Notes on the River -
Tim Junkin's essays, published in the Star Democrat are archived here.
Harvesting Wild Rice, Published Star Democrat Sept. 2, 2009
Just last week I rode with Drew Koslow, our Choptank Riverkeeper, and Nick Carter, one of our Board members, in a small skiff up Watts Creek, a tributary of the upper Choptank, located just south of Denton, looking to harvest some wild rice. Watts Creek is a tidal, freshwater stream bordered along its channel banks by hundred-year-old forests and on its lower edges by marsh dotted with yellow spatterdock lily, arrow-arum, purple pickerel weed, cardinal flower, and orange jewel weed, a favorite of hummingbirds and an antidote for poison ivy. Kingfisher and wood duck outraced us, and flocks of blackbirds wheeled over the wetlands settling down to feast on the tall, willowy rice stalks shimmering like green lace in the morning light. The rice stalks grow to eight feet or more, and once the grains ripen there is only a short window of time in which to harvest them before birds and weather combine to strip the stalks clean. As Nick would pole us into openings in the marsh, we beat the rice horns into our boat, filling our ponchos with the husks, feeling a sense of ancestral kinship, and appreciating the simple pleasure of being in such a quiet and beautiful place while accumulating from nature an edible measure of rice.
Nick, a retired biologist and aquatic scientist, is a walking encyclopedia on the upper tributaries of the Choptank. He seems to know the name and genus of every marsh weed, flower and bird. If as the writer John Hawkes once wrote, “Love is a long close scrutiny,” then Nick is a man who loves our rivers. He has spent most of his adult life working on them and trying to find ways to protect and preserve them. Back at the dock we were discussing his views on the pressures facing our waterways when Drew took a call from someone who lives on the Tuckahoe, concerned that this year there seemed to be fewer fish and birds on his river, and asking us if we could sample the green slime that was covering the water in front of his home. He was afraid to let his kids swim in it. He called us, he said, because he was looking for someone who cared. Later that same day, someone else asked us to sample the water in Newcomb Harbor, just off the Miles, as he had several hundred spot in a fish holding net that had died overnight, and the water had turned red and opaque. August is a time of the year when many of our sub-watersheds show the affects of the excess pollution that increasingly threatens our rivers. Too many nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous are causing too much algal growth. Excess algae turns our water dark and opaque, chokes out sunlight, takes up the oxygen in the water, kills our fish, and can threaten our health.
Our rivers are living resources. They are resilient, and if we give them a chance, they will heal themselves. But all of us need to help by changing our habits. On our website we encourage such change. If you have a septic system, for example, consider participating in your respective county’s de-nitrification upgrade program. It is free. Talbot County will handle the installation, pay for everything, and restore your lawn. By reducing the nitrogen that your system discharges, you will help heal our rivers. And reduce or eliminate your use of fertilizer. Advocate natural grass lawns. Let the emerald-green lawn become a badge of dishonor on the shore. Small changes, undertaken communally, can turn the tide.
Remembering Dr. Laurence Claggett and Soft Crabbing off the Oxford Shore - Sept. 9 Star Democrat
We recently lost a dear friend, historian, and conservationist when Dr. Laurence Claggett passed away this month. Dr. Claggett was born in 1923 and spent much of his adult life caring for property down Baileys Neck on the Tred Avon River. Known as “Pinney” by many, he was my late father’s oldest and dearest co-conspirator. I recalled a story at Dr. Claggett’s memorial service about the two of them as boys. They were about ten and had taken off their socks and shoes to wade out to a rowboat moored just off the shore. I may be hazy on the details, but I think they were planning to “borrow” the boat for a short while to go crabbing. They had more success than anticipated. Before long the bottom of the rowboat was overflowing with crabs, and the two barefoot ten-year-olds, neither of whom wanted to yield, were trying courageously to man their crab lines while hopping and dancing amidst a sea of angry, snapping pinchers. To hear them tell it, each claimed that the other jumped off first. I suspect that the two in combination had just sense enough to save their toes, for they did abandon ship, eventually, swam to shore, and retrieved their shoes before swimming back to the boat.
Living on the Strand in Oxford during my high school days I would often go soft-crabbing with my father on summer mornings, another delight that he and Pinney had shared together as boys, and one that was passed on to me. Calm days were best, when the surface of the water was still; “quiet as a looking glass,” is how my father wanted it. To carry our bounty we’d tie a small bushel basket inserted in an inflated inner-tube to one of our belts. Nets in hand we’d slowly wade across the shallows trying not to disturb the surface, the sun over our shoulders to minimize the glare. In waist-deep water, even deeper water sometimes, up to our chests, we could see the shimmering grasses on the bottom and the soft or shedding crabs half hidden in the aquamarine light. Often we’d get a dozen or more to sauté’ in butter for our family breakfast.
