A SNAKE, SOME FERNS AND A SAD ENDING - WHAT'S WRONG WITH US? WHY SHOULD WE FEEL BAD?

I delivered a few dinner items to the boy's store yesterday afternoon. Andrew and I sat in the van, for a few minutes, talking about some of the events of the day. Andrew stopped in mid sentence, pointed to the centre of Muskoka Road, and asked, "Dad, is that a snake crossing the road?" Before I could answer, he said, "It is a snake." I concurred. It was a garter snake trying to make it in a modern world. It was a hot tarmac and it seemed an inhospitable locale for this serpent, which seemed to be trying to get on the painted yellow line. Probably because it was cooler than the black surface, which in the sun, was steaming hot.

"Should we go and get it," asked Andrew. We had only a few seconds to react and just trying to think what we could use to scoop up the snake took-up precious time. By time we had sort of figured out what to do, and get out of the vehicle, the wee beastie had suffered two hits from passing vehicles. Andrew was upset. Just as he had been as a kid, when neighbor kids delighted in showing him how to pull the wings off butterflies. The snake was still moving a bit and he decided to spare it further tarmac insult, by whipping into the shop for a snow shovel. He raced out onto the road, and held up his hand to stop traffic, while he scooped up the near-death creature. He carried it over to the long grass beside the building, and watched it curl into a protective ring. When he got back to the car, he said, "I know dad, I know. It'll be food for something else." It reminded me of the nature walks we took along Algonquin's Booth Trail, and how nature provides its own order of things. Like the time we were feeding a chipmunk, at our campsite on Rock Lake, and had to watch a hawk swoop down and take away our picnic buddy. It was the crunching of the chipmunk's bones, within our earshot, that was a substantially unsettling reality. While the snake didn't perish because of nature exactly, the question is, why was it on the hot tarmac in the first place. Well, it couldn't go under the road. Then I remember the culvert system on the Highway 400 extension to Parry Sound and area, to allow the rattlesnakes safe places to cross the artery. I guess this snake had a really good reason to get to the other side.

Our boys were brought up to appreciate the intricacies of nature. They respected the awesome power of nature to rejuvenate itself, and they understood the importance of a healthy environment to all our lives. And, in this town, they've also witnessed the destruction of a great bounty of pristine habitat, that supports wildlife and protects our well being……..whether we choose to appreciate it or not. As he was upset by the demise of a main street serpent, I must admit to feeling this way about some of the beautiful ferns over in the bog, the victims you might say, of an all-terrain vehicle being navigated through the upper portion of the woodland. When I hear it start-up it makes me wince. Here is such a beautiful, rare, in-town natural oasis, and it just doesn't jive with four wheels and an engine. While it's not that I dislike the forest being travelled and enjoyed for what it has to offer, as inspiration and opportunity for exploration, I wonder if the chap mowing down the ferns understands the intricacies of this natural place. What is habitat to him? A house with a recreation room undoubtedly. I would like to explain to him that the habitat for the creatures of this forest, depend on those ferns and the shade they provide to the forest floor. My boys could play all day in those same woods, and tread carefully so as not to destroy this habitat. Never once did their fulfillment require a motorized vehicle to mow down what appeared so important and natural. They were taught about conservation by one of the legendary Outdoor Educators in Ontario, David Brown, of Hamilton. When Dave stayed here at Birch Hollow, as a stopover from some canoe expedition or other, he enjoyed taking us on nature walks through The Bog. He'd show Andrew and Robert, the underside of a fallen tree, and they would be mesmerized by the lifeforms thriving beneath. He didn't preach about sparing all nature. He was a realist. It was inevitable that wild places like this might soon disappear, as urban demands increase.

I thought about Dave's words, when we were forced to defend The Bog, some years after his death, as the town decided it would be a good idea to sell off this urban wetland for residential lots. We prevailed. Common sense prevailed. We still have The Bog. And we still have folks in the neighborhood, who frankly couldn't have cared less about saving the property anyway, still dumping their yard waste, and other goodies, onto this wonderful acreage. One day, earlier this spring, a truck was backed onto the shoulder of the road, and the driver jumped up on the back to push-off yard waste into the "ferns yet to be." It was someone who should have known better. But we had a little chat, and their assurances they would no longer dump refuse into The Bog. I can't tell you how many Christmas trees have wound up dotting the woods here, presenting a pretty good dry fuel source, should a fire ever break-out. All the individual cares about, is an immediate solution to a personal dilemma. Where to get rid of a balding evergreen. The Bog! Why not?

