ABOUT OUR BLOG:
In case you missed it, our luscious website (estuarymagazine.com) also features a blog—that strange information beast, a contraction between web and log, intended to add value to readers’ lives and to inspire action. In addition to offering back stories behind the magazine’s articles and features, the blog provides links to sources of activities and information, including past, present, and planned articles in the magazine related to the blog’s subject matter.
We identified in the inaugural blog four calls to action:
- Subscribe to the magazine to learn more about the River—its wildlife, recreational opportunities, science and conservation issues, important people, lifestyle and culture, and fascinating history. Tell your friends and relatives about Estuary.
- Go outside and enjoy the environment and recreational opportunities of the River and surrounding watershed; if this is not possible, experience the River vicariously through the features and high-resolution pictures in the magazine.
- Become involved in meaningful conservation activities for the River and watershed. These may range from advocating for sound environmental policies in your state and town to engaging in environmental monitoring studies, in creating synergies among like-minded organizations to leverage scarce resources, in the removal of invasive species, in community development projects involving the River, in habitat management, and in the reduction of your carbon footprint, to name some. The blog will promote important conservation projects that will benefit from community participation.
- Send us your ideas about the Connecticut River and its watershed in care of info@estuarymagazine.com. The same goes for your feedback about how to improve the magazine, including the topics that you would like to see in future issues and in its blog.
Several installments later our blog continues to be a learning experience for us, defined as the process by which we increase our capacity for effective action, that is, coaxing our readership’s involvement in the preceding activities. We are still learning in the blog how to facilitate navigation among topics with keywords, to narrate personal stories succinctly, to encourage participation, to provide evergreen (lasting) content, to use images, and to establish thought leadership by communicating influence and authority.
Looking ahead, we anticipate increasing the blog’s effectiveness by making it a greater team effort than it is today. Just as with the magazine itself, we will empanel a select team of competent contributors, with occasional guests, to brainstorm topics and to write, illustrate, and edit our blog’s content. What won’t change is our deep appreciation for your comments and feedback.
Gratefully,
Ralph T. Wood
Editor, Estuary Blog
A Magnificent Obsession: Our Fascination with Wildlife (Part 3)
In Part 1 of “A Magnificent Obsession,” we began an investigation of why we humans are so fascinated with wildlife. In Part 2 we continued our investigation, which expanded to the present blog. Herewith, we conclude our investigation with a final source of fascination, “Entertainment with Purpose,” before briefly summarizing our findings.
Entertainment with Purpose
From childhood to today, undoubtedly many of Estuary magazine’s readers, like me, have fond memories of visiting zoos and aquariums and being entertained by the variety of captive animals and their antics on display. Over time the animal enclosures at these facilities have become more “natural” and the objectives of the organizations that operate the zoos and aquariums have changed in favor of becoming protectors of rare species that are facing extinction. A number of large zoos and aquariums—for example, in the United States, the Bronx Zoo (NY), the San Diego Zoo and San Diego Zoo Safari Park (CA), the Mystic Aquarium (CT), the Birch Aquarium (CA), and the Atlanta Aquarium (GA)—now conduct important research and reproductive programs for threatened wildlife species. Your membership and admission fees, while providing entertainment for you and your family, also support the species research and preservation initiatives of these facilities.
Great Horned Owl
Image Credit: Ralph Wood
Hands down, however, the largest avocation in this category of “entertainment with purpose” is birdwatching. In the 2016 National Fish and Wildlife Service census, 88% of “around-the-home” wildlife watchers were bird watchers, and 72% of “away-from-home” wildlife watchers were bird watchers. Quite simply, humans are beguiled by birds, their colorful plumage, their sounds, and their flight, foraging, hunting, and survival skills. A must-see demonstration of raptors and their acrobatics is the falconry show put on by Brian Bradley of Skyhunters in Flight. [3] Shown here is a picture of one of Brian’s fearsome “sky hunters,” a great horned owl, which had just devoured a whole mouse in less than the blink of an eye.
Adding to these sources of charisma are the widespread geographical distribution of birds and the fact that we in the Connecticut River Valley can observe a crucial part of a bird’s lifecycle, which may involve migration from wintering sites, mating, nesting, raising young, and migration back to their wintering sites, if they don’t winter in place. We even find interesting birds in urban areas, which offer buildings, parks, and cemeteries as habitats. Thanks to the leading efforts of many local, state, and national ornithological and conservation organizations, including those that promote backyard bird feeding, one does not have to travel very far to find important bird areas that are habitat to a variety of bird species. And, of course, while out in nature, the birder is treated to sights of other wildlife and plant life.
The casual birder can start with a fairly inexpensive pair of binoculars and a smart-phone bird application, which relies on advanced image identification techniques and recorded bird sounds to hasten identification. (For example, see the Cornell Ornithology Lab’s application Merlin, available free for both IOS and Android smart phones.) Our fall 2020 issue of Estuary magazine features a story about Old Lyme, Connecticut, resident Roger Tory Peterson, whose field guides to birds pioneered his witness-line highlighting of key features to aid identification and became world-wide best sellers because of his extensive knowledge, attention to detail, photographs, and artistry.
Once infected with the fascination of birding, causal birders will usually purchase more expensive optical equipment, which may include top-of-the-line binoculars, a spotting telescope, a high-resolution camera with powerful telephoto lens, and a variety of footwear, hats, and clothing made for birders for day-long outings. Our formerly casual birders will begin to record their observations, participate in organized local and regional bird-counting events (e.g., the Backyard Bird Count, the Christmas Bird Count, a state-specific Breeding Bird Atlas), and send their records to a central database, such as e-Bird that is maintained by the Cornell Ornithology Lab. To complete the spanning from entertainment to purpose, our birders may even, after some training, become bird banders and collect still more data on bird populations. They may also gain enough self-confidence in their birding competency to start leading bird-watching walks for others. Finally, they might take advantage of several organized trips—day, overnight, or multiple days—to observe exotic bird species in special habitats.
Counting bird species is a prominent example of citizen science, in which non-scientists gather huge amounts of data that help conservation scientists conduct their research investigations. Thanks to volunteer-collected bird counts, scientists at the Cornell Ornithology Lab, which in March 2018 tallied the 500 millionth record in the e-Bird database, were able to determine that the US bird population has declined by almost 30% in the last 50 years. An article on the implications of this shocking finding for the CT River watershed appeared in the summer 2020 issue of Estuary magazine. Where Have All the Birds Gone?
Tentative Conclusions
In the three installments of this blog, we have explored some underpinnings of our human fascination with wildlife. Beginning with what we know about our ancestors’ pragmatic need for wildlife watching, that is, to eat or to be eaten, we have come full circle to the pragmatism of today’s wildlife fascination that is driven by our desire to preserve the wildlife species (and their habitats) that we see in addition to being entertained by the act of watching. Along the way, we have also touched on some other sources of our fascination with wildlife: our evolutionary heritage that derives from wildlife, curiosity stoked by being able to observe “living fossils,” by the emotions of awe, love of beauty, and empathy, and by science—our relentless quest for understanding our environment and how to protect it from human encroachment.