It grieves me that I am unable to share such a pleasure with my son. Recently I waded out into the water off of the Strand in Oxford. Just knee deep in the river I couldn’t see my feet, let alone see the mud on the bottom. Due to pollution, leading to “eutrophication”— an excess of nitrogen and phosphorous in our waterways— the clarity of the water has changed, diminished. And if I had been able to see through the water, the sad truth is that there are no grasses left for the peelers to hide in. Underwater grasses are the habitat for juvenile crabs, fish, and much other marine life. They pump oxygen into the water and keep it clear. In the Miles River and Eastern Bay, for example, just over this past decade we have lost over 75% of our underwater grasses. The ongoing degradation of our local tributaries is uniform and ubiquitous. Many good families who for generations have fished our waters have already lost their livelihoods. If pollution trends continue and we end up with foul and dead rivers, we may lose our way of life here altogether. Unthinkable as it may be, foul rivers could cause property values to crash, people of means to leave, and bring ruin to our local economy.
We can reverse these trends by changing our ways of thinking and our habits, and in that way, each take part in restoring and protecting the vitality of these precious rivers—our rivers—which instill in all of us a sense of wonder. At CREB, we urge such change, and on our website—www.crebconservancy.org—provide specific recommendations for each of us. Recently, for example, we have been conducting stewardship surveys. Upon request, our Riverkeeper will walk the property of waterfront landowners and draw up specific recommendations to improve a property owner’s stewardship of the land and river—ways to reduce nutrient runoff and erosion, increase indigenous buffers and habitat, all the while enhancing the natural beauty of the property. Participate in becoming a better steward. Advocate with us for stronger measures to protect our rivers. Leave behind, like Dr. Claggett, the legacy of having loved and cared for our natural heritage. Each of us one day will bid goodbye to this earth. But our rivers, fair or foul, will continue to meander through our lands and through the lives of our children. Small changes, if undertaken by all of us, can keep them fair.
Doug Gansler and Fish Kills – Sept. 23, 2009 Star Democrat
Attorney General Doug Gansler will be in town this Wednesday, September 23, to conduct a Miles River audit. His office asked us to assist in identifying key pollution issues that he might address. There will be a town hall meeting at 5 p.m. in the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum’s Steamboat Building. We encourage concerned friends to come and to arrive with productive ideas to reduce nutrients and polluting sediment in this important waterway.
His visit coincides, unfortunately, with the notice we just received of a major fish kill on the Neuse River in North Carolina. Fifty million fish are estimated to have died over a few days due to inadequate oxygen levels in the water. Photographs of dead fish carpeting the surface can be found on our website at www.crebconservancy.org. Larry Baldwin, the Lower Neuse Riverkeeper, reported that “The stench around New Bern is awful and that is true far downriver…”
The Neuse is the longest river in its state, opening up into Pamlico Sound. It suffers from problems similar to those in our local estuaries—pollution from excess nutrients and sediment, the majority of which comes from fertilizer and animal waste. Fish kills, of course, are not foreign to Maryland. In 2007, the Baltimore Sun reported 15 fish kills on the Bay from the Potomac River to above Annapolis. In 2001, there were 180 fish kills in our rivers, and some may remember what occurred in 1997 on the Pocomoke River. Parts of the tributary had to be shut down due to massive amounts of dying menhaden, rockfish, croakers and blue crabs.
Recently I read a book that I would recommend called The Unnatural History of the Sea, written by Callum Roberts. The book traces our depredation of the world’s fisheries beginning with the rivers of Europe in the Sixteenth Century through our unchecked pillaging of the open oceans during the Twentieth, but ends with a number of very hopeful examples of regeneration. Decimated coral reefs nearly given up for dead, used as experimental models around the world, have shown an amazing capacity to regenerate when given a chance to heal. One point that struck me from the book, though, is a description of what the author calls societal amnesia. Each generation is apt to view the environment that it was born into as natural or normal. Thus, today’s teenagers are not concerned that they can’t wade for soft crabs off the shore or fish for shad during the spring migration because they have never known what it is like to wade in clear water in this area or to witness the bounty of a healthy shad run. As Roberts explains it, “Shifting environmental benchmarks cause a collective societal amnesia…” The “gradual deterioration of the environment and depletion of wildlife populations passes unnoticed.” As a result, “our expectations diminish with time, and with this our will to do something about the losses.”
