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Readers of Walking The Berkshires know that the landscape of the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills is often the inspiration but just as frequently a point of departure for what I write here. I have long been interested in the connections between land and people, and what the history of a place and its inhabitants can tell us about our place in the world today. While these are recurring themes in my writing, my interests are varied and the associations I draw may come from unexpected quarters.
Hence, this post: inspired by family history, personal observation of the natural world, thoughts of the Divine, and only connected by the thinnest of threads to these time-worn hills. My ancestors the Olmsteds were original settlers of the Connecticut Colony, and our branch of the family later removed to Norwalk and were original proprietors of Ridgefield at the foot of the highlands that rise to join the Litchfield Hills. The Olmsteds of interest here, however, left Connecticut after the Revolution and took to the sea, where as merchant captains and supercargos they plied the waves and for many decades were engaged in the China Trade.
These were not those wealthy merchants who filled such places as Salem, Massachusetts and Middletown, Connecticut with their fortunes and estates. The Olmsteds sailed from Philadelphia and New York in the service of some of the great merchants and counting houses of their time but were never independently wealthy. When two of them were lost at sea, their widows and orphans lived together with relatives and shared a single purse.
When my beloved great Aunt and family historian Margaret Ogden died at the age of 98, I accepted responsibility for a vast family archive. Ours is a family that finds it hard to part with anything, and this collection preserves the ephemera of more than two hundred years of Ogden and Olmsted history. Included with the treasures in these papers is, among other things, a letter written on 36th Congress stationary, purloined by my Gr-gr-grandfather William Nisbet Olmsted, shown here in a photograph from 1863, when he and the 7th New York Regiment were quartered in the House of Representatives at the outset of the Civil War. The photograph was taken in Hong Kong, when he was working in China in the service of American merchant and missionary D W Olyphant. He also appears seated at right in the photograph that accompanies the preceding paragraph.
What brought my nautical, merchant forebears to mind was not the romance of the Orient or the perusal of historic documents, but rather the experience of reading some of Rachael Carson's writings with the good folks over at Whorled Leaves where I am an occasional contributor. Carson was an extraordinary writer with a gift for making the natural world come vividly to life with marvelously descriptive prose. She saw no need to segregate science from literature and her observations of the marine world in particular are evocative and moving. If all you know of Carson is Silent Spring, then I commend to you her other three books and especially the collection of her writing called Lost Woods.
Carson described a night in Maine when the spring tides of the new moon brought luminous phosphorescence crashing to shore:
The surf was full of diamonds and emeralds, and was throwing them on the wet sand by the dozen...The individual sparks were so large - we'd see them glowing in the sand, or sometimes, caught in the in-and-out play of the water, just riding back and forth.
The image brought to mind night swimming in Buzzards Bay, where sometimes in August the act of plunging below the water creates such agitation among the algae that their bioluminescence is enough to see by. Sailors often remarked at the incredible trail of milky light creaming in their wake, as one of my Olmsted ancestors did on a voyage to Canton, China in 1843. 29 days out from Philadelphia on the brig Childe Harold, my Gr-gr-gr-great uncle Henry Morse Olmsted noted in his log:
'Those who go down to the sea in ships and do business upon the great waters, see the wonderful works of the Lord.' And truly we saw last night one of his wonderful works. It was a grand view of the phosphorescence of the Ocean. It surpassed anything of the kind I have ever seen. We all noticed when we went on deck after tea that the water was more luminous than we had yet seen it, but at 9 o'clock it suddenly became brilliant beyond the power of my pen to describe. The vessel was going thro' the water at abt 4 knots and as she broke thru' the sea, one blaze of silver light lit up her forward sails so much that one could almost see to read. The wake was a straight path of light in the midst of the dark waves. As far as the eye could reach, around for miles, every crest of a ware gave forth that same, clear, lovely light. All were on deck admiring it. Little Fanny was awakened from her sleep to see the Ocean on fire.
...About 2 o'clock in the morning I was called...to see a school of porpoises along side. The phosphorescence still continued. The motion of the fish thru' the water was shown by streaks of fire, their forms as distinct as at mid-day. I thot of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner -'About, about, in reel and rout / The death fires dance at night/ The water like a witch's oils/ Burnt green and blue and white.'
