Wild places, especially those with moving water, remind us that the world’s most beautiful music is not born in a recording studio. The live performance is best. And among the combination of animal noises, bird calls, tumbling leaves, the soft breath of wind, and the nearly silent, moaning buzz of our spinning blue planet, the clear and precise notes of water songs are, by turns, the most dramatic and exciting, the most peaceful and soothing. The feral orchestra performs on a stage that blends the smell of cedar and pine with wet earth against a dynamic view of rolling clouds and verdant greens and blues. These are the sights, sounds, and smells of life -- what is essential to sustain life. Clean, moving water, vigorous plant life, wind and rain.
There are species in the animal and plant kingdoms that are noted as "indicators." They are strategically, critically placed such that a threat to their well-being points to a larger problem that has wide ranging detrimental impact on life itself. I think we need to broaden our awareness and sensitivity to the indicators phenomenon to include specific, finite geographics. If this could happen, the paradise we call northern Michigan, and more precisely the Au Sable and Manistee valleys, should be monitored most closely.
Sometimes it seems we are loving this area to death -- more cabins, more canoes, more anglers, more bird and deer hunters, more mini-malls, and mega-stores, more ORVs, dirt bikes, and jet skis. I really hate ORVs, dirt bikes and jet skis. On specific week-ends (Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, deer season) it seems that every single jackpine has its own ORV, every two-track fire trail its own series of spin-out scars, every stream its own ripped and muddied crossing. Every year there is another series of big stores, more dwellings on hummocks with a view, more billboards. I guess some folks call this progress. This is a beautiful, very desirable place to live and play. It seems inevitable that as population grows there is an increase in pavement, billboards, stores, and stop lights, a decrease in the volume of aquifers, in wild places and water songs. When I hear the word progress I smell greed that dims the wild view and lessens the volume of wild music. I can’t stop ORVs, dirt bikes, water skis, malls, mega-stores, progress. But, I intend to be a speed-bump. RWOL
© Copyright 2001, Bob Linsenman. All rights reserved. Last modified January 17, 2002