[3] Brian Bradley, Skyhunters in Flight, brian@skyhuntersinflight.com
A Magnificent Obsession: Our Fascination with Wildlife (Part 2)
In Part 1 of “A Magnificent Obsession,” we began an investigation of why we humans are so fascinated with wildlife. Every five years, the National Fish and Wildlife Service does an extensive study of how many people in the United States—by geography, education, age, sex, race, and ethnicity—are engaged in fishing, hunting, and wildlife-associated recreation (defined as observation, photography, feeding, visits to parks/natural areas, and maintaining plantings/natural areas). From 2011 to the last study in 2016, the total number of wildlife watchers grew from 71.8 million (29% of the population of people 16 years and older) to 86 million (32 % of the population of people 16 years and older). Commensurately, expenditures on equipment, supplies, and eco-trips related to wildlife watching grew 38% from $54.9 billion to $75.9 billion. The study assembled data for nine regions across the US, one of which is New England, but did not give state-by-state information to enable us to examine the Connecticut River states in detail. However, with 36% of its population of people 16 years and older engaged in wildlife watching, New England lead the rest of the regions in the relative numbers of wildlife watchers in 2016.
We will now consider another source of fascination with wildlife to continue our investigation.
Curiosity-driven Fascination
Living Fossils. A few animal species have survived more or less unchanged for thousands of years, and it’s fascinating to observe them today to see what they originally looked like. In the Connecticut River, these living fossils include two types of sturgeon, the short-nosed sturgeon (usually up to 4 ft in length and 60 lb in weight) and the much larger Atlantic sturgeon (usually up to 8 ft in length and 300 lb in weight), along with the common snapping turtle, which dishevels our gardens in the watershed to dig nesting holes for its eggs. There is an article about the shortnose sturgeon, with the following picture, in the fall 2020 issue of Estuary magazine.
An adult shortnose sturgeon, a federally-listed endangered species, is inspected and documented at the Holyoke
Dam Fishlift in Holyoke, Massachusetts. After inspection, the fish is released upstream in the Connecticut River.
Photo courtesy of Holyoke Gas and Electric Co. via Steve Gephard/CT DEEP
Awe and Beauty. The emotion of awe is sometimes defined as a mixture of surprise and fear, to which I would add love of beauty. Among the human population in general, there appears to be a common, cross-cultural thread of fear of some wildlife, especially snakes and arachnids, which come in both non-venomous and venomous varieties. This fear is likely taught by family and peers, but it is less likely to be the product of direct experience, such as learning about the perils of burns by touching a hot stove. Awe breeds curiosity breeds fascination breeds the desire to observe the fearsome object closer. In my case, caution to take the accompanying photograph of a juvenile eastern timber rattlesnake, a chance encounter in the watershed, was overcome by my fascination with the sheer beauty of this animal. 
Sporadically, the morning news reports on people who got too close to wildlife, possibly to feed and touch them, without realizing that a free-roaming bison is not a domestic cow or that a hungry bear can be enormously powerful, bad-tempered, and do serious damage to both people and their property. It’s worth noting that some rail trails in the Connecticut River watershed have posted protocols of how to behave if you encounter a bear while walking, running, or biking.
Empathy. When we observe wildlife, we see living, breathing creatures that, like us, are trying to cope with their environments in order to survive and propagate their species. When I see a tiny black-capped chickadee in a sub-zero, wind-driven snowstorm, I wonder whether it will survive the night. I empathize with its struggle to hold on to its thread of life. A fleeting thought, “I’m glad that I’m not a chickadee that has to live outside in this weather,” passes by. The next day when I see this bird at my feeder, I rejoice that it has made it through, and I look upon it with wonderment for its rugged resiliency. Gazing upon wildlife in any season fills me with amazement how the creature can negotiate its surroundings to find food, water, shelter, and avoid predators.
Science – The Ultimate Curiosity. I am always fascinated by non-invasive scientific inquiries that involve wildlife. One clever research project from MIT translated the biological concepts of DNA, genetic engineering, and the lifecycle of fruit flies into lessons for business (Charles Fine, Clockspeed, Perseus Books, 1998). Fruit flies speed up their evolution by many times in a contracted period because of their short, two-week lifespan. This fact has been well exploited by researchers in genetics. The bridge to industry is explained by the concept of “clockspeed,” which measures how fast an industry’s products, processes, and organizations evolve and how their evolution can benefit from principles of genetic biology. In the watershed, there are several businesses, particularly aerospace original equipment manufacturers and their smaller suppliers, that can take advantage of these insights. For now, we’ll leave the broader lessons for human society to a future time.
Another fascination with the lives of animals derives from seeing what an animal sees, as it follows its daily foraging and hunting routine or annual migration, by mounting a small video camera directly on the animal. In a recent example, wildlife biologists captured a video shot from a fur seal, journeying from its home on an Australian island to Tasmania, that yielded previously unknown information on the several creative tactics the seal had developed to evade being eaten by great white sharks. Closer to home, wildlife biologists have installed video cameras at underground viewing windows to monitor the migration of fish swimming upstream through selected fish ladders on the Connecticut River and its tributaries.
Finally, humans are fascinated by the ability of animals to provide early warning—the so-called mine-canary effect—of impending catastrophes, which include earthquakes, fire, low-pressure weather systems, environmental poisons, and climate change. There is also knowledge that debilitating viruses, like the coronavirus, can be detected in animal populations and controlled before the diseases ravage humans. The same can be said for the signals that wildlife species have been telegraphing about climate change and rising sea level. The distinctly human endeavor of scenario planning for the future works only if humans pay attention to the faint signals of change that foreshadow which one of several alternative scenarios is coming true. Therefore, it would behoove humans not to ignore what is happening in the wildlife kingdom.
Part 3
The draft for this part expanded beyond a reasonable length for a blog, so we will conclude next time with a Part 3 to cover our final source of fascination, “Entertainment with Purpose.”
A Magnificent Obsession: Our Fascination with Wildlife (Part 1)
Cave painting in Chauvet, southern France. Image credit: Claude Valette/CC BY-SA
Before initiating the venture that has become estuary Magazine, we conducted a brief survey of the topical preferences of our potential readership along the Connecticut River. Of the several choices that have become the magazine’s themes, wildlife was at the top in popularity, higher than the next closest topic, science and conservation. When responses to the birding choice are added, the combined wildlife category is the run-away favorite. That outcome made sense to us, especially considering the diversity of wildlife in the Connecticut River watershed and the fact that we, too, share this fascination. Who isn’t stirred by the sight in the wild of a moose, a doe and fawn, a black bear, a great blue heron in flight, or an eagle or osprey carrying prey, or by the sounds of a wood thrush, coyote, wood frogs or an owl, or by estuary magazine’s stunning wildlife photographs? But why? What is the source of this fascination with animals and other wildlife? Is there a scientific, perhaps evolutionary explanation? My investigation hasn’t yet yielded complete answers, but there are some revealing clues.
