For the second time in 2012, Cedar Creek Parkway has had a major construction project take place within its boundaries.  The first project, led by the LCA, destroyed a large swath of soil health and habitat across the park and nearly brought an early end to my long term research project.  The second project, currently underway,   is a PennDot project to repair the bridge on Cedar Crest.  This project actually did destroy a small piece of my research area but most of the project plot remains unscathed.

Last week, when I spoke at Muhlenberg College, I gave a detailed presentation on the current major ecological threats in Allentown. This project brings a new dimension of severity to those issues.  This has to be tended to quickly and properly when construction ends.  I hope to see it done.

(This is the 11th in a series of new park logs that began in January 2012, links to the other 10 are at the end of this post)

The picture above was taken in July of 2009 in Trout Creek Parkway.  The entire left side of the creek is a dense monoculture of Japanese Knotweed.  On the right side of the creek, the grass is mowed as close to the creek as was possible to avoid any equipment tumbling in.  After initial visits to this park and hours of subsequent study, I spent many posts here on the blog decrying the conditions at Trout Creek Parkway and naming it one of the forgotten parks in Allentown. 

(Two of those forgotten park posts, October 2009:
1. Our Forgotten Parks – Trout Creek Parkway
2.  Our Forgotten Parks – East Side Reservoir  )

My commentary on Trout Creek Parkway (TCP) has been  a theme of my blog writing for three years. Here are links to some choice TCP coverage before I get to the current state of the place.

1. June 2011: Restoration began, but there were enough ecological failures, dirty diapers, and discarded underwear t to write about:  Underpants, Asphalt, and Knotweed -  The Story of Trout Creek Parkway

2. August 2010: I organized and led an Allentown EAC invasive species identification walk through TCP which ended up an impromptu litter clean up as well:  EAC Tour of Trout Creek Parkway

3. July 2010: In a series I wrote called “State of the Parks”, I took a hard look at TCP after a year and a half of campaigning for its rehabilitation. The invasive species management policy I called for was implemented the following summer with a plan written by Wildlands Conservancy:  Trout Creek Parkway – The land of Knotweed and Poo Pants.

4. January 2010: Sometimes, its good to see something pretty: Winter Sunset at Trout Creek Parkway

5. August 2009: To understand the myriad issues affecting Trout Creek, I followed the body of water from its headwaters to its end in the Lehigh River: The Journey of Trout Creek.

With all this history and all the work I put into getting people out into TCP and making them aware of the ecological crises afflicting the park; I am very happy to report today that TCP is better off than I have ever seen it.  The restoration plan implemented last summer is taking hold.  The bridges that helped channelize and deepen the creek are gone. 90% of the Knotweed is gone.  Large swaths of grow zones and restorative meadows have been introduced.  Take a look, and after the pictures, stay on for a final comment.

A: Where once was knotweed, now grows grass and a few saplings.

B: A new streamside grow zone

C:  A Knotweed free, bridge+ dam free, brand spanking new Trout Creek

D. The ghost of a bridge

E.  Even with new beauty, issues remain.  Invasive Honeysuckle on the left.

I am totally and utterly impressed by the effort here at Trout Creek Parkway.  It is one of the first steps taken by the City in my time writing this blog that can truly be applauded.  That said – this is really just a beginning.  Now, the real work begins.  Invasives will return and proper management is even more essential now to prevent a return to non-native dominance.  A project like this also offers a fantastic resource for public education events about environmental restoration.

I cannot stress enough that this is just an introduction – it’s a beginning.  More work needs to be done at TCP and in every single park in Allentown; the dire circumstances I have been documenting at length for three years – are still out there and they are getting worse.  Sometimes, making headway in one area leads to the necessity for immediate actions in others.

With Parks Director Greg Weitzel departing at such a crucial time in the process of restoring our precious parks, it is task number one for the Mayor to replace him with an individual ready, capable, and willing to continue this restoration.  The City cannot back down.  This task is ongoing and has to become more intense and purposeful in 2012 than it ever has been before.

For a second though, well done.  Now – back to work.

Park Logs 2012:
1. Cedar Creek Parkway 1. : The LCA destroyed everything.
2. Cedar Creek Parkway 2. : Well, They never paved the Rose Gardens…
3. Lehigh Parkway 1: Erosion, Erosion, Erosion )
4.  Lehigh Parkway 2: The Proof is on the Stream Banks
5.  Parkway 3:  This is Bad. Very Bad.
6. Jordan Park: What I was surprised to find
7. Winter Woods and Rain at The East Side Reservoir
8. A Smack in The Face at Canal Park
9. Thanks Harry, at Trexler Park
10. Why Muhlenberg Lake Has to Go

Check it out!

http://www.littlepocketguide.com/three-walks-in-the-woods/

The talk will be in Seegers Union on the campus of Muhlenberg College, in room 110.  I will make sure there are directions as soon as you step in to Seegers.

