Blog Action Day

I had the great fortune of growing up in one of the beauty spots in America, the mountains of north central Pennsylvania. The great West Branch of the Susquehanna River was (and still is) an icon for me. It has an amazing beauty as it cuts through the mountains where I lived, separating the Alleghany Plateau to the north from the ridge and valley province of the Appalachians to the south.

What I didn't know when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s was that it was, for the most part where I lived and on to the west a sterile river. Nothing lived in it thanks to the mining that had polluted the river with runoff and acid wastes. To the east and south I guess there was fishing. Whenever our family went fishing we went up Pine Creek or other places. Never did we go in the West Branch.

My senior year in college we began to hear about ecology and the environment. The first Earth Day was held that year and I remember that there were speakers and music and just a beautiful afternoon on the lawn at school. The message has taken off- but much remains to be done. Global warming- climate change in the sort of more politically correct lingo- is real. The times are a changing. Life will be affected. Greatly.

Like the West Branch of the Susquehanna 50 years ago it can look incredibly beautiful, awe inspiring. But that outward view may hide something far more deadly. As a Minnesotan I may enjoy not having as deep a freeze in the winter- but what does that do to the ecology of the land? It is far more than what I as a human would like to think and see.

In the end it doesn't matter where some of the changes are coming from. Some could be normal, misunderstood cycles of nature. Others are caused by us. But that doesn't mean we ignore it.

Only if we want to see everything turn as sterile as the Susquehanna was. Today the Susquehanna has improved. There are signs of return. Not as many as some would want, but it is not quite as dismal as it was. It didn't happen overnight. To get any change has taken time. But if it hadn't started, it would never have happened.

Start today.