Archeology
Our ancient ancestors documented for posterity that they were animal watchers. On the walls of the caves in Chauvet, southern France, they drew pictures of many animals, which experts have deciphered to include both predators, such as cave bears, cave lions, wolves and panther, and prey, herbivores such as bison, musk oxen, horses, reindeer, several other species of deer, mammoths and rhinoceroses. One can imagine that these pictures, which have been dated to over 30,000 years ago, were art that celebrated survival: sustenance (identification of animals to eat) and safety (identification of animals that would eat ourancestors). Evidently, for our ancestors, animal watching had two necessary purposes: opportunity to learn the habits of their prey to improve hunting success and awareness of dangerous animals nearby and the learning of evasive tactics. Neither fits the definition of “fascination.” Humans today, however, have added more reasons for which fascination with animals and other wildlife becomes a more apt description.
Evolution
Humans are animals, too. We have similar lifecycle activities: birthing, nurturing, maturing, eating, eliminating, sleeping, reproducing, aging, and dying. One theory of our fascination with animals holds that we observe them, in their native habitats and in zoos, to discover deep origins of our current behavior. In short, we view animals as reflections of ourselves and we watch them to learn more about us.
Image Credit: Getty Images
We know, for example, that the foundational construct of the human brain stem, the so-called reptilian brain, began with fish, reached a higher state in reptiles, and is found in many other animal species. The reptilian brain, which regulates vital body functions, is the seat of our autonomous “fight-or-flight” instinct, also shared with animals. It’s thrilling to see how the animal kingdom engages this instinct, particularly in mating rituals among competitive suitors and in actions taken to elude predators. Underneath, are humans really that different from animals in the wild?
Enter further evolution. Although in the main we share with animals the same five senses -- seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting, these senses have evolved to different degrees of responsiveness, compared with animals, as have other functions of our brains and, indeed, brain anatomy. The human brain today has developed two additional components, the limbic system and the neocortex. Part of our current fascination with animals comes from observing the extra prowess that some possess and from comparing our brain power to theirs. For example, the visual acuity of a raptor is 8 to 10 times that of a human; dogs can hear high-frequency sound that is out of range of human hearing; elephants and whales can hear very low-frequency sound; birds can see into the ultra-violet wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum; pit vipers can interpret images in both the infrared and visible parts of the spectrum; some migrating bird species can navigate thousands of miles evidently by sensing and processing flux lines of the earth’s magnetic field; bats navigate by sonar; and the African elephant is believed to have the most sensitive sense of smell of any land animal. This species has 250% more olfactory receptors than a dog, which has 200% more olfactory receptors than a human.
In comparisons of brain power and function, we can find animals that excel in sensory reception (just enumerated), navigation, brain protection (avoidance of traumatic brain injury), density of supporting brain cells (glia), and neurogenesis (ability to generate new neurons). Thanks to the neocortex part of our brains, humans generally excel at advanced planning and decision making, consciousness and self-awareness, humor, appreciation of mortality, imagination, value judgments, and adapting to unstable environments. Nevertheless, it is fascinating to watch a wild animal, often lacking an opposing thumb and finger, adapt a stick or stone for use as a tool. It’s not uncommon to find a parking lot, road or bridge surface that’s littered with broken shellfish shells dropped there from on high by birds attempting to open them. And it’s also fascinating to watch schools of anadromous fish swim up fish ladders, which they have learned to use to surmount human-placed dams on their way upstream to spawn. (The story of fish in the Connecticut River will be expanded in a featured column in future issues of estuary Magazine.)
Another fascinating consequence of evolution that’s seen in animals is their camouflage. For example, the pitch and width of stripes on a zebra create an optical illusion, when the animal is running, that confounds a pursuing lion to the point that it stops the chase. In the Connecticut River watershed, rabbits, deer, birds, frogs, toads, snakes, and praying mantis, to name just a few species, often blend in indistinguishably with their environment, especially when they are frozen motionlessly to fool predators or to ambush prey. To protect themselves from predators, some species have adapted markings very similar to unpalatable or more dangerous counterparts; in the watershed, a prominent example is found in the viceroy butterfly’s mimicry of the monarch butterfly that is unpalatable to birds.
Comparison of a Viceroy butterfly (left) and Monarch butterfly (right).
Image Credits: D. Gordon E. Robertson/CC BY-SA and USFWS Midwest Region from United States/CCBY
Next time I will wrap up this blog with three other areas of investigation: Curiosity-driven Fascination, Entertainment with Purpose, and Health. The Entertainment with Purpose area is about birding, arguably the most popular of human fascinations with wildlife.
Invitation to Public Comment Meeting for the Proposed Connecticut National Estuarine Research Reserve
Great Island Wildlife Management Area, Connecticut River Estuary, Old Lyme.
One of the Properties in Connecticut’s Proposed NERR Site.
Invitation
You are invited to attend a virtual public comment meeting for Connecticut’s proposed National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR).
The meeting will be held on Tuesday August 4th, 2020, from 7:00 to 9:00 PM EDT via WebEx.
At this meeting the steering team will provide an update on the effort to designate a proposed National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) in Connecticut and will seek public input to help guide the development of the required Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).
Meeting Access
To join by computer:
https://uconn-cmr.webex.com/uconn-cmr/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=1200263550
To join by phone:
US Toll: +1-415-655-0002
Access code: 120 026 3550
Soon there will be posted further information about the meeting on DEEP’s website for the CT NERR ( https://portal.ct.gov/DEEP/Coastal-Resources/NERR/NERR-Home-Page). A little later this site will also carry copies of any presentations that were made.
The upcoming fall 2020 issues of Estuary magazine also has an article about Connecticut’s NERR.
Making Comments
Following from the Federal Register Notification are instructions for submitting comments:
- Electronic Submission:Submit all electronic public comments via the Federal eRulemaking Portal. Go to regulations.gov/docket?D=NOAA-NOS-2020-0089, click the “Comment Now!” button, complete the required fields, and enter or attach your comments. Written comments must be submitted no later than Tuesday, August 18, 2020.
- Mail:Submit written comments to Erica Seiden, Stewardship Division (N/OCM6), Office for Coastal Management, NOS, NOAA, 1305 East-West Highway, Silver Spring, Maryland 20910; ATTN: CT NERR. Comments must be postmarked no later than Tuesday, August 18, 2020.
- Instructions:All comments received are part of the public record and will generally be posted for public viewing on regulations.gov/docket?D=NOAA-NOS-2020-0089 with no changes. All personally identifiable information (e.g., name, address, etc.), confidential business information, or otherwise sensitive information submitted voluntarily by the commenter will be publicly accessible and maintained by NOAA as part of the public record. NOAA will accept anonymous comments; on the eRulemaking Portal, enter “N/A” in the required fields if you wish to remain anonymous. If you would like to provide an anonymous comment during the public scoping meeting, type your comment into the question box, and state that you would like to remain anonymous when your comment is read. Multimedia submissions (i.e., audio, video, etc.) must be accompanied by a written comment. The written comment is considered the official comment and should include discussion of all points you wish to make. NOAA will generally not consider comments, or comment contents, located outside of the primary submission sites or addresses (i.e., those posted on the web, cloud, or other file-sharing system). Please note, no public comments will be audio or video recorded.