Born from mounting environmental concern and inspired by the burgeoning anti-war movement, the first Earth Day was held in the spring of 1970.  A new world of environmental conservation was spawned and soon after Earth Day came landmark legislation from Washington in the form of the Clean Air and Clean Water acts.  It would seem that the days of burning rivers, leaking cesspools of canals, and oil spills were drawing to a close.

When considering Earth Day in 2012, I cannot help but think that the individuals who were part of the movement as it began could have truly foreseen what would follow that one shining moment in 1970.  I would say without hesitation that on Earth Day 2012, our environment is more threatened that it ever has been in the history of modern human civilization.  Now, before you consider me off my rocker because of the supposed progress of pollution reform and the like, there are current considerations that bear severe enough a merit, that my claim becomes starkly valid.

First consider that an entire political party in the United States of America supports candidates for our highest elected office who consider it a priority to reverse the Clean Air and Water acts and, most importantly, campaign on the promise to dismantle and decommission the Environmental Protection Agency.  These same candidates and their already elected cohorts publicly decry the value of science in general and continue to attempt to defund the National Science Foundation and other leading grant funding operations.  (And also, don’t forget the complete devaluing and defunding of NASA that has already occurred)  So, a large sect of the American populace no longer cares about clean air, clean water, conservation, or the scientific advancement of our civilization at large.  There is perhaps no better verbal embodiment of this growing movement than in the mantras of Governor Palin: “Drill, Baby Drill” and now, “Frack, Baby, Frack”.

Speaking of fracking, a whole host of new environmental catastrophes await the world in projects like hydrofracking, the Keystone KL pipeline, and new groundwater pumping operations in Las Vegas.  Even the “other” party, led by our current president, supports projects such as these.  The damage of these initiatives is documented, recorded, and readily available for public consumption.  These facts are not broadcast as news.  (I mean, Snooki’s pregnant after all)

Generations of corporate influence on the media in this country has created a mainstream vacuum of knowledge that informs no one.  For every pipeline or fracking station stopped there are hundreds hiding as amendments on countless bills in State Congresses and the Federal Congress.  One of these days, one of them will pass and there will be nothing we can do to stop it.

Consider next our food.  Not only have the human health impacts of the Monsanto born food product we consume on a daily basis just begun to see the light of day; it is becoming scientifically apparent that Monsanto pesticides are killing non-target organisms that are essential to the food webs that keep our planet functioning properly.  Of course, there are also the environmental damages incurred daily by the factory farming practices used to cultivate this frankenfood.

Then, there is climate change and the anthropogenic mass extinction that is being documented as it begins worldwide.  There are new fungi and insect populations reaping the benefits of the warmer world at the expense of a nearly exterminated brown bat population or the dead sticks of pine trees left in the forests of Colorado and the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.  There is Tuvalu and a whole host of Pacific islands disappearing as you read this from rising sea levels.  Worsening storms, temperature extremes, acute droughts, 100 year flood events happening weekly and the like being met by a growing skepticism in the United States that is fueled by an industry funded attack on science and intellectualism that is readily accepted as okay by a society of individuals so obsessed with the self that twitter exists.

Now, look at the parks in your own town.  Look at the ecological destruction on display right there, right now.  Consider the biosphere of the world being destroyed by a human civilization that no longer seems to know better and look right at the end of your shoes and see it in front of you.

Now, tell me when the environment was worse off.

Happy Earth Day.

( On Wednesday evening I will be talking about local environmental issues in depth at Muhlenberg College at 7PM.  After my presentation, the floor will be opened for your questions.  Come out, and invite your friends!  Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/events/340612732652996/)

Is it a prerequisite for a hike to seek escape?  I am beginning to think so.  There seems to be an inherent element of seeking or perhaps, of discovery that is the catalyst for the boot clomping journeys so many folks take when they have free time. Ah, that’s it – isn’t it? Free time.  What the hell is free time? It’s funny to me how the only organism that identifies a self has subsequently learned to categorize all that surrounds it in relation to that novel idea.  Free time. 

A couple of weeks ago, I set out early on a Saturday morning to go and explore Walking Purchase Park.  This park is a large expanse of mountainous terrain alongside both the Lehigh Mountain Preserve and the Lehigh River.  It’s nestled in the space between the City of Allentown and Salisbury Township.  I had never been to the area before, even though I had discovered it by an accident of a different sort of exploratory trip.  One of the access lots to the Park is located at the end of Constitution Drive, which is the subject of a least one local ghost story and a more heavily known urban legend.  I was attempting to determine the validity of that urban legend when I found the Park.