It is a remarkable description by a literate observer who was witness to fantastic events, for all he was prone to seasickness and far from home. I myself have sailed a dogwatch under the Perseids, watching them plunge in colored trails of glory, and saw the Aurora dip South one spring to cloak the sky in Eldrich light. I have heard my tenor note reverberate from apse to nave in Canterbury Cathedral in seamless harmony with a dozen voices. Rachael Carson dipped her hands to scoop liquid fire from the foaming shore, and Henry Olmsted saw the wonderful works of the Lord in the bioluminescence dancing on the face of the Ocean.
It is a New Englander's prerogative to grouse about the weather. We have had a very soggy spring here in the Litchfield Hills. Since April 1st a weather station in Litchfield, CT has recorded 13.6 inches of rain, and 28 days with measurable precipitation. The cool, wet weather settled in as the apples were in blossom, which does not bode well for this year's crop. Vegetation stays damp and the soil saturated. Some plants in my garden, especially the Clematis vine, are now stricken with mold and starting to show signs of rot. I have not had to water my vegetable garden since putting it in plants and seed the week before Memorial Day.
Still, it is not the wettest Spring on record, nor particularly cool in comparison to the seasonal average. We had a drier than normal winter, with just 55.5 inches of snowfall recorded by that same station in Litchfield. It was a heavy spring for pollen and for allergies, and shows signs of being a very productive year for mosquitoes.
Except for the days with heavy rainfall, it has been an excellent spring for cold water fly-fishing, to judge by the anglers who stand at regular intervals in mid- stream between West Cornwall and Cornwall Bridge on any given afternoon. The Housatonic in this stretch resembles a photo shoot for the Orvis catalog, with occasional raft and kayak traffic thrown in for the sake of diversity. Housatonic River Outfitters, Clarke Outdoors, and other businesses that serve recreation activities on the river are adapting to the vagaries of the Housatonic now that the hydro-power plant at Falls Village is managed more ecologically as "run of river" rather than "pond and release."
The rapids were a true hazard a few weeks back and the State police had to shut down access to the river after 5 paddlers capsized in succession during a river race. My colleague Patience Lindholm was in her dry-suit on water rescue duty that day, and it taxed both her stamina and EMS training fishing contestants out of the flood.
The heavy rainfall has presented new challenges to roadside navigation as well. A large beaver dam up on the west slope of Rte 7 gave way a couple of weeks back and tore up a barn and a home in its path before surging across the road and down toward the river. I drove home along River Road on the other side of the Housatonic that afternoon, and the state highway crews spent days shoring up the embankment. I have no doubt that the beavers completed their repairs before the State.
In 1973, Kentucky author Wendell Berry wrote "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front", a poem you can read in full here. The Mad Farmer is comfortable with deep time, and outraged at our estrangement from the land and the processes that sustain life. I always thought the line from his Manifesto that appears in the title of this post would make a great bumper sticker. The poem continues:
Say that your main crop is the forest Berry reminds us that "conserve" and "conservative" share the same roots. For all his rejection of soulless capitalism and the alienation produced by our automated society, the Mad Farmer embodies the essence of American patriotism when he declares: Denounce the government and embrace So when Hank Paulson is attacked by some on the far Right as a radical environmentalist because he likes to fish, watch birds, and was Chair of The Nature Conservancy's Trustees, I wonder if they know how far they have strayed from their conservative roots. Investing for the long term is something a nominee for US Treasury Secretary should understand, and the fact that Mr. Paulson also sees the need to preserve the ecological capital that makes all else possible should be greeted with approval by conservatives and liberals alike. The tradition of Roosevelt, Baxter, and other conservative conservationists deserves a new day in the sun. Nor is stewardship of the Earth inconsistent with Christianity, as some on the religious Right are now rediscovering and other people of faith have long held to be true.
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
June 1, 1864 was one of the worst days ever in the Litchfield Hills. It was no natural disaster, like the Great Flood of 1955, but it struck the towns and villages of this region hard and cut the heart out of these communities. Events in war-torn Virginia shattered this region, for on that day, the 2nd CT Heavy Artillery was decimated in a fruitless charge at Cold Harbor. Ulysses Grant would later write; ""Cold Harbor is the only battle I ever fought that I would not fight over again under the circumstances. I have always regretted that the assault on Cold Harbor was ever made."
