A post about the environment? Hmm. I do my share to lower my damage to the environment. Such as: Installing energy efficient bulbs in all my light fixtures, recycling everything that our city will accept, a fuel efficient automobile, using cat litter that is more biodegradable than the average clay litter, and many other things. However, instead of patting myself on the back of what I do and what everyone should do for that matter, my posting is about a memory from my childhood that made me look at our environment in a whole new light.
When I was a gangly kid my family would go to a lodge in the White Mountains of Arizona every summer. Beaver's Head Lodge was the name, and it was traditional log cabins set back off the road, smack dab in the middle of the forest. It was like something off of a postcard, complete with a pond to fish in, an eccentric family that owned it, and a mean horse to scare the crap out of you. My cousins, the children of other lodgers, and myself spent many a summer wandering through the surrounding forest enjoying mother nature and doing what kids did before the invention of cable TV and video games.
The one thing that wasn't so great in that setting was the fishing, and that's just what my Grandfather wanted to do with his time at the lodge. We traveled all over the area to some of the larger lakes, but he always hated dealing with all the other fishermen. He was always on the lookout for "The Spot". The one place that had fish jumping right into your lap, or at least always biting. One year the lodge owner told him of a fishing hole that was just that. It was off of an old logging road, but he promised that it would be everything he was looking for.
The next day, my cousins and I piled all the fishing gear into the VW my Grandfather always drove, and we headed for the illusive fishing mecca. I can still remember the drive, and holding on for dear life down the roller coaster drops of the logging road. I'm sure I was scared as hell, but my cousins and I could not stop laughing. All of a sudden we leveled off and my Grandpa said "Here we are." We stepped out of the VW into a picturesque setting straight out of a movie. An undisturbed small pond with tree line all the way up to the banks, and not a soul in sight. My Grandpa was a little apprehensive. How could there be fish in a pond this secluded? Did the Forestry Service even stock this pond? The only way to find out was to set up the gear and start fishing.
I had never caught a fish in my life. I used to go out with my Grandpa just to spend the time with him and my family. My Grandpa caught fish all the time, and I had just written it off that fish could tell my line from his. So, I cast out my line, sat in my folding chair, and prepared to be sitting there for the rest of the day listening to my Grandpa tell tales from his childhood. I don't think 5 minutes went by when my pole jerked, and my line started feeding out. I looked at my Grandpa with a "What the hell?" expression, and he told me if I didn't start reeling it in, that fish was getting away. With some coaching from my Grandpa, and some perseverance, I caught my first fish. It was a beautiful rainbow trout, and after that fishing was different. Instead of sitting watching my Grandpa fish, I was fishing right along with him. In fact, in a matter of two hours we caught our limit, even my six year old cousin. My Grandpa dubbed the little pond "Our Secret", and we packed up the car and went back to the lodge to have a delicious trout dinner, and my Grandfather made sure the lodge owners were there since it was because of them we had all these fish.
That went on for four summers, and every year the little pond looked exactly how we left it, and that was one thing my Grandfather taught us: Leave nature the way you left it. Treat nature with respect and it will be there for you to enjoy. Every time we went to the little pond every piece of trash went back with us. On the fifth summer the lodge owner notified us that the state was taking back the land that the lodge resided on, and it was the last summer that we could spend there. I was crushed. I had hoped to spend summers there for the rest of my life, but that was not the crushing blow that would ruin our trip.
Since this was to be our last summer at the lodge we decided to make our trip to "Our Secret" a little early so we could spend the rest of our time enjoying the lodge for one last summer. My cousins and I packed the car the night before in anticipation, and the next day there we were again, holding on for dear life and laughing the entire time. When we rolled into "Our Secret" I knew something was wrong. I could tell by the smell. Our little pond always had that "foresty" smell. Trees, dirt, and water. Now, it smelled like a garage, oily and acidic. My youngest cousin, now 11, pointed to the middle of the pond. Floating in the middle of the pond was an old refrigerator. In fact, we started to notice that there was garbage all around the banks of the pond. The pond's surface had changed from one that I used to watch the sky's reflection in, to one that was covered in thick sheets of green algae. What thoroughly turned my stomach was the fish. There were numerous fish floating dead in the water. What was once a picture postcard had become the textbook example of illegal dumping. We all sat there staring at the pond and after a while my Grandfather told us to get back in the car. We rode back to the lodge in silence.
When we returned my Grandfather went to the lodge owner to get the number for the Forestry service. For the next hour or so my Grandfather chewed the ear off of everyone he spoke to about the illegal dumping that had destroyed the pond. He was promised many a time that someone would look into it. The event overshadowed the rest of our trip.
The next year we went camping, and my Grandfather and I decide to go back to the pond to see if anything had been done. The road to the pond had been gated off so we hiked up the road to see what, if anything, had been done. The garbage had mostly been removed except for a pile that looked like it would soon be taken away. The pond was even more overgrown now, so green it almost looked more like a swamp than a pond. We reminisced for a moment and then we made our way back to the car. On our way back a Forestry ranger was walking up the trail towards us. He asked rather gruffly what we were doing, and my Grandfather explained the situation. The ranger told my Grandfather that he had been one of the unfortunate enough to receive an ear chewing from him, and that he was overseeing the clean up of the pond. My Grandpa, being a doctor of agriculture, stated the obvious, "That pond is never going to be the same again." The ranger shook his head in agreement and walked with us back to the VW bug that had taken us there so many times before. My Grandfather and I drove back to our new campsite, and we never went back to "Our Secret".
As I look back on this story I'm sure it's not the pleasant tale that most may expect of "Blog Action Day". However, I see this story as a reminder of what we as a community, a society, a planet, need to do to make sure that we have a healthy, clean, environment to live in. This planet we live on may seem gigantic to some, but when it really comes down to it it's not that big a place, and many of those that are living on it are taking for granted that it will be here in it's current state until the end of time. The reality is pretty clear, if we as a society don't change the way we live, and in turn encourage change to our society as a whole, our planet will not be a healthy and clean place to live.
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