Eye on the Outdoors

An angler’s tale of change in the natural world

Bob Ballantyne

POSTED: June 14, 2010

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Fact Box

Natural facts

Water trapped in cracks and crevices in rock formations freezes in winter. Since water expands when it freezes, it forms a powerful wedge that fractures rocks both large and small.
Water tends to wear rocks down to smaller and smaller particles creating sand and silt. This material acts like an abrasive when captured by flowing water and wears down other rocks in streams.
Microscopic organisms not only attack dead trees. Wood-inhabiting microbes and living trees interact in a long and intense struggle for survival.
While the act of clear-cutting forests receives criticism, the change it brings in habitat favors many important species, and not just game animals.
The technical difference between a lake and a pond is in depth. A lake is deep enough to have an area where photosynthesis cannot occur because of lack of sunlight. Photosynthesis can occur everywhere in a pond.

A June campsite that supports an annual jaunt to Bradford County is located high on a mountain flat and on the shoreline of that county’s publicly owned Sunfish Pond.

While it is a pleasant location, the tent site is exposed to the sun. Last year, an early heat wave had struck. The water in what may technically be a lake was lower than normal and yielded trout mainly to others who rowed or paddled watercraft to locations over its deeper sections.

Because of those warmer-than-normal conditions, one afternoon’s adventure found me wading wet in the water of a small stream that cuts through a cool, forested ravine and thus provides relief from such heat. Other members of our group had chosen to test their skills on the much larger and more heavily stocked Schrader Creek, and I was later to learn of modest successes on their part. For me, however, a few small, wild brook trout were all I managed to catch and release in a few of the deeper sections of the small creek, waters that I tested with some of the most basic flies as I worked my way along.

The main target of the morning was a pair of falls upstream from where those first small trout were caught. The first falls was really more of a steep, fast-running water chute and had a deep pool at its base, a feature gouged out of the rock by centuries of erosion. In the past, the pool was fed by a short but deep channel flowing from behind a rock outcrop. To cast into it, one had to stand on a rock shelf and cast blindly around the corner of the cliff-like formation, all the while hoping that the false offering of a meal would land in water and drift past a hungry trout.

But a surprise awaited me. The hidden gorge was basically gone, filled with a substantial rockslide created by the same forces that had carved the chute-like formation in earlier times. The pool was all that could be fished. It has a slate bottom that is easily seen ten feet below in crystal-clear water. It did yield some small brook trout, but one could not call the technique used as typical of fly-fishing.

It was a little later that, on reflection, I linked the rockslide to other outdoor experiences. Many years ago, and far to the south of the that location, some timber men had created a clear-cut in the state forest lands of Pike County. In doing so, they quite unintentionally provided a perfect spring gobbler-hunting stand for me. Four rejected tree trunks crisscrossed in front of a standing tree and a low rock outcropping forming an almost boat-like natural blind into which I could sit for turkeys and secret myself from view. The blind now, however, has mostly rotted away, but since it is still a good spot for a spring hunt, I now create my own blind from smaller deadfall from the woodland floor.

Nearby, a logging road created through a more recent clear-cut gave access to what became excellent habitat for many species of wildlife. From that road, the land slopes downward to the Bushkill Creek, thus creating an opening where I often paused to absorb the view. One could see for miles westward across the forested terrain, a view that gave an illusion of true wilderness. Today, however, that opening is gone, blocked by a regenerating forest whose height and dense branching obliterates the once idyllic vista.

The lesson here – from the rockslide, the rotting tree trunks, and the regenerating forest – is of the dynamic nature of the planet we live upon. The Earth is in constant change. Even back in the seventeenth century this was recognized, for French poet Honorat de Bueil wrote this about nature: “Nothing in the world lasts save eternal change.” In fact, when hiking out from the little fishing adventure with which I started this story, I found a downhill pathway to have a uniform ripple to it. Buried beneath some moss-covered forest soil are the remains of railroad ties from a narrow-gauge track that carried timber off the mountain a century ago.

But a true appreciation of such constant change takes a lifetime of observation. One simply cannot appreciate it just through lectures, textbooks, or videos. Thus we should fear that the drift of young people away from activities that brings them frequently in contact with the outdoors will cause this critical lesson in nature to be lost on future society.