The 2nd CT Heavy Artillery faced battle for the first time on that afternoon. Originally recruited in Litchfield County back in 1862 as the 19th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry , its ranks expanded to three battalions and it was re-designated as heavy artillery in the defense of the Capitol. The 2nd CT and other heavy artillery regiments languished on garrison duty where deaths from disease were common and they endured the derision of combat veterans as "bandbox regiments". Then in 1864, Grant armed the heavies as infantry and launched them into his offensive against the Army of Northern Virginia that began in the Wilderness and ground to a halt in the trenches of Petersburg six weeks later.
They wore new uniforms at Cold Harbor, in contrast to the tattered flags and clothing of Meade's veterans, and those southerners who opposed them behind fortified breastworks. Observers after the battle said they could tell where the regiment fought by the brightness of the uniforms of the dead. They were mechanics from Winsted, ironworkers from Salisbury, farmers from Sharon and clerks from Woodbury. Some towns sent enough of their young men to fill an entire company. Salisbury sent 79 to war with the 2nd CT Hvy. Art. 22 of them would be casualties in this day's battle.
The attack was made at 5:00 p.m.after a hard march and against the entrenched confederate line. It was murder on the northern units. Tom Gladwell's Cold Harbor: The Perfect Killing Ground, describes the carnage:
Each of the battalions was in its own lines, the lines being positioned one hundred paces apart. Recalled Theodore Vaill, an adjutant, "The 1st Battalion, with the colors in the center, moved directly forward through the scattering woods, crossed the opened field at a double quick, and entered another pine wood, of younger and thicker growth, where it came upon the first line of the Rebel rifle-pits." A New York soldier watching from the rear remembered that as "soon as the heavies began the charge, the Rebel works were bordered with a fringe of smoke from the muskets and the men began to fall very fast... We could see them fall in all shapes. Some would fall forward as if they had caught their feet and tripped and fell. Others would throw up their arms and fall backward. Others would stagger about a few paces before they dropped."
The battle raged for 5 hours, and the losses of the 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery were 85 killed outright, 11 mortally wounded, 224 injured and 3 captured; total 322. This was the highest casualty rate of any Connecticut regiment in a single battle during the war. Union General Emory Upton described the attack as "murderous, because we were recklessly ordered to assault the enemy's entrenchments, knowing neither their strength nor position. Our loss was very heavy, and to no purpose. Our men are brave, but can not accomplish impossibilities."
Blaikie Hines, whose Civil War Volunteer Sons of Connecticut is the only consise and comprehensive history of every Connecticut Civil War regiment and the casualties credited to each town, determined that Canaan/Falls Village, Cornwall, Harwinton, Kent, Litchfield, Morris, New Milford, Norfolk, Salisbury, Sherman, Torrington, Washington, Watertown and Winchester lost more citizens on this day at Cold Harbor than on any other day during the war.
There is hardly a cemetery in the Litchfield Hills from this period without the grave of a soldier from the 2nd Connecticut. The Calhoun Cemetery beyond my office window has three of these, all of whom died during the war. Many others lie in Virginia soil. There is a regiment of Civil War reenacters based in Woodbury, CT that depicts the 2nd CT Hvy Artillery today. A monument to the sacrifice of the original regiment was dedicated at Cold Harbor in 2003 with the assistance of its modern depictors.
When my grandfather returned from the war and restarted his obstetrics practice in Boston, he wanted a home in the country. His requirements were few and his limitations many. He needed to be within a 50 minute mad dash of the hospital in the city to arrive in time for births. As a naval officer and child of Lake Erie, he wanted to be near the sea. He wanted space for his three daughters and the one on the way to run free, and projects aplenty to keep his mind sharp and hands busy. He had $11,000 dollars in savings.
When they visited the property out on Great Neck in Wareham, his heart caught in his throat. There was a great, rambling shingle style Victorian, barn red and fronting Buzzard's Bay. There was a small adjacent cottage, a 1 car shed, a barn with three stalls and a great fish mounted on the wall. The grounds had been ravaged by the Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944, and the shattered trunks of trees stood in ragged copses out in the yard. It was more than 30 acres with a long drive through deep woods and over 400 ft of shoreline, and the bluff overlooking the bay had a commanding view. It was perfect. The asking price was $80,000. He told the owner, old Mrs. Fish, the full amount of his savings and drove back to the city.
