the continental US – would so much of the Appalachian economy have wound up dependent on coal? %% see also: [[2021-06-21 Fungus]] %% Scientists are working on bringing the American chestnut back, with careful cross-breeding and spreadsheets. I hope they succeed – and in one small, subtle way _Cat and Wolf_ is my story of hope. ## Further Reading - The [Historical significance of American chestnut to Appalachian culture and ecology](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/HISTORICAL-SIGNIFICANCE-OF-AMERICAN-CHESTNUT-TO-AND-Davis/c4787a4a145fa004211ed53d327bbe07d505ec9f) by Donald E. Davis is a fascinating long-form