I began this journey (escape attempt?), by walking down a large and cleared path on a steep ledge overlooking the Lehigh River.  I’ve written about the uniqueness of the views of nearby Canal Park many times on this blog but as far as unique river views go, Walking Purchase Park is up there with the best of them.  This is of course because of the sort of absurdity that must be considered when looking at the Lehigh from this place.  There is a significant amount of urban density a few thousand feet in every direction where you stand in Walking Purchase Park and yet, this is the view:

With more than a slight chill in the wind, I decided to vacate the pathway near water and head up onto the mountain.  I chose the red blazed trail because it was right in front of me, ha.  So, I am going to post a series of pictures now that detail the beginnings of the walk and then, I am going to talk about what I saw through the trees and ultimately found hidden in the woods.

And then I saw the former State Hospital looming high across the Lehigh.  There is no consideration of that building that can be conjured without the use of adjectives like: foreboding, ominous, creepy, or now, forlorn.  If you have been reading my blog long enough you can imagine why I may feel those adjectives to be so appropriate.

Further through the woods:

And then, out of nowhere, park ruins:

Now, with the spring drought well underway, I decided to abandon the trodden path and climb down the barely running spring channel. 

Finding myself a few feet in, I must confess that I purposefully lost myself in this tiny bit of wilderness.  I did indeed come on this hike to escape, and escape is exactly what I did.  Huffing and puffing with a back full of sweat, I navigated the rocks.  Climbing lower and lower I began looking forward to the first sight of the nearing river and then, a fence.

And then, climbing back to the path, trash (with pellet holes).

And then, the slow walk back to the lot on Constitution Drive holding firmly to the few seconds where I could lose my sense of the connected self and attempt to find that other self; you know the one that makes us such a unique organism, the one that well – I don’t know.  I didn’t find it. Looks like there will be more hikes to come. 

We project ourselves onto our surroundings but there are specific times that I think our surroundings are projected on us.  The world is a truly empty and strange place and a naked forest in the final throes of winter death seems only to display it more harshly.  Nature is brutal and beautiful as the rigors of Natural Selection manifest themselves as the fate or destiny we so wish to use to find our own personal direction.

On the first day of spring this year, I sat near an 80+ year old forest – in the fog – and let the forest speak for me.  Of late, I am so much more convinced in the near purposelessness of the Corporate Age that this forest seemed even sadder than I would have imagined it to be.  Across the red tips of the sleeping Dogwood, I found new spider webs dotted with the moisture of the cool ground cloud.  Occasionally, the creak of a wood frog made me think that for a second – I would not always be alone.  The scattered chatter and calls of Chickadees, Blackbirds, Juncos, and Sparrows seemed muted to the echo of the calls of the Mourning Dove, in the fog like an aural garland hung to remind the ecosystem of the depths of space we leave between breaths.

Was the scene of me or was I becoming part of it?  I don’t know.  You can see the sight below for yourself.  For now, I’ll tack these words written on a Good Friday afternoon to some half hidden corner of the internet and wonder who is out there reading them.  Just as I looked into the forest, I look into all of you.  Is the world as mournful as it seems to be?  I imagine there are a hundred different machinations of understanding that can lead a wandering and worrying soul to different conclusions.

Back on the first day of Spring, in the fog, I was sure of only one.  I am surer of it now, looking back.  If only every evening could be spent in the warm August night of six foot tall Yellow Jewelweed, bat wings, bee hum, and the one thing that made a difference.  You know what that one thing is? I think I do sometimes, but I always seem to come up wrong.  I guess that’s part of the journey.  I guess that’s why I keep coming back to the forest.  I guess that’s why I fight for it.

Something has to make us feel less alone.  It certainly isn’t something bought.

I was thinking about the post I had written yesterday as I walked around the Lehigh Parkway late this afternoon.  It occurred to me that an individual needs to be aware of the value of something before they can become cognizant of losing it.  What I mean is that someone who doesn’t see the inherent value of nature would not lament the loss of it

(Uncontrolled erosion on the banks of the Little Lehigh)

It really takes a lot for people to see what is standing in front of them and staring right into their being. The creek cannot speak, nor can the trees.  We do not understand the language of birds but most people seem to appreciate it anyway.  The fight for conservation and preservation would be so much easier if birds spoke a language we could understand. I imagine we would hear a lot of things like – “Hey stop cutting our houses down, you {expletive deleted}s.

(A mowed Spring and wetland in a floodplain of a sensitive creek)

Us humans are incredibly adept at being inept when it comes to the value of the things we already have.  I imagine this is a condition that has developed as a consequence of Capitalism.  We have it engrained in us to always want more. We want the next big thing – the next hip thing – the next knick knack or possession that we use to create an emblem of how much worth we have.  That’s right – whether you know it or not – I contend that we are programmed to equate worth with possession and in turn, we cultivate a systemic absence that creates the emptiness or longing that fills the being of so many modern human beings. 

