I'm just one person, like everyone else

I really enjoy reading articles about the little things that make up nature. Sometimes I think we forget how incredibly complex the world is around us, until we can read paragraphs about the soil of a specific landscape. The world is, and the Adirondacks in particular, is a big place filled with little pieces that all create the environment we live in today. While the science of these interactions, be it photosynthesis in the forest canopy, may not be particularly interesting to everyone, the intricacy of these interactions makes you realize just how delicate these places are. Everywhere you touch you leave your own footprint and a butterfly effect coursing through it. Sometimes we think that the world is too big for one person to make such a difference but we could say the same about the particles of dirt or the leaves on the trees. We are all part of a complex ecosystem that we have inserted ourselves into in many cases and we must sometimes remind ourselves of how big a role the little things, such as ourselves, play in the grand scheme of these ecosystems and the world around us.

Miners who Mined in Mineville

I just stumbled across an article about a movie "Mineville" that is set in Moriah and is about the Irish immigrants who mined "Mineville's ore deposits in the early 20th century." It was a low budget, Indie film that came out in 2010. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1648214/.) I was amazed that filmmakers were addressing this relatively obscure part of Adirondack history, which in turn highlighted the significance of immigrants to the development of the region. This made me think about Amy Godine's article "The Peopling of the Park," which also addressed the presence of immigrant laborers in the Adirondacks at the end of the 19th century.

Before this course I wasn't even aware of the major mining industry in the Adirondacks, let alone of the large immigrant presence in the Adirondacks. For instance, the histories of cities like Troy are strongly based on the immigrant laborers who sought to make a living by working in various mills. While I have always been aware of these histories, the immigrant labor force in Adirondack history seems to be largely overlooked. Godine, herself, writes that "the ethnic makeup of the region has always been a richer brew than the image of the lean-jawed, dead-eyed Adirondack guide admits," (Godine, 57).

Godine specifically discusses the immigrant history of Moriah, which was a town complete with schools and stores by the end of the 16th century. Around the Civil War, the Irish arrived to Moriah, and in a second wave of immigration in the 1890's, Eastern Europeans and Italians arrived. It is interesting to note that the Irish rose to managerial status over time and were already well established by the second wave of Europeans came. An article from the Adirondack Museum (http://www.adkmuseum.org/about_us/adirondack_journal/?id=365) states that the Irish mine workers in the late 19th century lived in the best company housing whereas the new immigrants lived in tenements with other families. There is even evidence of the Irish managers forcing the Italian workers of paying for their own tools, conveniently omitting the fact that the company provided tools for free. This is only a small sampling of the anecdotes and accounts that center around the immigrant labor population in the Adirondacks in the 19th and 20th century. This piece of history, not matter how small it is, should no longer be overlooked, but rather explored as it is a vital piece of Adirondack history.

                                Miners from Mineville, Moriah township (from www.miningartifacts.org)

Innocence Lost

I feel as though I have lost some sort of innocence after completing these readings.  Though I suppose that is the nature of education, for some reason this feels different.  I spent the summers of my childhood in the Adirondacks and it has always held a magical quality in my mind.  I have always been in awe of its pure beauty, so to learn of its former violation is upsetting.  Of course this is to be expected though, as it is the pattern of human intervention.  Nature in and of itself did not warrant the respect it now does when the settlers arrived because it existed in such abundance.  It is truly amazing to think of the magnitude of the impact that the loggers had on the forests when all they had so little machinery.  The man-hours involved in the removal of the forests are truly impressive.  Although what they did to the forest is unfortunate, their work ethic and doggedness especially considering the conditions is quite impressive.  They may not have had the best interest of the Park’s future in mind, but the settlers who made the Park their home were certainly men and women to be admired.  Though some of my youthful ignorance may have faded with these readings, I am certainly learning to appreciate the park on a much deeper level, both in its power to heal itself and the sacrifices that were made so that I am able to enjoy it today. 

Helplessness

 Natural history fascinates me, but I still can't stand the inevitable feeling of disappointment that accompanies reading about the destruction of the natural world. There is a small but definite pang at each tree logged, each law passed that allows clearing, and every disease that wiped out any number of plant or animal. This is not necessarily a universal sentiment, but one that I believe I am not alone in experiencing. There is nothing that can be done about the past, but these feelings of regret translate differently in the present. The hopeful passages in environmental texts about what has been recovered or what can be done provide an alternative view, but the helplessness that goes hand in hand with past issues are even stronger when they are happening now. I can be somewhat relieved that in this moment I can do nothing about the forest fires of the early 1900s, but that's only because there is distance between myself and the time of the event. That buffer disappears when the arguments are current, such as the ongoing debates about whether or not to build the new ski resort in the park. Even in a text like the atlas, where the information is presented as a collection of factual information, the facts themselves act as a call to arms.

