Safe Passage

The I-40 Pigeon River Gorge Wildlife Crossing Project

a search for safe passage

Crosby helped inspire ‘A Search for Safe Passage,’ allusions to his lyrics made throughout the book

Legendary singer-songwriter David Crosby passed away on Jan. 19, 2023, at age 81. In addition to his solo career, he was a founding member of both the Byrds and Crosby, Stills and Nash (and sometimes Young).

Crosby’s music influenced Great Smoky Mountains Association’s creative director Frances Figart in writing the award-winning title “A Search for Safe Passage.” Set in a microcosm of the Pigeon River Gorge and featuring 19 species that collaborate to find a safe way to cross the road, the book is geared for young readers but offers a plethora of humor and significance for adults who love literature and music.

“David Crosby’s haunting post-apocalyptic anthem ‘Wooden Ships’ became the soundtrack for my creative work,” Figart (which rhymes with Tiger) writes in an essay about her influences that appears at the end of the book. In the song, two groups of desolate people from opposite sides of a war encounter each other after the destruction has rendered them weak and nearly dead—and some don’t even know who won!

“The song began to represent for me a dreadful future when we have lost our iconic Appalachian species to our own blindness and apathy—a time when humans would say to the few remaining individual bear, deer, and elk:

Horror grips us as we watch you die
All we can do is echo your anguished cries

And the animals would reply:
We are leaving, you don’t need us.

Oh, but we do need them!”

“A Search for Safe Passage” alludes to “Wooden Ships”in several ways.

Since the animal territory in the gorge is now divided by the highway into the North and South, those on the North side believe that the ones in the South have shinier coats because they live nearer to the river. So, Deer says to Bobcat in Chapter 4, “I can see by your coat, my friend, you’re from the other side.”

David Crosby’s haunting post-apocalyptic anthem “Wooden Ships” is alluded to in several different ways throughout “A Search for Safe Passage.”

Later, at the end of Chapter 6, Hawk catches “a fair wind blowing warm out of the south” and “sets a course” like the narrator at the end of “Wooden Ships.”

Then, in Chapter 7, Skunk asks Opossum a famous question from the song: “Hey, can I have some of your purple berries?”

And in Firefly’s final poem, the lines “free and easy,” and “the way it’s supposed to be,” also come from “Wooden Ships.” Firefly’s poem actually satirically combines Crosby’s lyrics with some from Samuel Francis Smith’s “America (My Country, ‘Tis of Thee).”

Figart finally alludes to the influence of Croz with the moniker “Human Highway,” the name of a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young album that was never published.

“David was one of my many muses, and his voice never faltered even as he made four solo albums in his 70s,” she said. “Many will miss him, and his spirit and influence will live on in the music that captivated several generations.”

You can purchase the book here to read more about wildlife crossings as well as Figart’s creative influences and allusions.

In the News: Berea College Magazine publishes ‘A Search for Safe Passage’ author reflection

In a December article for Berea College Magazine, “A Search for Safe Passage” author and Berea alumna Frances Figart reflected on all that led up to her work advocating for safe wildlife crossings in the Pigeon River Gorge and beyond.

In the article, Figart recalled that, as a child growing up in eastern Kentucky, she often created “books” for her parents with protagonists like foxes, bobcats, raccoons and opossums. “The only sadness I recall was seeing these wild creatures killed by vehicles on our narrow, winding country roads,” she wrote.

Folding her lifelong passion for protecting animals into her job, Figart supported her employer, Great Smoky Mountains Association, in joining other organizations to create what would become the Safe Passage Fund Coalition.

Around that same time, during the COVID-19 lockdown, Figart thought: “Why not create a story you would have loved to read with your parents as an 11-year-old in the mountains of eastern Kentucky?”

To read the full article in Berea College Magazine, click here.

“A Search for Safe Passage” was written by Frances Figart, pictured, and illustrated by Emma Oxford.

Published by Great Smoky Mountains Association in 2021 and tied to the mission of the Safe Passage Fund Coalition, “A Search for Safe Passage” tells the story of best friends Bear and Deer who grew up together in a beautiful Appalachian gorge, though their home is now divided in two by a dangerous Human Highway. Geared toward readers age 7-13, the book features 19 species of wildlife found in Southern Appalachia and includes an additional nonfiction section with educational lessons about animal habitat requirements, behavior, migration patterns, and roadway ecology problems and solutions developed with input from both international and local experts. 

Great Smoky Mountains Association releases ‘A Search for Safe Passage’ to teach young readers about wildlife crossings

Press Release from Great Smoky Mountains Association:

GATLINBURG, TN — Great Smoky Mountains Association is pleased to announce the publication of “A Search for Safe Passage,” an educational adventure for readers ages seven to 13 written by Frances Figart and illustrated by Emma DuFort.

“A Search for Safe Passage” tells the story of best friends Bear and Deer who grew up together on the North side of a beautiful Appalachian gorge. In the time of their grandparents, animals could travel freely on either side of a fast-flowing river, but now the dangerous Human Highway divides their home range into the North and South sides. On the night of a full moon, two strangers arrive from the South with news that will lead to tough decisions, a life-changing adventure, and new friends joining in a search for safe passage.

“Frances’ new book is a very accessible introduction to the problems and solutions associated with highways, traffic, and wildlife,” said Senior Research Ecologist Marcel Huijser (pronounced ‘Houser’) with the Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University in Bozeman. “Through easily understandable stories of the animal characters, we learn that a busy highway can be a barrier to the search for food, water, mates, and new areas to live.”

The book is closely connected to Safe Passage: The I-40 Pigeon River Gorge Wildlife Crossing Project, a new road mitigation campaign in Western North Carolina and East Tennessee. It includes an additional nonfiction section with educational lessons about animal habitat requirements, behavior, migration patterns, and road ecology problems and solutions developed with input from international and local experts.

Figart’s passion to get involved with this cause began as a teenager in the Appalachian foothills in Eastern Kentucky not long after learning how to drive. After running over a snake on the way to work one day, she was so devastated she returned home, called in sick, and cried for hours.

“Today, each time I see a dead creature along the roadway, deep down I still react like that teenager who was devastated by one individual death,” said Figart. “I simply refuse to accept roadkill as a natural part of traveling in a mountainous region, and I know many others who feel the same way. There are viable and affordable solutions that have succeeded all over the world, and the time has come to do something about this issue in our biologically diverse Southern Appalachian landscape.”

The cover of Frances Figart’s “A Search for Safe Passage,” a chapter book that teaches young readers about wildlife and the “barrier effect” caused by highways, illustrated by Emma DuFort.

After joining Great Smoky Mountains Association as the Creative Services Director in 2017, she got involved with a group of federal, state, tribal, and non-governmental organizations discussing the need for wildlife-crossing structures along Interstate 40 near the park boundary. That group, with GSMA playing a key role, formed Safe Passage: The I-40 Pigeon River Gorge Wildlife Crossing Project.

“When Taylor Barnhill, one of my colleagues on the Safe Passage project, asked me when I was going to write a children’s book about the need for wildlife crossings, at first I protested that I had too many other obligations,” Figart said. “But over the next six weekends, I wrote the eight-chapter book, channeling the 11-year-old kid in me and creating a narrative I would have enjoyed reading with my own mother at that age.”

This is the first children’s book by author Frances Figart and the debut book-length work by illustrator Emma DuFort. Figart also wrote “Seasons of Letting Go: Most of What I Know about Truly Living I Learned by Helping Someone Die.”

“A Search for Safe Passage” is available in the park’s visitor center bookstores and at GSMA’s online store at smokiesinformation.org.