Closed captioning will be provided for those who attend the public meeting online via WebEx: https://uconn-cmr.webex.com/uconn-cmr/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=1200263550.
Background
The NERR system is a partnership between coastal states and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), that establishes a location dedicated to estuarine research, monitoring, education, and stewardship. A Connecticut-based NERR would complement and expand many existing scientific, environmental management, and educational activities through the addition of funding, resources, and expertise from the national NERR system. Additionally, it would help identify and enable new initiatives to improve the understanding and sustainability of Long Island Sound.
For more than the last three years, a steering team of environmentalists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), the University of Connecticut, Connecticut Sea Grant, and the Connecticut Audubon Society has been diligently seeking the designation of a NERR site for Connecticut to join NOAA’s system of 29 other NERRs. Each NERR has the overarching objective of preserving or improving the site and its level of conservation for the benefit of all.
The first phase of Connecticut’s effort culminated last year with NOAA’s approval of the site selection team’s recommended site, which is shown on the following map (image courtesy of Pew Charitable Trusts).
This site, one of five candidates considered, scored the highest on NOAA’s almost three dozen acceptance criteria. It includes several state-owned properties as well as public area in Long Island Sound. The properties are shown in the next illustration.
After the Connecticut NERR site receives official designation, anticipated for spring 2022, the state agency leading the CT NERR will pass from DEEP to the University of Connecticut, although their present partnership will continue.
Become an Environmental Activist (Part 2)
A pair of cedar waxwings on branch over the river.
Credit: Robert Winkler/Getty Images
In the last blog I identified what it means to be an environmental activist (i.e., one who takes action on behalf of the environment) by introducing four examples. One, George Perkins Marsh, a Vermonter, who lived over 150 years ago and is cited as the first person to sound the alarm in his book Man and Nature (1864) about the irreversible harm that humans were causing the environment. Another, the famed birder, artist, and conservationist Roger Tory Peterson, whose legacy, forged in Old Lyme, Connecticut, lives on in his meticulous field guides, paintings, and prints along with a cadre of disciples that are continuing his conservation work.[1] The third, a contemporary husband and wife team, who have had an outsized influence on the environment of their town and the surrounding CT River watershed. And, finally, Bill McKibben, an indefatigable warrior from Vermont, who—in countless books, lectures, organized conferences, and the website 350.org—persistently applies his skills in environmental journalism and advocacy to promote taking local, national, and international action against climate change.
What You Can Do to Become an Environmental Activist
Last time, we parted with my advice to first become informed about the state of the environment and then develop the conviction that you can make a difference to the environment by volunteering in an area that interests you. To acquire this background, I recommended reading Bill McKibben’s book Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future followed by the book The Necessary Revolution: How Individuals and Organizations Are Working Together to Create a Sustainable World by Peter Senge et alii.
If you are still left wondering what you can do, you can start your involvement by looking no further than your personal lifestyle, back yard, or neighborhood. Douglas Tallamy’s book Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard (2020) offers recipes for accessible action.
Next, start your engagement by joining at least one environmental organization that is involved in the Connecticut River, for example, the Connecticut River Conservancy, the Friends of Conte (the Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge, which covers the entire length of the Connecticut River), a local land trust, or your state’s Audubon organization. The Connecticut Audubon Society, for example, has a nature center, the Roger Tory Peterson Estuary Center, that serves the Connecticut River Estuary and surrounding towns with science-based environmental education, advocacy outreach and research facilitation.
I further recommend that you join at least one national organization, such as The Nature Conservancy, the National Audubon Society, Clean Water Action, or Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, as well as the Union of Concerned Scientists for the general accessibility of its environmental project results reported in their periodical Catalyst. Among the websites and publications of these organizations, you will also find information about state and national legislative agendas for environmental policy.
As you continue your education by reading the information that comes with your membership in the above-mentioned organizations, it’s time to choose a focus that interests you. Some examples include
- advocacy for effective public policy for the environment
- reducing your carbon footprint
- eliminating air, water, and soil pollution
- re-establishing native plant species
- habitat restoration, preservation, and invasive species elimination
- stemming bird population decline
- organic farming, community gardening
- environmentally compatible recreation
- living shorelines
- wetlands reclamation
- resiliency to sea level rise
- environmental education
- mentoring of the next generation of conservationists
On the other hand, if you live in or near an environmental-justice neighborhood that is plagued with noise; poor air, water, or soil quality; and has little green space, then you may decide to direct your activism to founding or supporting a community group that seeks environmental equity, that is, the same healthy environment that is enjoyed by the majority of neighborhoods in a state. A recent article in the Union of Concerned Scientists magazine, Catalyst, describes the establishment of a neighborhood action group to achieve equity.[2] In this case, the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization solicited the help of the Union of Concerned Scientists to measure the impact of a proposed development project in creating harmful air pollution of Little Village’s environment. The Justice Organization then developed, jointly with city government and local businesses, an improvement plan called the Little Village Industrial Modernization.
Finally, the following is a partial list of environmental organizations that have activities, which may be of interest to you, and provide training:
Invasive Plant Alas of New England (IPANE)
New England Wild Flower Society Plant Conservation
Project FeederWatch, Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Audubon Important Bird Areas (IBA) Program, National Audubon Society
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[1] There is an article about Roger Tory Peterson forthcoming in the fall 2020 issue of Estuary magazine.
[2] Union of Concerned Scientists, “UCS in the Community,” Catalyst, Spring 2020, p. 7
Become an Environmental Activist
Credit: Jennifer Yakey-Ault/Getty Images
I started to write this blog on the topic of citizen science for the Connecticut River environment but soon realized that the concept could be too narrowly interpreted as just “science.” To be clear, citizen science usually involves a collaboration between non-scientists and scientists in which non-scientists collect data needed by scientists to resolve real-world issues. Often the non-scientists receive training in observation, data collection, and recording techniques. Thanks particularly to the efforts of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, citizen science has become most publicized and synonymous with bird population counting, although citizen science has broader applications than birding, for example, water-, air-, and soil-quality monitoring and studies of other fauna and flora.
What struck me was the apparent formality of citizen science and the fact that there are also other effective ways in which a motivated public can help the environment (nature). The key here is people. One of the more powerful activities that people can undertake on behalf of the environment is to advocate for public policy that protects our natural resources; at the same time, people can reduce their demands on these precious resources. In the end, I adopted the more inclusive term “environmental activist” as a voluntary aspiration for a citizen of the Connecticut River watershed.
