Rufus

Rufus and I go way back.  He was a stray kitten when I first met him, hiding under the hemlock trees in the front yard of the house I owned in the Greenmont section of Morgantown.  I remember him pouncing out of the shadows in mid-play, looking up at me, and trying to meow, but with no sound, only silent intent.  I suppose some genetic condition or injury had deprived him of his voice.  He spoke instead with beautiful green eyes and an open, untroubled expression.  It’s a far off dream now, like the intoxicating wave of curry goodness that used to waft into my house around dinnertime every night, courtesy of my Indian neighbors next door.  Rufus was a flea-bitten runt, a sweet tabby innocent who fit into the palm of my hand.  He was grateful for any love he was given and returned it ten-fold.  That night, despite the fleas, he slept on my chest with his face in mine.  He purred all night long.  He was the most relentlessly happy being I have ever known.  Through all my screwed-up relationships, all my self-doubt and anxiety, all the good times and bad, every ugly downturn in my personal economy, every friendship gone sour, he was the single, dependable constant in my life, the one friend who made me feel better and taught me that life is only as unbearable as we make it for ourselves.  We have the power to be happy in spite of our circumstances, in spite of our worst instincts.  Rufus came into my life with nothing but the fleas he carried on him, yet imparted to me the greatest wisdom imaginable – the key to contentment resides within each of us.

Two weeks ago, I had to put Rufus down.  He was twenty years old – ancient by cat standards.  His health had seriously deteriorated over the past two months, and I didn’t want him to suffer so I could selfishly spend a little more time with him.  Even to the end, his joy never wavered.  As I held him and said goodbye to him in the vet’s office, he purred and looked at me with his tired green eyes.  He sent me one final, powerful bit of wisdom.  In his own quiet way, he told me not to mourn his passing but to celebrate the time we had together.  And I have every day since.

Mollusk Ghosts

During the summer of 2009, one of the finest intact aquatic ecosystems remaining in the heavily mined coalfields of Northern West Virginia and Southwestern Pennsylvania suffered a catastrophic – and completely unnatural – biological shutdown.  With the exception of its last few miles before it enters the Monongahela River, this stream had somehow – inexplicably – survived nearly a century of abusive mining practices, including seepage of toxic effluent from the numerous underground and surface mines encroaching on its shores.  For many, including the fisherman who regularly claimed exaggeration-proof musky and bass from its waters, biologists who marveled at the stream’s diverse mussel population, and local residents who considered it to be a living connection to their ancestors who first settled this land, Dunkard Creek was a symbol of nature’s resilience in the face of human greed and irresponsible mining practices.  That symbolism has now taken on a more ominous and tragic dimension.  You can read an excellent synopsis here of Dunkard Creek’s final days and the suspected culprits who brought about its demise.  Suffice it to say, at a time when the coal mining industry has mounted a full-scale assault on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Office of Surface Mining (OSM) to roll back environmental protections (with the sponsorship of state and congressional leaders) and the Marcellus shale rush is re-imagining the Texas oil boom for Appalachia’s Generation X, it’s worth taking pause to consider how much of this planet’s natural history and biodiversity we’re willing to lose to fatten Big Energy’s bottom line and our political leader’s pocketbooks.

I suppose in every tragedy there is the possibility for hope and redemption.  A group of 90 artists, sponsored by The Mountain Institute, have undertaken a project to forever commemorate in art the diverse inhabitants of Dunkard Creek who perished in the blink of an eye during the summer of 2009.  The Reflections: Homage to Dunkard Creek exhibition had its premiere at the Arts Monongahela in Morgantown, West Virginia on September 11, 2011 and is currently travelling throughout the tri-state region.  The art speaks not only for the artists who created it but for those inhabitants of our planet who have no voices to argue their fates.  In the meantime, as Dunkard Creek begins a slow, uncertain path to recovery, two new fracking permits have been issued within its drainage area.  Let us hope that we will someday have more than bittersweet images in art by which to celebrate this stream’s diverse, inexorable life force. 

