As a high school student in Arlington County, Virginia, I used to take regular hikes down a path called Windy Run, and then walk along the south shore of the Potomac River, upstream. It was in the days before I knew anything about rocks, and I was mainly appreciating other aspects of nature, like the plant life, the birds, the bugs, the salamanders, and occasionally something really cool like a raccoon. But I was aware that the scene I observed and enjoyed was not the same scene that had always persisted.
I heard rumors from my uncle about patches of woods inside the DC Beltway that preserved virgin forest -- giant trees that gave a hint of the former majesty of this eastern hardwood forest. I read about an eastern herd of bison that would migrate north and south through the Piedmont and Coastal Plain, crossing the Potomac near Alexandria (before we killed them all). I noticed a gazillion deer, and had it explained to me that the lack of predators like cougars and wolves resulted in the herbivores' population explosion. We used to have elk here, but European colonists had extirpated them. The last of the bison were
killed off by 1800, and the final elk met a bullet around 1850. This used to be a pretty wild place!
I observed trash nearly constantly, often mixed obscenely with natural debris, sheathed in mud, or woven into birds' nests. Every few minutes, a jet airplane on its approach to National Airport would thunder overhead. Those of us who lived in the flight path would learn to automatically put conversations on "pause" during the 30 seconds it took for the planes to pass. Visitors didn't know what to do about the noise; it was too pervasive to be ignored. But live here long enough, and you learned to ignore it. You adapted, like the birds adapted by putting aluminum foil and plastic bags into their nests.
And the river itself? It's gross. In the modern day, it's constantly muddy and silty, with a foul-smelling sewage/sediment biofilm all over the rocks and logs in the water. There's scummy flotsam and rumors that you'll get a rash if you swim in it. There's people fishing down by Teddy Roosevelt Island, and you have to wonder
why... They're not going to
eat the fish they catch out of this polluted stream, are they?
The theme of this month's
Accretionary Wedge is "time warp." The
Wedge is a geoblog 'carnival,' though it's been inactive for a while, this month sees its return to 'accreting.' For those of you who are new readers to
NOVA Geoblog, it's probably a great opportunity to check out some of the dozens of other interesting geoblogs out there. So what does this have to do with my reflections on the local woods, and the Potomac River? This month's
Wedge host is Lockwood from
Outside the Interzone.
He asked geobloggers, "Where and when would you most like to visit to witness and analyze an event in Earth's history?"
I'm going to use my time travel experience to go back in time right here, in Washington, DC. I want to go back to 1491*. I want to see what my home looked like before European settlers showed up and brought their particular brand of industrialization / civilization / land use changes / ecological perturbations to the Potomac River valley. It may surprise readers to learn that I'd opt for this -- a simple experience of pre-colonization North American nature -- over something tectonic and structural, but that's what calls to me on a deep, emotional level. I want to see a vibrant ecosystem with big trees. I want to see the water of the Potomac River look like water; I want to go swimming in it. I want to see what
bird migration looked like before it
dropped off so precipitously. I want to see a passenger pigeon, a carolina parakeet. I want to see for myself what a healthy amphibian population looks like. And bison fording the Potomac in Alexandria... perhaps emerging from the clear water with the autumn colors ablaze on the far side of the river? That would just be... awesome.
* Note that there's a good book by this same name, on this same theme,
1491. The book makes the case that there was already a lot of landscape/ecological modification playing out before Europeans arrived: that native Americans played a significant role in messing with natural systems and we shouldn't imagine an ecological paradise, just less of an ecological disaster.
Of course, going back to 1491 may have some negative aspects to it: there would be malaria endemic to DC at that time, and the native tribes might not take kindly to a time traveler popping in to ogle their forested homes. But I'll take those risks (they exist today in other places I've visited), since the pay-off would be such a profound deepening of perspective.
If I had the ability to go back in time, I'd use it to gain experience with pre-colonial North America. I'd check out the same river banks I would walk 500+ years later, and see what we've lost.
...And, once I've seen that former world, I can't guarantee that I'd come back.
Labels: amphibians, birdies, blogs, dc, environmental, geologic time, mammals, piedmont, rivers, virginia