Examples of Environmental Activists from Connecticut River States
George Perkins Marsh
Credit: Photo by Evan Derickson, license CC BY-SA 3.0
In 1847, long before others became known as environmentalists or conservationists, the lawyer-diplomat-linguist-scholar George Perkins Marsh, born in Woodstock, Vermont, along the Ottauquechee tributary of the Connecticut River, gave a lecture that foreshadowed his book Man and Nature, published in 1864. In the book, he identified that humans were inflicting irreversible damage on the environment. He decried that wholesale deforestation (clear-cutting of trees for building lumber, firewood, and paper making) and the draining of swamps for development were upsetting the moisture content of the air and the balance of radiation from the sun in a way that was causing the earth’s atmosphere to heat up. He asserted that the welfare of future generations would be associated with the management of natural resources. Marsh’s argument, which did not mention carbon dioxide, was amazingly prescient; he died in 1882 before the use of fossil fuels became widespread and climate change accelerated. Marsh was not technically trained as a scientist, but he had an agile mind and was a very astute observer.
In the mid-1950s, Roger Tory Peterson settled near the Connecticut River Estuary in Old Lyme, Connecticut, and for the next 47 years continued his stellar career as an environmentalist, author, and artist. He, too, was not a trained scientist, although his associates accorded him the status of a scientist (ornithologist), and the reach and quality of his research, publications, and field guides on birds and other facets of the environment earned him honorary doctorate degrees from several universities as well as a Presidential Medal of Freedom, two international awards, and nominations for a Nobel Prize. His Field Guide to Birds, which introduced his unique identification system of witness lines to distinctive features on birds and his alignment of the birds on each page in the same direction, to facilitate the detection of differences, became a best seller. Apart from his research, publications, and art, perhaps the greatest legacy of his activism is found in the disciples whom he mentored and who have carried on conservation work after him. His biographer, Elizabeth Rosenthal, identifies 16 of these people in Chapter 13 “Worldwide Progeny“ of her book Birdwatcher: The Life of Roger Tory Peterson (2008). The fall 2020 issue of Estuary magazine will feature an article on Roger Tory Peterson written by an environmental activist, Eleanor Robinson, who was greatly influenced by him (but was not included in the biography’s list). Eleanor, by the way, was one of the visionaries who founded the Roger Tory Peterson Estuary Center in Old Lyme.
My next example of environmental activists involves a husband and wife team whom I will not name in order to protect their identities. He was raised on a small farm in New Hampshire and spent his professional career in the insurance business. She is a professional photographer and artist. They lived frugally on a small farm, with a few animals and a vegetable garden, in the woods of a town on the Connecticut River in Connecticut. He made land and habitat preservation his passion; he both established a land trust around his property and served on the board of a much bigger land trust in town. When he discovered a piece of land for sale that would serve a suitable conservation purpose, he would purchase it, even if it would strap their financial resources. In the early 1980s, she was one of the founders of a local nature center, devoted to inspiring an appreciation of the environment in children, youth, and adults, and she remained on its board and active in fundraising events for over 35 years until she and her husband moved to a retirement community.
Together they wrote articles on town heritage in the local newspaper and letters-to-the-editor supporting the town’s open-space and other conservation initiatives. They also attended town meetings and zoning board sessions on controversial land-use issues. They were constant volunteers for invasive plant removal efforts and for river clean-up days; he even rigged a small crane and winch to his canoe to enable the retrieval of underwater junk. He was also renowned for his trail maintenance skills, which he applied to trails in several of the Connecticut River’s forests. Besides the nature center, two local land trusts, the local historical society, and a local land heritage group, they actively participated in the following organizations: Connecticut Forest and Park Association, Northeast Organic Farming Association, Connecticut Audubon Society, and a local Bike-Walk group. They tirelessly attended all of these organizations’ meetings and selflessly volunteered for their activities. A few years ago, she received a coveted Benchmark Award from the Connecticut Audubon Society for her extraordinary volunteer efforts at their nature center. They are also avid bicyclists who led a riding group every Wednesday, weather permitting; and they were instrumental in the planning and implementation of the first leg of a bicycle trail system in their town. Together they set a very high bar for the meaning of environmental activism.
Bill McKibben speaks at Rochester Institute of Technology about global warming, consumerism, the economy, and his organizations, 350.org and Step It Up. McKibben's book, Deep Economy, was the common reading for all incoming freshman for the fall 2008 quarter at RIT.
Credit: Photo by Evan Derickson, license CC BY-SA 3.0
Bill McKibben of Middlebury College, Vermont, is also the personification of an environmental activist. In countless speaking engagements and in the many articles and books that he has written, including The End of Nature (1989), Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (2007), Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet (2010), Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist (2013), and Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? (2019), McKibben presents insightful analyses and dire predictions of what is going to happen to the human race if we don’t cease our worsening assault on the environment. He is, in fact, continuing to sound the alarm that George Perkins Marsh first activated over a century and a half ago. McKibben has devoted his life and seemingly boundless energy to the calamity of climate change. He has organized many international conferences on the topic, founded the website 350.org, and received numerous awards and fellowships. Like our other exemplary environmental activists, Bill McKibben was not educated to be a scientist; he is, however, an experienced journalist, writer, and speaker on the environment who is widely acclaimed for his work.
What You Can Do to Become an Environmental Activist
First, you need to be informed and then develop the conviction that you can make a difference to the environment by volunteering in an area that interests you. For information and inspiration, you might start by reading Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy book cited earlier. Then read the book The Necessary Revolution: How Individuals and Organizations Are Working Together to Create a Sustainable World by Peter Senge et alii. Between these two books you will find steps to take and success stories that should convince you that you can contribute meaningfully to sustaining the environment.
Having left you with a reading assignment, I will conclude next time with more details on a course of action to follow to become an environmental activist.
Solving Environmental Problems
A Saltmarsh Sparrow. Credit: Getty Images
Environmental problems can be complex and hard to resolve. The complexity arises because the components of the environment are linked, and their interactions may be separated by both time and distance. With the emergence of humans as a significant component of the environment, this complexity has been exacerbated by the sheer scale of human needs and by the social diversity of cultures and values that hampers collaborative action. Examples of major environmental problems include climate change, pollution, and the depletion of natural resources. Solutions to environmental problems often treat symptoms and stop short of discovering and fixing root causes. When this happens, the symptoms invariably return. For example, ride-hailing services (e.g., Uber, Lyft) were thought to reduce air pollution by reducing individual ownership of automobiles—a symptom. However, because of the way in which these services are scheduled, studies show that they actually produce more climate risk than individual automobile ownership. In other words, the solution to the symptom was worse than the original symptom.
Today’s blog introduces a simple but powerful problem-solving technique for finding root causes. It is called relentless root causes analysis. We will illustrate its use for an environmental problem of concern to the Connecticut River Estuary (as well as other estuaries). Problem-solving starts with an observation that defines the problem.
Observation
Our environmental problem originates with the observation that the population of saltmarsh sparrows is declining. After investigating this phenomenon with his graduate students, Professor Chris Elphick of the University of Connecticut discovered that the ground-level nests of brooding saltmarsh sparrows were being destroyed by sporadic flooding of the host marshes.[1]
Uncovering Root Causes
When humans are about two years old, we manifest a latent curiosity that spawns a string of “Why?” questions. It turns out that asking “Why?”, until the last why cannot be answered further, is a powerful problem-solving technique that can lay bare the root causes of a problem and help to identify potential solution options. The next figure demonstrates how this technique works to diagnose the plight of the saltmarsh sparrow’s declining population. Just by asking “Why?” repeatedly we arrive at five actionable root causes—answers in the lowest “Why?” boxes in a branch—that suggest solutions.