Several weeks afterward, the owner of the property called my grandfather and asked if he was still interested in her land. He said he loved her land but could not meet her price. "No", she said, "I mean at your price." He was dumbstruck. Mrs. Fish continued to say that she had had an offer at her asking price but that the buyer was going to subdivide and develop the property with multiple house lots. "This land has always had children" she said. "I saw yours enjoying it as it is and needs to remain." My grandparents closed on the property in January, 1947 for $11,000.
They called it Windrock, for the great, glacial erratic perched on the rim of the bluff that generations of my family have clambered over and posed upon for pictures. It was a weekend home and a summer retreat for my mother and her siblings during the 50s and 60s, and the place my generation descended upon for entire summers in the 1970s and 1980s. Although grand in many ways, it has never been maintained as an estate. The lawn was mowed by the family goat and Shetland pony during my Grandfather's stewardship. Where some yards have cars up on blocks, our disheveled grounds have the shells of disreputable boats in dry dock purgatory. The roof perpetually leaks despite the best efforts of family carpenters, although we may have finally licked it this time around. We are all Red Sox fans, so our hopes are not limited by heavy odds to the contrary.
It was Grandpop's domain and we its happy denizens. My Grandmother the doctor's wife endured years tethered to the phone, ringing the brass bell at the head of the steps outside to summon him from the roof or messing around in boats when a patient was in need. How her days at Windrock might have been different had there been pagers and answering machines when he had his practice!
The place is the solvent that keeps our far-flung family together. I know my 1st cousins as well or better than some people know their own siblings. The family has patrician roots but scorns any notion of class importance. There are lots of over-educated carpenters in our clan, and no one has bothered to keep up a listing in the Social Register. The attic is full of steamer trunks and the accumulated ephemera of generations of letter writers. We know the stock from which we come, but put more stock in the ground beneath our feet and the paths we have chosen for ourselves.
I have too many strong associations with my Grandparent's place on the bay to do them justice here. I remember the winter day in the early 1970s when we all drove over to the canal to watch a beluga whale cavorting far from frozen Labrador. I learned to SCUBA dive in the murky waters by the breakwater off the beach, to sail and splice and shingle here. In the twilight of his Alzheimer's, I talked my grandfather off a ladder on the roof by asking him to lead me to the highest pinnacle, where all the anxiety and frustration of his ascent fell away and we stood gazing together across twenty miles of ocean.
Some families preserve family lands through primogeniture. Others split their inheritance and walk away. None of my 5 Aunts and Uncles, 14 cousins and siblings, or the 15 great grandchildren who now convene for joyous, feral reunions at Windrock want to let the property go. My grandmother is 95, her two remaining teeth framed in an ageless smile. Her loss of memory has been more benign but just as relentless as her husband's and she requires round-the-clock home care that now totals nearly $70,000 a year. The cost of running the house, heating part of its drafty interior in winter, and doing a few, much required repairs adds another $40-45,000 annually to the tally. Mt grandfather lovingly provided a trust that he hoped would maintain the property for generations to come. It has about 12 months left before we use up the remaining principal.
Placing 25 acres in the open space tax abatement program provided for under Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 61B has reduced our property taxes by about $8,000, but they still exceed $20,000 a year. We are assessing ourselves until it hurts, as we are all of various means and liquidity but no one is in a position to carry the property on his or her own. Together we might be able to come up with enough capital to pay the operating costs of the property without drawing down the principal further, but it will be a stretch. We have renovated the little house next to the big one using family skills and financing, and are now renting it seasonally as a mid-term solution to provide for the carrying costs of the property. There are prime weeks available at Windrock.org if you are so inclined.
I am a professional conservationist. Preserving family lands is my stock in trade. Today, I am putting those skills in service of my own family and of our land at Windrock, trying to forestall the ultimate need to start selling off lots at the end of the driveway and working back toward the house to save the remainder. We are trying to explore a conservation scenario with local and regional land trusts that would keep the land intact and revive the family trust through the sale of a conservation easement. We have several advantages over other families in this situation. We are in close accord over the need to keep the property intact to be enjoyed by all as of old. It is a birthright but not a fungible inheritance. This is the year that will tip the balance, one way or the other, and we will not let the land go gently.