Woodland Asters

I’m feeling somewhat envious today of those folks living in the southern hemisphere of our wobbly, spinning ball of planetary rock.  Call it a bad case of “season” envy.  In Australia, spring is well underway.  Flowers are blooming.  Kites are flying.  Kangaroos are making babies.   In my part of the world, meanwhile, the first nor’easter has already barreled up the eastern seaboard, bringing down the last of autumn’s leaves (not to mention the trees to which they were attached).  The days are getting noticeably shorter and colder.  Today, in fact, daylight savings time ends, which can mean only one thing – lots of dark, gray gloom between now and March.  I consider the layover from November through December to be a sobering reality check scrunched between the pleasant bon voyage of October and the bone-crunching sucker punch of winter.  By January, this place turns into a non-stop zombie flick: gray, shriveled, and mostly dead – mostly.  Okay.  So I’m being a bit melodramatic.  From a photographer’s perspective, even winter has its moments.  The season ushers in a fantastically different world.  With the sun lower in the sky, the shadows grow longer and deeper, contrasts are enhanced, and light itself turns degrees softer and less harsh.  The sky becomes more subtle and elusive, with an array of grays contrasted against pale, muted primaries, whose lingering melancholy is occasionally consumed by an explosively-lit sunset.  Every sensation is deepened or heightened by bone-chilling cold.  Every trace of life, an animal track in the snow or a frozen breath hanging in the air, is suspended in an eternity of seconds, life itself slowed and drawn out like spun taffy.  To my eyes, it’s a fascinating world of impermanent treasures, from dripping ice cycles to snow-capped cattails, a landscape remade with each successive snowfall and thaw.    But all that snowy wonderment can wait.  In that winter doesn’t officially start until the end of December, I can still revel, however briefly, in the temporary thaw of Indian summer before the hardcore cold settles in.  So I leave you with some tokens of autumn as a fond farewell to the year’s more livable half.

Laurel Run

I snapped the photo on the left during a recent hike up the Virgin Hemlock Trail in Coopers Rock State Forest, which, true to its name, winds through stands of virgin hemlock trees along Laurel Run.  Despite the close proximity of the forest to the spreading suburbs of Morgantown, West Virginia, and the popularity of its two scenic overlooks, the Hemlock Trail seems to be almost an afterthought to most local hikers.  That’s fine by me.  The solitude of the forest in the shadows of its ancient protectors offers plenty of opportunities for quiet meditation and fanciful daydreaming.  Looking up from a carpet of moist moss and leaves, the hemlock trees take on a mythological significance, ancient forest gods petrified in place by some Olympian intrigue.  It’s a sad bit of irony that what hundreds of years of fires, wind, and snow could not bring down might well be destroyed in a generation by a foreign invader barely visible to the naked eye.  The hemlock woolly adelgid, accidentally introduced from East Asia in 1924, has devastated hemlock stands throughout the eastern US.  It’s difficult to accept that this beautiful and vital component of our forest ecosystem could disappear within a generation.  Efforts are underway to combat the woolly adelgid, but the future of the hemlock is far from certain.  Word of warning: the approaches to Laurel Run along the steeper sides of the trail can be challenging, given the thick understory of rhododendron and slippery slopes.  The rewards are worth the risk of a muddy descent and brisk plunge, however.

Dolly Sods

Dolly Sods Wilderness (left) is one of my favorite places for a day hike in the Monongahela National Forest, and not just because of the lyrical name.  The wilderness is located on a high, wind-swept plateau of the Allegheny Mountains and features plant and animal communities typically found much farther north in New England and Canada.  The plains are renowned for their flagged spruce trees, heath barrens, and sphagnum bogs, while Red Creek Canyon offers beautiful vistas from its rocky outcrops.  The Nature Conservancy owns a popular preserve, Bear Rocks, on the northern tip of the wilderness, with commanding views of the valley and ridge country to the east.  Dolly Sods is part of a much larger wild area that includes the Roaring Plains Wilderness and additional lands managed for backcountry recreation.  The national forest lands are bordered by the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge to the northeast, which itself connects to other public lands, including two state parks in Tucker County.  Recognizing the opportunity to connect and extend existing trail systems in these public lands into a much longer, multi-use trail system, a number of partner organizations have established the Heart of Highlands Trail system, which will eventually include a 23-mile core loop trail.  Branching trails will expand out from the loop trail into the interconnected public lands.  The project will make some of West Virginia’s most beautiful hiking spots even more accessible.

Meadow Run

Finally, I had a chance to sneak up to Ohiopyle State Parkin Pennsylvania for a short visit.  The park is best known for exceptional whitewater rafting on the Youghiogheny River and its proximity to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater on Bear Run, but it also offers plenty of rewarding backcountry hiking along the river and its tributaries, such as Meadow Run (left).  The area is riddled with falls and swift-flowing streams that provide plenty of tempting subject matter for nature photographers, but the park’s relatively close proximity to Pittsburgh ensures that you won’t find much serenity on a fall weekend, unless you opt for one of the park’s more remote trails.