Note that the causes in the “Why?” boxes often need to be validated by further observation and analysis. When feasible, one should perform a “nasty” test by devising a way to turn a cause on and off.
Problem Solutions
Evidently, there is not enough time left before the extinction of the saltmarsh sparrow species to make meaningful progress on abating climate change. That leaves three other causes that can be tackled with the following suggested solution options: upstream tributary dam removal, cutting new channels into the marsh, and removing structures that block marsh migration. A fourth solution, adding soil to build up marsh elevation, is suggested by the symptom that the marsh surface is not renewing fast enough from (natural) sedimentation. The next step would be to benchmark the lessons learned by other regions (for example, Narrow River, Rhode Island) that solved similar marsh habitat issues. Then develop marsh restoration plans with cost-benefit analyses that would also consider the other occupiers of this habitat.
Understanding how to alter a river’s capacity for increased sediment transport and deposition on marshes is a longer-term research project that would undoubtedly require modeling and sophisticated data collection by scientists, but it is a feasible undertaking. In the Connecticut River Estuary, we are fortunate that this work has already been accomplished; the results show that the Estuary has favorable, almost unique flow patterns for sediment transport and deposition. For our Estuary, then, we would turn our attention to the other options for elevating marsh surfaces to rescue the brooding habitat of saltmarsh sparrows and to steward other fauna and flora that share the marshes.
The engineering and project management skills needed to realize these plans would require a lead organization having the necessary resources, a role that could be played by Connecticut’s National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) when it is officially designated (see upcoming article about this NERR in the fall 2020 issue of Estuary magazine). Finally, the chosen solutions should be monitored to ensure that they were implemented correctly and are working effectively.
[1] Elphick, C.S., J.M. Hill and M. Rubega 2008. “State of the saltmarsh sharp-tailed sparrows.” In: Connecticut State of the Birds: Conservation of birds and their habitats. (M. Bull, ed.) Connecticut Audubon Society. pp. 5-9.
The Connecticut River’s Tranquility
Reflections in the Connecticut River, in Northampton, Massachusetts, during October. Credit: Getty Images
In these times of stressful living, designed to contain the coronavirus, more and more people are seeking solace in nature. The fall 2020 issue of Estuary magazine contains several personal essays on this topic.
Being outside in nature today has a double benefit:
First, it dramatically dilutes the potential (compared with being indoors) for transmission of the coronavirus as long as people maintain appropriate separation.[1]
Second, irrespective of the coronavirus, nature has both physical and psychological therapeutic effects on people.[2]
In this blog I want to discuss the therapeutic benefits that nature holds for us.
It’s currently understood that physical activity, besides bolstering the physiological health of the body, causes the brain to release endorphins from the pituitary gland. Endorphins are hormones that increase one’s feelings of pleasure and happiness and suppress feelings of pain, anxiety, and depression. Many, including this author, find that getting exercise outdoors in interesting venues with changing scenery can not only be good for our physical health but also downright exhilarating. The summer 2020 issue of Estuary magazine underscores this point with an article on a guided bicycle tour along the Connecticut River. In this sense, nature can be an enabler of improved health. But this is not the whole story.
Immersing yourself in a natural outdoor setting—whether walking, hiking, birding, fishing, rowing, canoeing, kayaking, bicycling, camping, boating, taking pictures or, even just sitting quietly, meditating, and contemplating a beautiful vista and listening to its sounds—brings a sense of focus on the moment that allows you to filter out your other worries. In this state of mindfulness, also called centering or presencing, imagine that you are again a curious twelve-year-old who is approaching your environment with fresh eyes, ears, and other senses that are open for observation and learning and not closed by pre-conceived prejudices. Think about how you fit with your surroundings and how your surroundings are at one with you. Think about the solidity that nature provides: the sure knowledge that the seasons will rotate, that the River will continue to flow, and that the plant and animal life you see, including yourself, will adapt to changing circumstances. I find that rivers are particularly attractive venues because they can range from quiet, lazy currents—that promote reflection—to noisy rapids and waterfalls—that evoke wonderment; and rivers can be viewed from perspectives that span from water level to high vantage points on the hills that usually surround them. The accompanying photographs show the Ottauquechee River tributary in Woodstock, VT, and Turners Falls on the Connecticut River in Montague, MA. The features of these water courses speak for themselves and what it would be like to contemplate each subject from the actual location of the photographer.
In addition to the personal essays mentioned above, the fall 2020 issue of Estuary magazine contains Chris Zajack’s photographic essay about the Fourth Connecticut Lake, the source of the Great River that is today called the Connecticut River. Chris’s vibrant photographs vicariously place you, the reader, in a spectacularly beautiful outdoor setting. Of course, you can’t smell the pine forest, breathe the clean, crisp air, or feel the morning dampness from an overnight rain, but you can identify with what Chris might have experienced by recalling your own exposure to a similar environment. Perhaps his photo essay will entice you to find, explore, and appreciate your own special outdoor places. Your mental well-being will thank you.
So far I have been discussing what nature can do for you. In 1898 Mabel Osgood Wright founded the Connecticut Audubon Society on the premise that by participating in inspiring outdoor experiences in nearby environments, people would become motivated to help nature. Her initial focus was helping to mobilize a groundswell of public opinion against the millinery industry’s harvesting of bird feathers and other parts for women’s hats because of the resulting devastation on bird populations, especially those of white herons and egrets. Today humans must continue to help nature by compensating for well over a century of environmental insults. The path to engagement, however, remains the same: inspirational outdoor experiences, education, and successful conservation stories to forge emotional connections with nature and to galvanize conservation action.
Along the Connecticut River watershed, you will find countless outdoor venues at parks, forests, boat launches, and sanctuaries operated by the watershed states and by non-profit organizations such as land trusts and conservation groups. Nearby you can find sources of food and overnight accommodations. Many of these entities have maps of their trails and interpretative signage on the trails so that you can learn about the history and typology of the area. The watershed states of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut all maintain websites that describe the locations and facilities of their parks.[3] You can find land trusts in the directory of land trusts for each of these states;[4] in fact, the fall 2020 issue of Estuary magazine will offer an introductory article about land trusts. And the Audubon societies of these states post websites that pinpoint their sanctuaries,[5] most of which are havens for birdwatching. To expand your outdoor experience, you might wish to participate in some of the programs also described in the websites listed in the footnotes.
At the least, consider subscribing to the magazine, if you are not already a subscriber. Our compilation of fascinating articles for Connecticut River enthusiasts is growing, and you will not want to miss any of them nor opportunities both to benefit from and to help nature in the Connecticut River Valley.
