When Will We Learn?
by Pete Kallin
I spent most of the week in Dayton, Ohio, at a family gathering celebrating my mother in-law's 90th birthday. I got most of my exercise pushing her around in a wheel chair on the wooded paths at the assisted living facility where she now lives.
The trees brought joy to her and she talked about her youth when climbing trees brought her great joy. Every time we passed the small cottage where she used to live, she pointed out the relatively small red maple she had planted to replace the ash tree that was killed by the Emerald Ash Borer a few years ago. Unsaid, but clearly on her mind, was the thought that that particular tree would hopefully be around long after she wasn't.
Our joyful family celebration was in stark contrast to the somber reflections of the local community after (another) horrific mass shooting in our country. There were community events that built solidarity and serious discussions about how to avoid future recurrences. It also reminded me there is much to be gained by listening to our elders and becoming immersed in the natural world. The rest of this column is basically a reprint of one that I wrote in 2011 when I was writing a column entitled, "Watershed Wisdom." I think it still has some good ideas
Watershed Wisdom — Ancient Wisdom
I have been discussing Mother Nature's watershed design and the importance of maintaining upland forests and vegetated wetland buffers to protect water quality. I have talked about the importance of responsible development to avoid excess stormwater runoff that can cause erosion and deplete groundwater supplies. These are not new ideas. Consider this observation from over 2000 years ago:
There are mountains in Attica, which can now keep nothing but bees, but which were clothed, not so very long ago, with fine trees producing timber suitable for roofing the largest buildings….while the country produced boundless pasture for cattle. The annual supply of rainfall was not lost, as it is at present, through being allowed to flow over a denuded surface to the sea, but was received by the earth, in all its abundance, into her bosom where she stored it.— Plato: Dialogue of Critias 360 B.C.E
Plato could just as easily be talking about modern day America. Cutting down forests in the uplands and clearing the native vegetation results in too much impervious surface, which in turn results in excess stormwater runoff. Instead of recharging the groundwater aquifers and filtering slowly into streams and lakes, this runoff flows quickly down the hills, resulting in flooding in the lowlands and excessive erosion and phosphorus-laden sediments flowing into our lakes.
The LakeSmart program I discussed a few weeks ago emphasizes the importance of maintaining native vegetated buffers along the shorelines of our lakes, rivers, and streams. Over 500 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)gave the same advice:
The roots of the willows do not suffer the banks of the canals to be destroyed; and the branches of the willows, nourished during their passage through the thickness of the bank and then cut low, thicken every year and make shoots continually, and so you have a bank that has life and is of one substance.
A few hundred years later, Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) built his home next to Walden Pond and observed:
My house was on the side of a hill, immediately on the edge of the larger wood, in the midst of a young forest of pitch pines and hickories, and half a dozen rods from the pond, to which a narrow footpath led down the hill. In my front yard grew the strawberry, blackberry, and life-everlasting, johnswort and goldenrod, shrub oaks and sand cherry, blueberry and groundnut.
Thoreau clearly understood the importance of diverse vegetation and a healthy vegetated buffer. Interestingly, even before the advent of shoreland zoning rules, he built his house a half dozen rods back from the water, almost exactly the 100 ft setback requirement of Maine's current law. With his narrow meandering footpath, I'm sure Thoreau would have qualified for a LakeSmart Award. He certainly understood the beauty of healthy lakes with forested shorefront areas:
A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows.
We have discussed the importance of watersheds and managing our lakes on a watershed basis instead of arbitrary municipal boundaries. There are two places in Maine where this takes place — the Cobbossee Watershed District and the Penobscot Nation in the Penobscot River Watershed. It is no coincidence that Cobbossee Lake is the only major lake that has been taken off of the official DEP list of impaired waterbodies.
Native Americans have long recognized the importance of taking care of our lakes and rivers. Chief Seattle (1786–1866) was not a Penobscot but I think they would agree with him:
The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. The rivers carry our canoes, and feed our children. If we sell you land, you must remember, and teach your children, that the rivers are our brothers and yours, and you must henceforth give the rivers the kindness you would give any brother.
More recently Luna Leopold (1915–2006), the son of the great 20th Century conservationist Aldo Leopold, who was the Chief Hydrologist of U.S. Geological Services (USGS) and a Professor at the University of California summed it all up when he said:
Water is the most critical resource issue of our lifetime and our children's lifetimes. The health of our waters is the principal measure of how we live on the land.
Our new Maine Lakes Resource Center (MLRC) [which merged with the Belgrade Regional Conservation Alliance in December 2017 to form the 7 Lakes Alliance] will shortly be working to make conservation a tradition in our watershed. We plan to implement some of the wisdom of past generations to preserve this special place for future generations. We need to take advantage of Mother Nature's built-in systems and figure out ways to modify man-made systems to mimic natural systems. We have implemented many state-of-theart best management practices into the design of our new center. Come visit and learn how to live lightly on the land for the sake of the lakes. We want our children and grandchildren to have memories like E.B. White:
For me the golden time of year was summertime, when we all went for one month to a rented camp on the shore of Great Pond, one of the Belgrade Lakes in Maine. This Belgrade era began, I think, in 1904, when I was five years old. It was sheer enchantment. We Whites were city people — everything about Belgrade was a new experience: the big freshwater lake, the pines and spruces and birches, the pasture with its sweetfern and juniper, the farmhouse where we took our meals, the rough camp with its sparsely furnished bedrooms… the boating, the swimming, and the company of other campers along the shore. The month of August was four solid weeks of heaven.…
The delicious smells and sounds of Belgrade are still with me after these many years of separation. I spent much of my time in a canoe, exploring bogs and streams, netting turtles.… At Bean's store [owned by Ervin A. Bean, the brother of L.L. Bean] Father would treat us to a round of Moxie or birch beer, and we could feed the big bass that hung around the wharf and then head back [in the launch] across the lake… (There was a new drink out called Coca-Cola, but Father assured us it was a cheap imitation of Moxie and without virtue.)
This is my last column of the season. I hope readers will find it of value and be inspired to "take it outside" and reflect on some of the life lessons Mother Nature can bring. And don't forget to take a kid along on your next adventure. Or someone older, who will once again, feel like a kid again.
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