A sense of distant
familiarity filled the brisk mountain air as my brother, Phillip, and I sliced
a path through it with boots and fly rods, following rocky switchbacks and
clambering over fallen trees along a footpath aimed at an intimate Blue Ridge hollow. Irrigating the gorge 1,000 feet below was a
favorite and well-known brook trout stream, but our sense of adventure was
renewed, our minds overtaken by anticipation, as our feet treaded a course to a
foreign stretch. Fishing together has
been rare since the pursuit of a college education relocated me 200 miles to
the south, and so it seemed fitting to choose a venue of tradition
for the day that we broke the fast.
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| Photo by Matt Reilly |
Gurgling Appalachian
Mountain water joined our downward venture when a narrow gut nuzzled the
hillside trail. An unnamed creek, a
tributary beaded by lucid, globular pools, captured our passing fancy and
required an impromptu plying with flies.
We split up. Shortly, the modest trickle yielded a half
dozen fiery-flanked brookies of respectable size, and I retired my preliminary
efforts to the overlooking path, excited and ready to continue on to the main
event. Phillip was still fishing as I
took a standing perch atop a rock mound to reflect and wait.
A bluebird sky
illuminated the forest floor, warming the ground and lighting diamonds on the
riffles and runs of the brook trout’s home.
The warmth of spring tugged at young hardwoods, at the ground, drawing
renewed life and its tell-tale buds of green from the ragged nooks of an
otherwise harsh landscape. There was not
a road in sight, nor a human who was not diligently cracking away at a hungry
trout.
The air is stimulating
and humbling in such places, tucked away in the folds of the developing
world. For a moment, I was comfortably
engulfed by the emotions of wilderness, the unstudied potential of new water,
and the impression that their influence was unrestrained.
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| Photo by Matt Reilly |
Yet, I know too much. As Aldo Leopold explained, “One of the
penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of
wounds.” The water we were scheduled to
meet by afternoon is plagued by the adverse effects of acid rain deposition, by
no fault of the fragile brook trout or the caddisflies or the equally iconic
black bears of the mountain setting, but by fault of humans in the adjacent,
polluting, coal-producing region.
Regular water quality monitoring and treatment loan the native trout
their health.
Less than 24 hours
prior, a press release landed in my inbox detailing the recently sealed fate of
the Ozernaya River in Russia’s Kamchatka.
Gold was discovered in the headwaters of the river in 2004, and in 2013
plans to develop access roads and a road mine were made, stealing the
“pristine” designation from the largest spring creek valley in the world.
Meanwhile, the U.S.
Senate voted to support a budget resolution that would allow state governments
to take over control, auction, or sell all federal public lands, except for
national parks and monuments. Sportsmen
and women are undoubtedly the strongest advocates and defenders of our public
lands. Following the announcement that
the number of Americans involved with hunting and fishing had dropped from
approximately 40 million in 1991 to 34 million in 2006, this recent bout of
immorality in the Senate is particularly ominous for the future of America’s
outdoor heritage.
On a more local level,
New Mexicans are engaged in an ongoing, fist-clenched battle against Senate
Bill 226, which threatens to eliminate their access to public waters. Should the amendment, which contradicts the
rights to public waters spelled out in the state’s constitution, be passed, New
Mexicans will be stripped of their right to wade, float, or fish navigable,
public waters which are bordered by private property.
Incomparable and
dwarfed in “ecological education” to Leopold, my foundational education mirrors
his own. I am an outdoorsman, and in
reflecting upon the deeply personal relationship that I have with the outdoors
I know one thing—that the stewardship and the quest for ecologically
sustainable systems that I challenge my purpose in life with is a direct result
of that foundational outdoor education, and that the future of our sports, our
public lands, and our Earth rely upon the ongoing recruitment of such passions.
Between the lines of
the tense reports on issues that threaten the health of our environment and the
access we currently enjoy to our woods and waters are the voices of
sportsmen. We know there are no “quick
fixes” for these short-sighted, progress-guised adulterations, and understand
our obligation to defend our natural resources tooth and nail against such
baneful human activity. Hope for the
future resounds in those voices, united in a world of wounds.
*Originally published in the Rural Virginian
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