[1] Bromage, Erin S., https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them
[2] Adams, Jill, “The Nature Antidote,” Audubon Magazine, Winter 2019, p. 36
[3] New Hampshire (nhstateparks.org), Vermont (vtstateparks.com), Massachusetts (portal.ct.gov/DEEP/state-parks/connecticut-state-parks-and-forests).
[4] Land Trust Directories: NH(findalandtrust.org), MA(massland.org), CT (ctconservation.org)
[5] Audubon Websites: nhaudubon.org, vt.audubon.org, massaudubon.org, ctaudubon.org
Island Solitude
“Come to the woods, for here there is rest,” wrote John Muir, the pioneering environmental activist and writer. “There is no repose like that of the green deep woods.” Few knew the healing power of nature better than Muir (1838–1914), whose deep connection with the outdoors was forged through a convalescence. It was in March of 1867 that the Sottish-born Muir was working in a wagon wheel factory in Indianapolis when he suffered a serious eye injury. Confined to a darkened room for six weeks in order to regain his sight, the 28-year-old Muir, who had studied botany in college but never graduated, was forced to reflect on his life and his purpose. It was during this period of solitude, Muir says, that he determined “to be true to himself” and follow his dream of studying plants, immersing himself in nature and the outdoors. “This affliction has driven me to the sweet fields,” Muir later wrote. “God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons.”
Today, many of us find ourselves confined to our “darkened rooms,” or perhaps more precisely, as in Dante’s Inferno, trapped “in a dark wood, where the direct way [is] lost.” Dante goes on to tell us: “It is a hard thing to speak of, how wild, harsh and impenetrable that wood was, so that thinking of it recreates the fear.” His words speak to us over the centuries. Dante had Virgil to lead him out of the gloom. Who will be our guide?
When I really need to escape, I paddle my canoe over to an island in the lower Connecticut River—a rocky, wooded, wild place with a meandering creek and marshes on the back side. The day I visited, I beached my craft near the inlet on the northern end, following a trail into the woods up to the crest of a ridge, a couple of hundred feet above the river. Seated on a rock in a clearing, I looked down through the dark trees to the glittering water. It was late afternoon, when the sounds of the powerboats fade away and a deep solitude washes over the place. The stillness was a tonic.
John Muir, ca. 1902
Image Credit: Library of Congress
In that ethereal quiet it was hard to image that in the 19th century this island swarmed with 600 men, mainly Irish and Italian immigrants, who lived in camps from May to October to work the granite quarries. It was an extensive operation, with steam drills and derricks and a narrow gauge railroad to haul the massive blocks to waiting schooners. This island in the Connecticut River was known for its usually dense gneiss, prized in New York City and Philadelphia for street paving and curbing.
Quarrying ended abruptly in 1902, when the stone business was no longer profitable. The woods grew back, and the island became a haven for those who wanted to escape, for whatever reason. In the 1930s, a reputed gangster hid out on the island to evade capture. He built a lean-to against some rocks and camouflaged it with branches. Friends brought him food and supplies. The authorities never found him.
The island’s best-known hermit was a fellow by the name of Andrew Holloway. Jilted by his wife who favored his brother, Holloway vowed never to speak to another human being. He built a houseboat and paddled it to the island, where he lived as a recluse for 50 years. When friends came to visit, he communicated by writing on a slate.
A beautiful, wild, lonely place, this island.
–Erik Hesselberg, Managing Editor
My Connecticut River, cont...
We weren’t settled for very long in Glastonbury before I joined the Connecticut Audubon Society and became a member of the Regional Board of Directors of its nature center in Glastonbury and then was elected to the state Board of Directors. These responsibilities introduced me to still more dimensions of the Connecticut River. Volunteering at the Eagle Festival, which the Society used to host as a major fundraiser toward the end of winter each year, brought me in contact with the charming village of Essex, which I quickly grew to adore—a liking born of the scenic bicycle ride along the Connecticut on River Road, the breathtaking view to the east across the River, the Connecticut River Museum, and the choice of very good restaurants in town.
I fondly recall one festival day when the temperature didn’t rise above 0° F. We froze on the ferry that was plying the river in search of eagles; despite the cold, we spotted 17 bald eagles and one golden eagle. Afterward, we warmed up at the Griswold Inn with a steaming bowl of their gourmet New England clam chowder while seated beside a crackling fire in the Inn’s colonial-era fireplace.
Another allure of Essex is the steam train that chuffs and whistles along the River pulling restored Pullman cars and, as an option, off-loads passengers for a 2-hour boat ride on the Becky Thatcher up and down the River. We’ve also taken our grandkids on the train ride option that drops passengers off at the road (Route 148, Ferry Road) to the Chester-Hadlyme Ferry and gives travelers enough time to cross the river on the ferry, hike up the trail to visit Gillette Castle, eat a picnic lunch, and make their way back to the return train. The vista of the Connecticut River seen while standing on the Gillette Castle’s porch is nothing short of spectacular.
Vista of the Connecticut River as seen from Gillette Castle.
When I was chairman of the Connecticut Audubon Society’s Board, one day I received a call to meet with some citizens in the town of Old Lyme, across the River from Essex. This amazingly talented group had a vision to establish a nature center in Old Lyme that would focus on conservation research, environmental education, and artwork of subjects in nature. (For those who don’t know, the bedrock of Old Lyme’s culture is art; the town is home to The Florence Griswold Art Museum, The Lyme Academy of Fine Arts, The Lyme Art Association, an art gallery, and a sculpturing studio. Old Lyme was also the home of Roger Tory Peterson, who was a prolific painter of birds and published bird and other wildlife field guides made popular by the simplified identification techniques that he devised. An article about him is planned for the Fall 2020 issue of the magazine.)
The group wanted to explore joining the Connecticut Audubon Society as its nature center in southeastern Connecticut. I caught their enthusiasm and became a champion of their cause, which came to fruition four years ago as The Connecticut Audubon Society’s Roger Tory Peterson Estuary Center (RTPEC). Early on the founders of RTPEC had solicited the help of the Mentoring Corps for Community Development (MCCD), a collection of very capable people, mostly retired (much like Encore), who have the mission to assist individuals, small organizations, and whole communities solve problems and develop strategies for sustaining themselves. Together, RTPEC and MCCD became sources of new friends and challenges, particularly with respect to the River.
My activities with RTPEC led to my membership, with its board’s vice-chair, on a team responsible for justifying and selecting a site for a proposed National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) in Connecticut. Led by Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), our team’s two-year effort culminated with a site recommendation that has subsequently been approved by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which oversees a system of 29 NERR sites in coastal states across the country, including Hawaii. In the northeast region there are already NERRs in Maine (Wells), New Hampshire (Great Bay), Massachusetts (Waquoit), Rhode Island (Narragansett Bay), and New York (Hudson River). Connecticut’s NERR promises regional benefits in the areas of conservation research, environmental education, training for coastal decision makers, and environmental stewardship.
Of particular value is the NERR system’s extensive library of knowledge, applications, tools, techniques, and education and training programs for environmental issues facing estuaries and wetlands. The library holds the results of a large number of projects that were undertaken system wide. In the northeast sector, about 12 projects involve science collaborations among several NERRs that are facing common environmental challenges (i.e., climate change, sea level rise, shoreline stabilization, wetlands and other habitat preservation, endangered species, water quality).