Eventually the cast of yard debris becomes part and parcel of The Bog, and of course, it's true, naturally, even the ugly old Christmas tree pile will attract residents who benefit from the cover. Each time I find another pile of yard crap tossed unceremoniously into the forest, I can't help but feel sorry for the perpetrator…..that they can not see the folly of their action…..or appreciate the world their children will inherit because they didn't appreciate the negative long-term impact of treating nature as if it is inconsequential. We have seen this lack of knowledge play-out with deadly consequence around the globe……why not build a nuclear reactor (or four), in an earthquake prone, tsunami frequent zone? Why not build on an historic, well known flood-plain? Why not have a bowl of shark-fin soup? Hey, why worry about heaping up yard debris, or flattening ferns, as long as everyone's getting what they want out of life?

I was sitting in our own woodlands, one afternoon, when a contractor's truck backed up to the shoulder of the road, where the culvert run-off cascades into a hollow and small pond. I really didn't think too much about it at the time, as there was a lot of construction going on further down the street. There was a lot of smashing and crashing going on, but I couldn't see what the two men were doing. When one of the gents yelled to the other "Toss the asphalt," I got particularly interested. By time I got down to the road, the truck was gone but the debris was in the pond. They were roofing contractors who had dumped mostly empty cans of asphalt / adhesive material into the water…..which passes down eventually into the water of Muskoka Bay and Lake Muskoka. Instead of following the truck, I spent the next hour fishing out the chemical contamination, shingles, old iron cast-offs, two garbage bags of dirty rags, and sundry pieces of concrete. I paid to have them disposed of at the town landfill site. I watched for that truck to come back down that street but alas, the dumping, apparently, was the last task in our neighborhood. I should have pursued it by going door to door, to find out where the contractor was working on the street. We were new to town and I thought it might be better to handle the situation without ruffling the feathers of our seemingly kindly neighbors. On another occasion, a contractor working for the post office, removed the wooden framing from the base of the post box, drove twenty-five to thirty feet up the road, and threw them over the embankment. Pressure treated, chemical coated wood into the ferns. How nice?

I was standing in our driveway, late one night, and saw a cab coming from further down the street, slowing and crossing over lanes toward the community post box. It slowed down enough for the driver to roll down the window and toss out a large collection of fast-foot bags and containers, partially eaten chicken legs and coleslaw, dumped all over the asphalt ramp. He took off when he saw me coming down the driveway but not fast enough that I didn't make note of the company he worked for. I did make a call. They denied that any of their drivers would do something like this. So I educated them. And while they wouldn't reveal the name of the driver who had made a drop-off on our street, I suggested that they might find it necessary to provide the name to the police, that I also intended on calling. Once again, I picked up the bear-food, and disposed of the garbage in the usual fashion. Every week, some other dork will toss off landfill materials in our neighborhood. There's another clown or clowns, who are dropping cigarette butts dangerously close to the forest, and in close proximity to slash, and other property refuse that would greatly accelerate a forest fire. I've watched poop-heads toss still-lit cigarettes out of moving cars along our street. I've extinguished those but one day, we're not going to be so fortunate. As the forest fires have had grave consequences around the world, there's a great danger of a woodland fire here as well.

We are a caring neighborhood, and there are many folks here who will fight to the death to protect these important natural qualities and quantities. I won't be losing any sleep about lo a small number of ferns being flattened, and I suppose I've come to expect assorted piles of garden waste and cast-off shrubs to dot the forest floor, and I can even tolerate the sound of a small engine and four wheels snapping the natural ground cover, but I won't ever like it, suggest it as a good idea, or buy a fern-beater myself because it's such good fun. But suffice to say, we are policing the welfare of our Bog none the less. And we have a small but eager cavalry to come to its defense.

Even hours after the snake got smushed on Muskoka Road, Andrew was still feeling bad about it! As if it was the case he let the snake down, by not jumping out the vehicle, and stopping traffic both ways, while scooping up the wayward serpent, before the first tire-blow. His feeling is genuine. His regrets are sincere. But sometimes, stuff just doesn't work out they way we would like. In this case, we lost a nice snake in downtown traffic. It should have known better, than to live where engines and wheels, asphalt and concrete are the urban jungle. Is it a failing of nature; it created us after all.