I spent Memorial Day at my grandmother's home on Buzzards Bay in Wareham, Massachusetts. This is the place where my roots are deepest, where childhood memory informs adult understanding of the patterns of wind and tide, and the many changes -subtle and profound - that have taken place here over the last three decades. Some of these, such as the return of the Osprey for which the bay is named, are glorious reaffirmations of nature's resilience and the power of well-placed regulations to safeguard the environment. Others, no less dramatic, have profound implications for the future of this property and the bay it overlooks.
The beach is glacial cobble, and as the northwest winds turn to southwest in summer, they sweep away our winter accumulation of sand and a new crop of pink and Grey stones emerges underfoot. Littoral drift accounts for some of this shift of sediments, but the gradual collapse of a piled stone jetty and the breakwater offshore have allowed the sand to move more freely along the beach. Better shoreline protection regulations make it difficult to repair or replace these jetties, but although it may be better ecologically our family bemoans the loss of sand.
There used to be a sand bar just offshore, but now it stays submerged at mean low water and there is eel grass once again close to shore. Back when I was a child, the beach was strewn with drifts of dead eelgrass, the result of a massive die-off of this keystone aquatic plant that sustains a web of diversity from larval blue crabs to the blue-eyed bay scallops that find shelter among the waving grasses. Eel grass decline was first observed in the 1930s, the result of a slime mold infestation, and in the 1980's thousands of acres of eel-grass died off in Buzzard's Bay and up and down the Northeast coast as a result of an algae bloom known as "brown tide." Rising water temperatures, nutrient loading, water pollution, coastal dredging and alteration are all contributing factors, but taken together they continue to threaten the recovery of this vital part of the marine environment. Last year in the highly saline lower Chesapeake Bay, thousands of acres of eel-grass died off, threatening the recovery of the region's blue crabs and many other species.
Today, the drifting seaweed that accumulates at the high water mark is a thick, green species Codium fragile spp. tomentosoides, the most widespread invasive seaweed in the western Atlantic. First reported in Long Island Sound in the late 1950s, it now ranges from the Canadian Maritimes to Virginia. The impacts of this introduced species on native sea grass communities are being investigated by researchers at Northeastern University and elsewhere, but I would suspect that, as with freshwater aquatic invasions, salt water invaders are altering native habitats and the complex species interactions they sustain.
One possible effect can be observed alongside the drifts of Codium at the high tide line, where massive accumulations of common Atlantic Slipper Shell (Crepidula fornicata) give a pink tinge to the shoreline. Codium often anchors to clumps of these slipper shells, bringing them on shore as it drifts. The biomass represented by the Crepidula shells is staggering, and whether evidence of a massive decline of of superabundance of this species is not altogether clear to me. They are vulnerable to fuel oil spills, and Buzzard's Bay endured a big one in 2003. Where it has been unintentionally introduced on the shores of the the Eastern Atlantic, Crepidula fornicata is now an invasive species.
There are quahogs closer inshore than I remember in my youth, but very few bay scallops. One still finds the green tubes from the old offshore oyster racks that littered the beach when I was a child. There is less beach glass, a result of better environmental regulation, but the beach still has its accumulation of jetsam. Fishing line and six pack holders still kill birds and fish. There are invasive European green crabs all over the intertidal zone, now our most abundant crustacean. Not all is invasive however. The largest Rosette tern colony in the Northeast lies on Bird island, 4 miles distant, and there are now Piping Plover nesting on Stony Point Dike alongside the Cape Cod Canal just down the beach.
Up the bluff from the beach, the raw scars from Hurricane Bob are now covered by oriental bittersweet and fast growing Jack Pine. The woodlands along the shore are growing older, and denser. When I was a child, the view of the water was largely unimpeded, and neighbors' houses could be seen on either side. There are still many ceders near the shore, but pitch pine is now but a minor component of the shoreline forest and virtually gone now from the interior where it has been replaced by the more salt-sensitive white pine. Pitch pine needs periodic fire to germinate and keep competing species at bay, and there has not been a fire on Great Neck in at least a century. One would not be welcome, now, with all the accumulated duff and available fuel, including hemlocks blighted by woolly adelgid. Lyme ticks are pervasive throughout the woods and grasslands. Box turtles, listed as species of special concern in Massachusetts, are still common on our land.