Nature often harms itself

I found it interesting that several sections in this week’s readings focused on how the forests in the Adirondacks are negatively impacted not just by humans but also by nature itself.  Yes it is true that in the last two centuries, most of the damage to the forests has been caused by logging, and clear cutting the forests for charcoal or wood pulp to make paper, but mother nature has done a pretty good job in clearing forests all on her own.  Reading about big storms, forest fires, droughts, and fierce destructive winds and hurricanes that clear hundreds of thousands of acres made me reflect on how vulnerable trees in the Adirondacks really are just to nature itself. 

But unlike the destruction caused by humans, most of the destruction caused by nature can have positive results. For example, McMartin says on page 44 “Windfalls, whether caused by hurricanes, tornados, violent thunderstorms and their accompanying winds, or isolated instances of windthrow of old or dead trees, are responsible for more extensive recycling than diseases and the work of beaver.”  There are several cases in the Adirondacks, where larger and healthier swaths of land have regrown in areas previously destroyed by natural events such as big storms.  I find it really interesting how nature and the wilderness have the abilities to regulate themselves with destruction and regeneration.  This makes me wonder, though, how nature’s regulation process is going to be or has already been disrupted because of human influence and climate change.

Wilderness in Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks

Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks offers us a different perspective on the famous abolitionist John Brown from his son, Owen Brown. Owen Brown’s narration and complex personality captured my attention from the very beginning of this novel. One of the novel’s settings was in the Adirondacks. This wilderness served as a place for John Brown to represent the ideal American family. Owen states, “To him, we were a farm family settled in the wilderness, wholly admirable, exemplary even- an ideal American family of Christian yeoman” (200). John Brown and his family showed that American’s could tame the landscape and make it on their own, without slavery.  He used his family for a model of what was morally right and used the Adirondacks as a backdrop for his beliefs.

Owen Brown had a very complicated relationship with his father, which in turn complicated his relationship with nature. Through Owen Brown’s eyes, the reader sees how John Brown’s hatred for slavery in essence enslaved Owen himself to his family. Owen Brown retaliated with anger towards his father, followed by guilt for being wrathful. This is witnessed in the scene when Owen, talking to Ruth, says,  “’…But I want to leave this place. I want to get away, that’s all. From everything. This farm, the Negroes, these mountains!’…  I was angry and confused- wrathful was what I was, for, uncertain as to the object of my anger, I was smearing it over everything in sight” (193). Owen resented the Adirondacks and felt alone in the wild. He did not believe he fit into the model his father created and therefore blamed his surroundings for his unhappiness. Owen Brown felt trapped by the wild instead of the wild facilitating freedom, like his father preached.

This father and son dynamic offer us two different perspectives of the Adirondacks. Russell Banks shows us that the wild is as we interpret it ourselves. It is complicated, just as Owen’s relationship with his father is throughout the novel.

A Slippery Slope

The fate of the Adirondacks, especially since the beginning of it's semi-industrialization, has been somewhat scary. Logging and clear-cutting for farmland have threatened to strip the land of certain healthy varieties of trees, as well as getting rid of animal habitats. Mining has destroyed parts of the land, many of which will never fully recover. Hunting has essentially destroyed the Adirondacks' wolf populations. One of the scariest things about human intervention in the Adirondacks, however, is our inability to be consistent, and to stick to our own rules and regulations. Schneider, for example, describes these inconsistencies in terms of logging regulations over a period of almost 100 years. In the first big sweeps of the land, "loggers could afford to be selective," (Schneider, 202) because there were an overwhelming amount of trees at their fingertips. There were directed to only take trees that were 12 inches or more in diameter. The next time through however, they "harvested down to ten inches." (Schneider, 216) Already, the loggers had ran out of trees that fit their original standards, causing them to have to rethink their original instructions and regulations. Finally, in the 1880s, the loggers were sent back into the forests and told they could harvest trees that were only five inches in diameter. The trees they were originally looking for were "getting hard to find." (Schneider, 217)

As human need increased, and therefore no longer fit the previous regulations, the logging companies had no problem changing their original plan. The same applies to many other aspects of the human treatment of the Adirondacks. Since we create the rules, what's stopping us (well, maybe not those of us in this class) from molding them to fit our, often economic, plans? This ties back to to the Forever Wild land swap that we discussed briefly in class the other day. Yes, the amount of Forever Wild land increased with this swap, but it has made the rules, and therefore the protection of the park, a little less stable. How can Forever Wild land actually be wild forever, if it can be swapped with another "identical" plot of land as soon as it is convenient for us? In my opinion, this land swap gives mining companies, and other economic endeavors on Adirondack lands, way too much power. It shows that their monetary needs can outweigh the needs and protection of the land. This is, as Phil Terrie says in his article "'Forever Wild' Isn't Forever", a "slippery slope."

(Terrie's article --http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2014/01/phil-terrie-forever-wild-isnt-forever.html)