Barrens Fire

We had a forest fire here in Mountaintop, Pennsylvania earlier in the spring. It burned off several hundred acres, threatened several homes, and scared the crap out of other people who imagined that it would consume their properties. This is pretty much normal for April in our corner of the commonwealth.

I watched from the home of a friend, who has a deck with a spectacular view of the conflagration.  The action was perhaps a mile away, on the next ridge over.  Even from that distance, we could see the flames leaping far into the night sky, as though they would consume completely, everything in their path. As is usually the case, this does not happen. Millions of years of evolution have equipped trees and shrubs with the tools to survive wildfires; they tend to regrow rather stubbornly.

I drove through the affected area today.

Already, several weeks later, there are signs of healing with the green grasses and bracken ferns punctuating the charcoal forest floor. Some of the smaller trees as well as the less fire resistant species will die, but most seem to have survived. Much of the fire occurred on scrub barrens land, for which burning is the agent of perpetuation.

Regrowth

 Today, the chestnut oaks on the burn site are in bloom as though nothing significant had happened.

In a year, only the blackened tree trunks will suggest that there had been any forest disturbance here.

Nature, in this case fire, creates renewal. The results can be jarring when a favorite landscape is involved, but most often, the changes wrought by fire are natural and even helpful to the ecosystems involved.

 What is most disturbing is that a fire strips away the shroud that hides our human misdeeds. With the ferns and underbrush gone, it is the nonflammable human refuse that remains, revealing the obscene way, that at least here in Northeastern Pennsylvania, we tend to abuse our surroundings.

I have never understood what possesses a person to toss their garbage into the countryside.

If you don’t want to pay for garbage pick-up, find a dumpster somewhere, take it to work, to your parents, whatever.

 Please don’t do this.

Revealed garbage

Fishing the Lehigh

In honor of the first day of the Trout Season for 2010, I offer this essay:

For the Pennsylvania angler, there are many forms of fishing to be experienced. From trolling the depths of Lake Erie for salmon, “still fishing” at night for catfish, jigging through a hole in the ice of a frozen lake, or riding a high-powered bass boat across a lake to a favorite weed bed, the choices are numerous. Without disparaging these pursuits however, fishing in Pennsylvania for me has always been about streams… and trout.

     The trout is a wonderful food-seeking engine. Whether brook, brown or rainbow, it is a sleek, torpedo, painted with precise and tasteful patterns of red, silver, brown and blue, aesthetic in a way unmatched by the pallid green of most other game fish.  For the most part, they exist in rivers and streams, searching for a variety of food sources including crayfish, minnows and most importantly, aquatic insects.

   Trout behavior is if nothing else, logical. They favor positions in the flow where they are protected from the current (and thus expend less energy), but have ready access to the main channel where the food is plentiful. Larger fish generally get the most favorable locations. Fishermen know this, they cast their lures into the relatively quiet water behind large rocks, or near to eddies and undercut banks.

    Pennsylvania is well known as a desirable trout fishing destination. It is our topography that determines this. With large regions of ridges and valleys; with mountains that are high enough, but not too high, our state is interlaced with excellent trout water. From the remote hemlock-shaded streams of the Allegheny National Forest, to the more open limestone creeks of the central state, to the upper Delaware River, the angling opportunities seem almost endless.

     Though there are many ways to fish for trout, fly-fishing is by far the most challenging. For most anglers, the goal of an outing is to catch multiple, preferably large, fish however you can.  Fly fishermen see it somewhat differently. Limiting themselves to the use of odd-looking wisps of feathers, hair, and thread as bait; they seek to present the quarry with unlikely replicas of the aquatic insects that on that month, day and hour, and in that particular creek, are the trout’s likely food source.

    To accomplish this with any consistency, one must not only understand trout and their behavior, but also the etymology of aquatic insects. Much of the fishing is “catch and release”, facilitated by the use of “barbless” hooks.  Thus in effect, the trout ceases to be a trophy, but becomes instead a judge, testing the accuracy of the fly tiers art, the gentleness of the cast, and the angler’s knowledge of stream biology.

     This is not to say that trophy fish are not pursued. Even in this gentle art, landing a huge, slack-jawed creature is an exiting and memorable event. The fish is handled gently, measured, and perhaps photographed, then as quickly as possible returned to the streams embrace.  A taxidermist may later immortalize it; working from the snapshots and dimensions to create a replica of that noble creature.

    As we later admire it, mounted perhaps on a den wall, it is fun to think that the magnificent spirit depicted there probably still exists. One can imagine it, grown slightly larger now, slipping quietly through the waters of that very same stream, waiting patiently for the next juicy morsel to float by.