Some things seem frozen in time. My children and their 2nd cousins run wild through the yard, climbing trees and paddling boats as I did with their parents as a child. The old house is falling down in places and lovingly restored in others, a patchwork of family labor and half-finished projects that manage to keep it going year after year. There is nothing so thrilling as a gaff-rigged schooner tacking across the bay, unless it is two of them like we saw over the weekend. I ascended the flagpole out on the bluff as I used to of old, astonished that I still had the upper body strength for the task, to re-thread the line and run Old Glory up for another Memorial Day. I stopped by my Grandfather's stone on the way home yesterday, noting his fresh new flag among the hundreds of others in the Cemetery.
The more I learn about the changes in the bay, the more I believe it is incumbent on us to observe with new eyes, to note the shifting patterns and discern their implications. The sky may be blue, and the whitecaps frisk on the water, but nothing below or ashore remains unaltered.
Spring is the season of returning and renewal. Neo-tropical migrant songbirds arrive in New England after journey's of thousands of miles, while Monarch butterflies make the long trek north from their winter refuges in California, Mexico and Florida along with human "snowbirds". Amphibians move to their vernal wetlands and rattlesnakes to their summer hunting grounds.
Along our coasts and riverways, other migrations as vast and significant as those on land or in the air are also underway. There are in-stream migrations of cool water fish moving between main stem and tributary as temperatures rise. Many anadromous species, those that spend portions of their life cycles in fresh water and salt, make annual migrations upriver from the sea to their freshwater spawning grounds. Some, like Blue Back and River Herring, may journey just a few miles upstream or hundreds of miles to the place of their birth to spawn, making them keystone species for overall ecosystem health in these aquatic systems. The herring run in Wareham, MA, is a harbinger of Spring for me, and I marvel at the silvery fish, lined up in tight ranks across the current beneath the spillway, as they prepare to make their leaps. Sadly, the Coalition for Buzzards Bay gives herring a marginal rating of only 5 out of a possible 100 points in its viability assessment of this species in the Bay.
Among the most extraordinary migrations is that made by the American Shad, a fish of such former abundance that it has earned an importance to the development of early America and its legendary place in American History as The Founding Fish that -apocryphally, it turns out- was claimed to have saved Washington's Troops after the terrible winter at Valley Forge.
Shad did impact the outcome of one Civil War battle, the confederate rout at Five Forks, when General Thomas Rosser's men netted a run of shad and he, General Fitzhugh Lee, and division commander George Pickett enjoyed a shad bake. Most inopportunely for the Confederacy, this feast kept them away from the line when Sheridan's Union forces attacked soon after.
Shad have a difficult time with the Housatonic, with its many impoundments and lack of fish ladders. Historically, the Great Falls of the Housatonic at Falls Village was the natural barrier to upstream passage for anadromous fish. The Delaware, Hudson and Connecticut rivers, however, have majestic runs, which in good years see fish passages hundreds of miles upstream. Connecticut River migratory fish counts show an anadromous fishery dominated by shad, followed by sea lamprey, and just handfuls of herring and salmon.
The farther a roe shad can travel upriver before she spawns, the greater her reproductive success rate. Female shad can produce 30,000 eggs in their much prized roe, but reproductive success is extremely low. Shad are the primary forage of striped bass, and while among the boniest of fish, their sweet flesh is a regional delicacy.
The Half Moon Press published Christopher Letts; "Reflections of a Shad Fisherman" in 1998 in which he comments on the association between successive runs of shad and the flowering of certain species in Spring:
"As we headed for the beach, I focused on the shadbush blooming on the shore. The old-timers had a litany of flowering times that matched the progress of the fishing season. When forsythia bloomed, shad were in the river and it was time to fish. Successive runs of fish came in cadence with the blooming magnolia, cherries and shadbush. The shadbush marked the high point of the season, the peak of the catch. Then came the dogwood run, and finally, the biggest and best shad of the year signaled the end of the season when the lilacs bloomed. Lilac shad might run to fifteen pounds, more than twice the size of the shad we had in the boat."
