Saturday, June 12, 2004

Bear and Trees in the Road Black bear sightings are often fleeting at best.  Most of those I've seen have been crossing a road, usually Highway 13 north of Bayfield or Highway 63 near Bibon.  It's been a few years since I've spotted a bear in the road, so when I came upon one the other day crossing Highway 51 a few miles north of Tomahawk, at first I thought it was a black Lab.  But when it loped off into the marsh as two cars approached, it was unmistakably a black bear, and a pretty good-sized one at that.  That image will join several others clearly etched in memory. I was coming home from a good news/bad news trip to Ashland and Washburn.  The good news first.  The North still has all the charm it did when I lived there 20 years ago and when I returned regularly in the last decade to teach or visit or hunt.  Spring there is nearly a month behind spring down here, so some aspen were still leafing out.  Ferns were still unfurling.  North of Wausaw, life slows.  You can breathe easier.  Trees line major highways and town roads alike. There's no excuse other than being too busy for not having seen Lake Superior in over a year.  With all the rain lately, Chequamegon Bay was the color of tomato soup.  Logging a century ago stripped the North of its pine, then hardwood, which changed the landscape forever and let runoff rip through formerly sheltered streams, setting up the red-clay erosion that has followed every year since during spring thaw and whenever it rains. New logging is the bad news.  I had driven 350 miles north with the hope of convincing a town board that, despite their road crew's claims, there was no need to cut down every pine planted along the dead-end road where I used to live in order to improve spring drainage.  The road crew had convinced them otherwise.  So, unless a handful of current residents and I can come up with an alternative to cutting pines and ditching the road, it looks like those pines planted nearly 100 years ago will soon be gone.  All because the man who planted them had the foresight to give three generations of residents and visitors their shade and serenity, but not the foresight to see that they were smack in the right-of-way. We stood in the road, the board members, road crew and I, discussing the relative merits of culverts here, ditches there, trees left alone or trees removed.  Ironically, the road was firm this week, despite all the rain.  Residents said it had not been all that bad this spring.  Everyone I talked to said it would be a shame to cut the trees.  Everyone but the road crew, that is.  Gotta make room for a "proper" ditch.  Never mind the fact that the existing ditches have made the road adequately passable to cars, trucks and horses for 100 years.  Gotta have some place to push the snow.  Gotta be able turn around without hitting that one red pine whose bark has been gouged mercilessly by years of contact with the wing plow.  They could have that tree, I offered.  Nope.  They want 'em all. The little stream that crosses the road on its way to Lake Superior might have been able to stop progress, were it not for the Jobs Creation Act, passed by the State Legislature in February.  Funny name for a law that eases restrictions on lakeshore development and streamlines the permitting process for roads and culverts and the like. I never thought of myself as a tree hugger, but that's what I felt like doing when I walked away from my red pines for what might have been the last time. I'll keep you posted on this one.  Anyone got any ideas or know a civil engineer who might? 10:22:44 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2004 Dan Small. Last update: 6/27/04; 9:31:04 PM.