We are a species disconnected. We are living lives out of balance. 

If you don’t believe me, what have you thought about the pictures accompanying this post?  All of them are an ecological crisis on display.  While we revel in Apple’s latest announcements of soon to be replaced revolutionary gadgets, the biosphere around us is being destroyed.  This destruction is on permanent display in every park, every backyard, and every “green space” that surrounds us. 

That’s ok though!  The new Ipad has HD display!

All around us the vernal birth of Spring is once again putting these problems on display.  These problems, unlike the creation of Big Box stores and chain restaurants, facilitate a slow process of loss.  This slow and perpetual losing, I think, is even worse than the sudden loss brought on by development.  Every layer of our ecosystems are falling apart. Organisms, from bacteria to birds, are under attack by the greatest threat they will ever face – Us.

(A developing monoculture of the invasive species, Poison Hemlock)

We can sit across from the greatest thing we could ever have and not see it because it doesn’t seem to fulfill the material requirements that our society has deemed the most important.  Trust me, the ignorance of the ecological crisis at our doorsteps is manifested in the same disconnect I spoke of earlier.  The disconnect is in our Art, our music, our families, and always – in our being.  Each picture in this post shows an ecological issue that poses a serious threat.  Severe erosion.  Invasive Species. Stormwater Runoff. On and on.

(A developing monoculture of the invasive species Multiflora Rose)

We can look at what could be the most important thing we could ever have in our life and see nothing in it.  The creeks reflect that consequence of modernity.  Everything does.  At the end of the day, I fear it will be too late.  Human beings won’t see the light of day until it passes into the long night of consequence.  It’s truly sad.  That loss – that loss is far worse than the loss I spoke of yesterday. 

If only we could always see what is right in front of us…   Maybe there is an app for that.

Not going to lie – I have been trying to write this post for a few weeks.  Writer’s Block or rather Writer’s way-too-much-stuff-holy-crap-in-my-head has seemed to have its grip on me for a while and nothing written of any use has been created.  The place that prompted this blog/rant is called the Archibald Johnson Conservation area.  The place had been under the threat of development for some time and as these things go, the whole thing turned into a political-environmental-bureaucratic maelstrom.

Thankfully, an individual stepped up to the plate and fought the developers down.  For now, this beautiful space alongside the Monocacy will remain as is and the nearby plots will not be developed.  That is a genuine piece of great news that was not, will not, and never will be reported or seen any place save a blog in some odd corner of the internet.  Bald Eagles are nesting there, plants are working through the process of succession there, an ecosystem has come into being there and with one signature it all could have ended.  This area could have joined a long list of places gone to the hum of the bulldozer and clang of the change in the kick-back machine of local politics.

Hungarian Masons built the stairs and stone walls that surround the house that once belonged to the first mayor of Bethlehem. Yep, that’s right – the house is that historically significant.  Now, the site becomes an intersection of local history and conservation and in doing so, becomes emblematic of the community that once thrived in the Lehigh Valley.

I used the past tense in that previous sentence because that community is almost gone now.  There is a beautiful resistance and a bevy of survivalist groups popping up around but their fight is just beginning.  An older fight – perhaps a silent struggle, has long been lost already.  Around the corner from this Conservation area is a Wal-Mart across the street from a K-Mart and a Home Depot in an adjoining parking lot.  Each of these big box stores is surrounded by a sea of gray/black asphalt save the structural oases of chain restaurants and smaller chain stores.  That’s the lost fight I am referring to.

There may be no worse feeling in the course of human existence than the feeling that rises when one loses the sense of possibility.  The cliché  “You don’t know what you got until it’s gone”, is true.  A world without wild spaces is a genuine possibility. I can’t fathom how awful the regret of a future generation would feel when all that’s left of Nature is trapped in overused, poorly managed, and barely funded State and National Parks.

It’s hearing the girl you’ve been after say she has a boyfriend after you never took the chance to tell her how you felt.  It’s the road less travelled by that really does make a difference.  It’s never trying for anything that’s beyond the tangible reality you assign yourself to.  It is losing folks, it’s a way of life steeped in and defined by a perpetual state of loss.  How much more are we willing to lose?  Our rat of a Governor wants to completely defund a precious source of funding for parks in Pennsylvania – he is apparently ready to keep losing.

Me, I don’t want to lose anymore.  I am tired of it.  I think you are tired of it too.  I’ve been losing a lot lately – the entire human populace has – in a thousand ways.  At some point, I’ve got to believe that more people are going to draw the line.  That the losing will end.  I have to believe it because the idea that we will stop losing seems to me to be the definition of hope.

Today, there are Bald Eagles by the creek.  Today, nobody lost.  Let’s not waste our chances.