The lilac run has passed now, but there are shad bakes up and down the rivers of our region from the Connecticut to the Hudson. The one I attended last year in Catskill included a novel method for preparing planked shad. About six giant bags of charcoal were laid end to end on heavy grade aluminum foil and set alight. Shad fillets were fixed to seasoned oak boards with reversal props to facilitate flipping using strips of bacon and new roofing nails. These were placed near the coals and turned once during an hour of baking. The fish was smoky sweet and I look forward to experiencing it again. Shad roe was a bit more challenging to warm up to, but dredged in flour and lightly fried it sliced fine and was quite good with scrambled eggs.
It is amazing how making modest adjustments in our behaviors and standard approaches to the things we do every day can generate significant conservation benefits. Curbside recycling has been a major incentive to separate trash and dramatically reduces the amount of waste going to incinerators and landfills in many states. The way we care for and manage land, either for conservation purposes or for other objectives, can either enhance or degrade the environment, and responsible stewardship requires that we consider the consequences of land management and adjust our approach when a better method or opportunity is available.
Here, then, are 10 recommendations for better stewardship, which you might wish to adopt yourself or for your organization, or see included in permit conditions and local ordinances in your communities.
1. Biodegradable bar and chain oil: There are now high quality, vegetable-based lubricants available for chain saws that are safe to use in wetlands and do not lose their viscosity in cold temperatures. Compared to conventional bar and chain oil, these products cost $20.00/gallon instead of $8.00 and may need to be ordered by your local Husqvarna or Stihl distributor, but you will avoid spraying a mist of petroleum-based lubricant in your woodlands if you make the switch.
2. Artificial Erosion Barriers: This sounds counter-intuitive, but those mulch bales you see lining wetland margins at work sites are left in place to decay and often provide a rich medium for invasive plant growth. This is especially true if the mulch bale contains pieces of Phragmites reed or purple loosestrife seeds, and unless you know for certain that the source of the bale is a clean site without invasives, the risk of it becoming a vector for the spread of invasive plants is fairly high. Although silt fences can fail if not installed properly, when backed with wood straw, a natural product that biodegrades in about 2 years, it can be very effective, especially on cold, north-facing slopes.
3. Real Men Use Reel Mowers: For me, the warmth and beauty of a summer day is perpetually marred by the whir and rattle of power mowers. The American fetish with all things mechanical plays out in our villages and suburbs in our motorized lawn and garden equipment. Now, I believe there is a role for power tools. It would be hard to put in much of a garden without a rototiller, and I own both a chainsaw and a power drill, but I don't use these things every day that it doesn't rain, unlike half of my neighborhood. Unless you have a very extensive lawn (several acres, anyway) or are physically unable to push a mower, owning a riding mower is just lazy. On the other hand, our Amish friends in Lancaster County, PA have reel mowers, and so do I. They do 5 acres of lawn, and I do less than 1, but both of us get a good, even cut when we keep our blades sharp and they are quiet enough to use as still talk on the phone, were you so inclined (our Amish friends are free from such inclinations, but there is an answering machine in the chicken coop). These mowers come in various models, even with bagger attachments, and the top line models will set you back $200. You'll save that in fuel costs alone in no time.
4. Clean Boat, Clean Water: Zebra Mussels and many aquatic invasive plants get an assist over "spacial gaps" from recreation boat users. Fouled propellers and boat trailers may be easier to detect than Zebra Mussel larvae in your bilge, but regardless it should be standard practice to thoroughly wash trailers and boats before moving to a new water body. Some recommend a bleach solution on the hulls, and some lake associations now forbid anyone from putting boats to water without a receipt from the local car wash.
5. Keep Compost Weed Free: Unless you are religious about turning over your compost pile every three days, it will never reach a core temperature sufficient to kill invasive plant material. Some plants can propagate rhizomatously, or from fragments of themselves, and others are so loaded with seeds that your Eco-friendly pile will quickly become contaminated and a vector for their spread if you try and compost them. You can leave non-woody invasives like Phragmites or garlic mustard out in the sun in black contractor bags and cook them that way, but otherwise the only safe disposal is to burn it or cut the plant before it sets seed if that is how it generally reproduces itself.
