Hickory Hollows

Article first published in the Arc’s 2023-2024 Newsletter

Here at the Highlands Nature Sanctuary, we try to keep close tabs on properties that come up for sale in the region. And so, when two small for sale signs popped up on Cynthiana Road on the south boundary of our preserve, our curiosity was piqued. The 77-acre property listed was composed of seven small parcels that lay in a contiguous tract on the lower slopes of Spargur Hill and bordered a private lake. Satellite images revealed forested hills, but not in sufficient detail for us to be able to assess the woodland’s quality.

On a pleasant Saturday in July of 2023, Arc staff members Andrea Jaeger, Brit Wood, Nancy Stranahan, and Brent Charette, decided to hike into the property to see if it might prove “Arc-worthy.”

The property stretched between two roads in a region unfamiliar to us. Spargur Lane bordered its northern boundary; Cynthiana Road its south. Entering from Spargur Lane, we were greeted by an abandoned house trailer, a run-down empty shed, rubbish, and invasive plants. The soils and stream channels behind the trailer showed signs of gullying and past erosion events. Although this first of seven parcels had a solid canopy of maturing trees, the understory was nothing but thickets of multiflora rose. This is how so many of our site assessments go. We all glanced at each other and bit our lips, shaking our heads in silent disappointment.

Bracing ourselves, we crossed over a low ridge to the next parcel. Thankfully, as if a line were drawn across the ground, the multiflora rose was left behind. We angled to the east to catch our first glimpse of Head Lake. The panorama of the hardwood forest reflected against its silent still waters, and we could see the forested hills and valleys on its far shore. Our moods lifted immediately.

We began to notice hickory trees, not just a token one here and there, but as the dominant trees around us. Here were large and healthy pignuts, shagbarks, and bitternuts. For years we’ve longed to save a remnant of the hickory-rich forests that once thrived in the western half of the Sanctuary. But few of them have survived to modern times, and none have come up for sale. Might this place be the first?

From parcel to parcel the positive side of the balance sheet continued to grow. Hillsides were carpeted by spring ephemerals such as wild ginger and twinleaf. Fingers of dolomite braced the hillsides, offering shelter for ferns, moss, and more wildflowers. Tributary streams dissected the hills as they meandered down from Spargur Hill, contributing their own water-borne life force to that of the lakes. These streams were punctuated by small waterfalls, limestone cliffs and slump blocks - gifts provided by incomprehensible eras of geologic time that precede us. We walked below towering tree to towering tree, shouting excitedly to each other, “Look at this one!” “Look at that one!” Our faces were now covered with delighted grins.

The final exclamation point for us was an exceptionally large patch of black cohosh in full bloom. It was then we decided to commit to a name. “Hickory Hollows” it shall be. We all agreed without discussion that the Sanctuary and this forest needed each other. Exiting the forest and while still in the car with the others, Nancy called the realtor to tell him we were interested, and we would get back to him as soon as we had some time to strategize.

After that day, the rest of the summer became a blur. The seller was excited about our interest, but required a closing date within 60 days, well before any grant funding could be leveraged. Furthermore, our Land Revolving Fund, never big enough in any case for a project of this scale, had been emptied earlier this year. We toyed with borrowing the money and having our sister nonprofit hold the land for us until we could get Clean Ohio funding, only to soon discover that we were unable to secure the formal support the grant required. Clean Ohio was out.

That left only one option, something we’ve only done three times before in our 28-year history, and that was to go to donors with an emergency campaign. The acquisition would then either succeed or fail on the basis of public response. But that was easier said than done. All of our staff were in the thick of our busy summer visitor season, as well as writing five Clean Ohio grants due that fall. We had to seriously ask ourselves, “Do we have the muscle for this?”

And then the unthinkable happened. Sylvan Deep in Jackson County showed up on the realtor’s listing. Ten days later we were in contract for a second property we didn’t have the money to buy (click here for the Sylvan Deep article). The emergency campaign was suddenly becoming very, very interesting.

Work on the infrastructure for a campaign commenced. We built webpages and Excel spreadsheets, wrote up mass emails, made a short film, prepared to deluge our social media platforms, and got our systems ready for what we hoped would be an onslaught of donations. We couldn’t believe we were going to ask for nearly a million dollars, considering the most money we had ever tried to raise in emergency circumstances in the past was $300,000. Were we crazy to even try? We were about to find out.

Three weeks to the day before the first of the two closing deadlines – the one for Hickory Hollows - the emergency campaign went live. Our staff found the results to be even more surprising than did our donors. On day 3, we already had received enough donations to pay for Sylvan Deep!!

Two days before Hickory Hollow’s closing date r - we disabled our campaign’s donation button. To our absolute astonishment, in less than three weeks we had raised a million dollars from roughly 661 donors, 273 of whom were new to the Arc. Our emergency campaign was complete. We were stunned and very, very happy. We suspect that wildlands preservation is perhaps the best tonic that exists for battling cynicism and hopelessness. The people of Ohio love their wildlands, and they are true spirit-lifters!!!

We will never rest in our pursuit to leverage our donors’ gifts as far as they will stretch. In the months ahead, if we find grants that might yet be directed to Sylvan Deep or Hickory Hollows, we won’t hesitate to put the effort into securing them. If we succeed, we may be able to amplify the land-buying power of our donors’ generous contributions to fund even more land.

But, at the very least, the gifts that have so generously poured in this summer from private donors have ensured that Sylvan Deep & Hickory Hollows are fully funded and will be preserved into perpetuity.

And that, friends, is a deeply gratifying and sufficient outcome.