Into the Wyanokie Wild
A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I headed to Ringwood, NJ for a day hike in Norvin Green State Forest (near the Wanaque Reservoir). We mapped out a 5-mile route through the forest on the Wyanokie Trail System and then spent the next 4-1/2 hours hiking past 200-year-old stone walls, pint-sized waterfalls, old iron mines, enormous outcroppings of glacial and erratic rock, pines, maples, elms, oaks, sassafrass, laurel — and almost no sign of wildlife. At times, the trail was so quiet, I couldn’t decide if the silence felt church-like, or morgue-like.
The rocks, trees, bushes, flowers and other miscellaneous flora on the hike were quite amazing, and I highly recommend spending time on these trails (which were surprisingly well-marked, despite a few wrong turns). But it was over three hours into our journey before I saw a bird flitting from tree to tree — the only one I saw that day. About 15 minutes later I spotted two chipmunks chasing each other (finally! I love those cutie guys…). And we were almost at the end of the hike when I spied the lone insect to cross our path. Sheesh! Where was all the fauna? As we left the trail and headed back to our car, my husband asked, “Hey, what’s that noise?” “Leaf blower,” I told him.” Aha, I thought, leaf blowers. I realized that I’d been hearing the whine of leaf blowers all during our hike, except for spots above tree line (like the Wyanokie High Point, which was simply breathtaking — 360-degree views stretching at least 25 miles into the distance, which we viewed standing atop bare glacial rock with a stunning vein of quartzite running right through).
I’ve read that the incessant whine (too gentle a word — at 75 or more decibels they come in around 100x higher than the “safe” level for ambient noise*) and excessive pollution (they produce 500% more carbon emissions than a car*) of leaf blowers has a profoundly detrimental impact on our flora and our fauna, and I wonder if the forest’s neighbors’ attempts to shoo away those leafy bits of red, orange, yellow and brown have created a sort of woodsy ghost town. (And, honestly, the sight of a man wielding a leaf blower around his house in the woods, shuffling leaves from one tree-filled patch on his property to another, was laughable.) Apparently, the first recorded leaf blower was developed in Japan as a way to gently remove leaves from delicate beds of moss. These early blowers were nothing more than hand-held bellows. Certainly, if it’s necessary to remove leaves from hard-to-reach spots, this is a good solution (and think of how much better developed our biceps and triceps would be).
A friend recently told me that the next generation of leaf blowers will be even louder than the ones currently on the market. Clearly, the industrial designers on the leaf blower teams are not working collaboratively with Nature on developing these super-pollution devices. I shudder to think how our forest environments will continue to degrade with the current noise onslaught, let alone with the addition of even louder machinery. I vote for a little research into those early Japanese bellows-blowers, for those garden spots where it’s really necessary to remove the leaves (though I personally haven’t encountered one of those spots — I think fallen leaves look quite pretty, and it’s no secret that they decompose into excellent plant food).
But, I digress. Please treat yourself to a short walk or a dayhike on the Wyanokie Trails sometime, if you live in or travel to New Jersey. The forest is filled with gifts waiting to be enjoyed. And, perhaps the addition of gentle, co-creative souls to these woods will act as some sort of counter-balance to the noise and air pollution (or other man-made forces exacting a negative impact). Maybe I’ll see you there, the next time I journey into the Wyanokie wild — I’ll definitely be going back, and soon.
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