6. Power Wash Construction Equipment Between Jobs: What is true on the water is also true on land. Invasive material can be moved in the treads of tires, in manure spreaders, and in the beds of pick up trucks. A friend of mine with MA DFW noticed ATV users who parked under Norway Maples were the main vector for the spread of its seeds to the tops of mountains where seeds would not naturally land. Invasives love disturbance, and the very small seeds of garlic mustard, phragmites and stilt grass can be spread deep into forests on logging equipment. Power washing between jobs may be a hassle, but otherwise it should be part of the contract for a follow up site visit during the next growing season to detect and respond to new invasions.
7. De-Icing Alternatives to Rock Salt: Millions of tons of sodium chloride are spread on our roads and sidewalks every year. Vehicle traffic releases pavement salt into the air, and it just as easily finds its way into soil and water. I have seen a spring migration of salamanders burned and paralyzed in mid road after coming in contact with rock salt. Towns and Highway departments use it because it is the least expensive de-icing material, although it is ineffective at temperatures below 20 degrees, and because their liability insurance requires them to protect public safety on winter roads and walkways. There are less toxic alternatives to rock salt, including potassium chloride which costs a bit more but is safer for plants and pets and works at temperatures as low as -15 degrees. There are also vegetable-based de-icers on the market, including ones that use brewery mash and corn steep water, but these are not yet widely in use.
8. Rot-Resistant Alternatives to Pressure Treated Wood: PT is not as toxic as it used to be (arsenic is no longer an ingredient), but it is still unsafe to burn wood scraps from construction jobs and there is still the risk of its chemical preservatives leeching out into the environment. I would not use it to line my vegetable beds, not would I recommend it for use in wetlands. Boardwalks, in particular, can be constructed with both natural and artificial materials without using pressure treated wood. Trex products make very attractive and long lasting decking products, as well as 4 x 4s that make excellent supports from foot bridges and boardwalks. Cypress and Black Locust planks can also be used as decking for bog bridges and boardwalks.
9. Lose The Lighter Fluid: It seems that propane grills have replaced charcoal as the medium of choice for backyard cooking, yet another example of our love affair with chrome and steel. Those who fail to clean their gas grills in these parts may find they've created another bear magnet (see below), and frankly if I wanted to cook with gas I would use my kitchen stove. However, I have no nostalgia for the charcoal briquettes that gas grills are replacing. These Frankencoals belong in the ash heap of history, along with the lighter fluid that they must be soaked in or impregnated with to light. Natural lump wood charcoal is available in my local hardware store, and while it costs more than Kingsford it has many advantages over briquettes. It requires only newspaper to light the fire, it burns hot and imparts a smokey aroma untainted with petro-chemicals to my barbecue. If you must use charcoal briquettes, then the product you need for ignition is a charcoal chimney starter (available for $12.99 at Sears so there is no excuse) that uses paper and radiant heat to get the coals glowing.
10. Bird Feeder Dos and Donts: It is the number 2 outdoor recreational pastime in America after gardening. In Pennsylvania alone, non-consumptive wildlife-related recreation accounts for $2 billion in economic activity every year, with bird watching taking the lion's share. Still, bird feeding is not without environmental consequences. Anyone living in black bear country knows how attractive a bird feeder looks to a recently emerged bruin in the Spring. In Massachusetts, nearly every nuisance bear complaint lodged by homeowners identifies attraction to sunflower seeds, even the shells, as a contributing factor. Most bird seed is grown conventionally with agricultural chemicals and pesticides. Bird feeders that are not kept clean (and who washes their feeder regularly?) can harbor salmonella which can be fatal to feeding birds. Finally, keeping the feeder up in the warmer months gives an unnatural advantage to overwintering species over Spring migrants and may be responsible for the displacement of some bird species by others, including introduced species like English Sparrows and Starlings. If you must feed in warmer weather, provide food sources other than seeds (suet, nectar, peanut butter) that are in shorter supply than millet and sunflower seeds and support different species.
There you go. Give a few of these a try. I've got my BioPlus bar and chain oil on order for my new chainsaw.
Here, and hot off the press, are some sobering gleanings from an ongoing assessment of conservation and development trends in NW Connecticut by the Litchfield Hills Greenprint:
Read 'em and weep.
