Anna Gage Norton - On Nochaway
On Nochaway
Anna Gage Norton
The majority of woodlands in the US is owned by private individuals and families, specifically more than 80% of all land in the East and 90% of Georgia’s 37 million acres. That said, land management choices made by private citizens are critical and education to foster responsible practices essential.
After years of mismanagement and neglect of farmland that has been in my family for generations, we are restoring 250 acres along the Ichawaynochaway Creek in Baker County, Georgia in effort to promote biodiversity for a sustainable ecosystem.
On Nochaway documents this land and its restoration back to the native longleaf pine with an emphasis on the prescribed burns fundamental to the process.
When this land was still occupied by those who gave the creek its name, pines ruled, though not the fast-growing, scrawny species preferred for pulp.
Shaped by frequent, low intensity naturally occurring fires, longleaf developed fire-resistant characteristics that would allow them to thrive, forming one of the most extensive ecosystems in North America.
Stalwart and slow-growing, longleaf pines dominated the southeast providing an open understory for wildlife endemic to the area including gopher tortoises and the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker, both of which are keystone species essential to the survival of many others.
The southern landscape of today would be unrecognizable to anyone who knew it before the logging and fire suppression that led the longleaf ecosystem to become one of the most endangered and fragmented in the US.
Significantly transformed after only a few years, the farm is now home to a growing number of native plant and animal species including quail, fox squirrel, and yellow Indiangrass. It will be about thirty years before these young pines mature creating a new and resilient landscape for future generations.
Anna Gage Norton received her MFA in photography from Tyler School of Art, and exhibits throughout the US. Norton’s work deals with her relationship to place and centers around questions of historical and geological time, the animate and inanimate, permanence and transience. A native of South Georgia, she now lives in Western North Carolina where she continues her photography and videography for her personal fine art as well as commissions.