To complete the designation process for Connecticut’s NERR, RTPEC and the Connecticut Audubon Society are now working in collaboration with NOAA, DEEP, and the University of Connecticut on developing a management plan and an environmental impact statement for this site, which includes part of the lower Connecticut River and an eastward stretch of Long Island Sound. Look for more details about Connecticut’s NERR Site in the Fall 2020 issue of Estuary magazine.
Proposed CT National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) site map- Western areas.
For me, working on Connecticut’s NERR site selection and designation teams has been both a labor of love and an extremely rewarding experience in building my knowledge of the Connecticut River and the organizations and people that call it home.
One day I was talking with Dick Shriver, whom I had met at MCCD and partnered with to deliver enrichment sessions to classes at the Bennie Dover Jackson Middle School in New London. We were discussing the large number of organizations and interests that exist along the entire length of the Connecticut River—soon to be joined by the CT NERR. The idea of a magazine, to be a focusing voice and vehicle of collaboration among these various interests, suddenly struck us. Finding nothing extant that would meet our concept for such a voice, we initiated the planning and designing of Estuary magazine together with a business and marketing strategy.
The first issue demonstrated that our team of talented writers, editors, photographers, graphic designers, and media and printing professionals can produce a high-quality product that is a credit to the beauty of the River and its watershed. I believe that where we go from here, as I hope that I have illustrated in my story, will depend considerably on the depth of the emotional commitment and affection—love—that our readers either have or will develop for the River.
My Connecticut River
For this inaugural blog, I thought that I would recount several of my Connecticut River experiences that fostered the strong emotional attachment that I hold for the River today. They happen to intersect five of the articles that either appeared in the first issue or are planned to appear in one or more of the next three quarterly issues of the magazine. Why start here? Because a wise consulting practice called Vital Smarts once wrote persuasively,
“Finding a way to encourage others to both understand and believe in a new point of view may not be enough to propel them into action…. At some point, if emotions don’t kick in, people don’t act.”
Patterson et al., Influencer: The Power to Change Anything
Growing up as a Boy Scout in a small town outside of Boston, my first encounter with the Connecticut River was a 45-mile, downriver canoe trip that started with overnight camping near the Dartmouth Outing Club in Hanover, NH. (An article in the upcoming Summer 2020 issue of Estuary magazine on page 7 describes the 1773 journey of John Ledyard in a dug-out canoe over part of the same route.) The next day, under clear skies with no incidents, we neared the half-way point and stopped on the Vermont side to scramble up a bridge embankment to restock our supplies at a general store. That night, we pitched our tents and camped out in a dairy farmer’s field that bordered the river on the New Hampshire side. The next morning, we awoke to several curious cows rummaging through our campsite; we were anxious that they would crush our tents, but our fears were unfounded. The rest of the trip through bucolic landscapes proceeded uneventfully, and we hauled out in the vicinity of the Bellows Falls Dam. For a 13-year-old boy, this was the trip of his young life.
Bellows Falls, Vermont
I did not return to the Connecticut again until after I was married and in graduate school. This time, about a week before Thanksgiving, I went deer hunting with my father-in-law in the thick woods surrounding the Connecticut Lakes in far northern New Hampshire—the very source of the Connecticut River. The weather was bitterly cold and the snow was waist high, which made walking any distance exceedingly difficult, even with snowshoes. We came home empty-handed but had enjoyed the company of our back-woods host, a habitual punster (likely his defense against cabin fever), and his wife, who gave me my first taste of deer-heart stew for dinner one evening in their kitchen that was overheated by a glowing wood stove.
Years later, toward the end of winter, I came back to this region to attend my niece’s wedding at the nearby Balsams Grand Hotel and Resort, which has many recreational amenities, including hiking, mountain biking, and cross-country skiing trails. The Balsams, by the way, houses in its bowels a small, wood-paneled room that was the earliest polling place to open for presidential elections in the United States. At that time, as I recall, the diminutive town of Dixville Notch, NH, had a turnout of around 12 voters at midnight at this polling location.
Many more years passed before I got back to the Connecticut River. During this time, we raised our family in upper New York State, moved for a period to West Virginia, and then moved back to New England, where we settled in Glastonbury, CT, which has a serpentine border on its west side with the Connecticut River. It was at the ferry landing in Rocky Hill, just across the river from Glastonbury, that I purchased my first “pair” of fresh roe from a river-caught shad. I was subsequently taught by a long-time resident how to cook this delicacy. As fate would have it, sometime later I returned the favor by cooking shad roe for this friend just a couple of days before he died. His last words to me, “Don’t boil the water,” will forever remain in my memory as an indelible part of his no-frills recipe: poach the roe in simmering water for about 20 minutes; then carefully transfer to a well-buttered skillet, heated to medium temperature, and fry until golden brown. Handle the roe lobes very gently so as not to break them at any step. (For a fancier recipe, see the article “What’s for Dinner?” on p. 69 of Estuary magazine, Spring 2020.)
While living in New York State and then in West Virginia, I took up bicycling with a passion. This time I was able to afford decent road bikes, as opposed to the junkers that I rode, also passionately, as a kid. To my delight, I was pleased to find from my base in Glastonbury a multitude of exhilarating riding routes that thread through the River’s watershed, track along the River’s shores, and sometimes cross it. These routes span south to the mouth of the river at Long Island Sound and north to Westfield, MA. Most feature gorgeous scenery along the river and its tributaries; crossings are via bridges (Baldwin, East Hampton, Arrigoni, Founders, Veterans) or ferry (Glastonbury-Rocky Hill, Chester-Hadlyme).
One of my favorite northern rides, organized by River’s Edge Cycling in Sunderland, MA, is a 100-mile round trip that starts in Northampton, MA, and follows the west side of the River to Brattleboro, VT, after passing through the historic Massachusetts towns of Deerfield and Turners Falls.
Turners Falls, Massachusetts
The route then crosses into New Hampshire the next day and follows the east side of the River back to Northampton. (Forthcoming is the article “Cycling the Valley” on page 13 of Estuary magazine, Summer 2020.)
In addition to taking in the beautiful scenery on these rides, we manage to find outstanding restaurants for lunch. One particularly cherished ride that traverses the hilly terrain of the watershed between Marlborough and Chester, CT, has the name “Pie Ride” in recognition of the huge (18-lb) apple pie that chef-owner Dennis Welch bakes for us at his restaurant, The Wheat Market. One 1 ½ lb slice of this pie is enough for breakfast, lunch, and dinner combined; the trick is to bicycle up the hills on the 20-mile return trip without “losing” the pie.
In case you haven’t guessed already, bicycling and sharing meals with a group of friends in the exquisite surroundings of the Connecticut River renews my soul and has added considerably to my emotional bond with the River.
I will conclude my story in the next blog.
A 1 1/2 lb. piece of pie waiting to be eaten.