Reading about our rivers, past and present, is a way to fend off societal amnesia. Remembering the shad runs, the early mornings of soft-crabbing in the shallows, and the oyster reefs rising over the low tides is important. Acting to reverse the gradual deterioration of our rivers, however—something to prevent future catastrophic fish kills—is even more important. Let us welcome Attorney General Ganzler with appreciation for his interest, but also with a common demand that he and all of our state and local officials begin to truly enforce a moratorium on waterway neglect and abuse. No industry, business, or individual should be exempt. If our leaders hear our united commitment, they will act on it, and like the coral reefs, our waterways can and will regenerate themselves.
Duvall Farm and Bobwhite Quail- October 2009
Some might recall in times past that virtually any sojourn in the country would be accompanied by the familiar clear rising whistle of the Bobwhite quail (Colinus virginianus). Bob-white! or bob-bob-white! is the seductive call given by males in spring and summer. These days, it is not commonly heard. The Bobwhite quail ranges up and down the east coast and throughout the eastern portion of the country to Wisconsin and Texas. Over the last thirty years, though, their populations have plummeted as agricultural practices have intensified and taken over the grassy field buffers and woody thickets that once provided ideal habitat for quail.
In Maryland, populations of these birds have declined ninety percent during the past several decades. Such reductions are blamed on a loss of habitat combined with the short life-span of the fowl. Out of every 100 Bobwhite that are alive in the fall following their breeding season, typically 75-80 will perish over the next twelve months. When their basic needs of cover, food, and shelter disappear, the birds are unable to reproduce. One poor year can result in a large population decline. Several bad years in a row will decimate their numbers.
Back in June we had the pleasure of visiting Duvall Farm, located between Easton and Oxford, and it was unlike any farm either of us had toured. Instead of fields of beans or corn stretching across the landscape, three large, stepped, shallow ponds fringed with wetland plants and filled with ducks contour the land. Surrounding the ponds are meadows of warm season grasses bordered by brush piles and thickets that provide perfect habitat for Bobwhite. The wetlands and ponds are nature’s filters. The rainwater that falls on the farm flows into each pond successively before entering Trippe’s Creek. As we learned from Chip Akridge, the owner of Duvall, and as one might expect, the water leaving the farm and running into the creek is clear and clean. Oysters are thriving in the waterway near this flow. Wildlife and waterfowl are abundant. And numerous coveys of Bobwhite explode from the bush.
Many of our conservancy members own acreage that borders the water, and several of them have asked us to walk their property to assist them in finding ways to improve natural habitat and become better river stewards. Over the past several months while conducting these Stewardship Surveys we have helped owners with ways to address issues such as shoreline erosion, the control of invasive species (such as Phragmites), the overabundance of lawn grass, the need for natural buffers, and the possibilities for restoring habitat. Tall grass and thickets are just the type of habitat that the Bobwhite need and once established, these meadows require far less maintenance than turf grass. With an interspersion of wildflowers and shrubs—an enticement for butterflies and hummingbirds—these meadows provide a natural beauty that turf grass cannot approach.
Regarding land presently used for agricultural purposes, funds are available through USDA conservation programs to pay for up to eighty-five percent of the cost of converting fields to habitat. Additionally, landowners receive a yearly rental fee. Other programs are available for those with property not actively farmed. Visit our website at www.crebconservancy.org and contact us if you are interested in learning more about conservation initiatives that you can implement on your property—ones that will help filter water, reduce nutrient loading into our rivers, and provide habitat to attract wildlife.
River Clean Up and Responsibility- November 2009 Star Democrat
This past October 9, I participated in a river cleanup with Emily Cranwell’s second grade class from The Country School. We met at the Choptank River Fishing Pier Park adjacent to the bridge to Cambridge. The wind was blustery that day, out of the south, and the river teemed with whitecaps wildly rushing over themselves and hurtling towards us like, as James Joyce might have written, the flying manes of so many frothing horses. I was worried that these eight-year-olds might be deterred by such a gusty breeze. I was wrong. Skipping among the bulkhead stones they seemed to delight in the smacking waves and over the course of a morning managed to remove enough trash from the shoreline to fill nine 50 pound bags.
Drew Koslow, our CHOPTANK RIVERKEEPER, accompanied this expedition, but it was organized and led by Clarence “Doc” Kuntz, who serves as CREB Conservancy’s volunteer Director of River Cleanup. This past summer Doc was recognized by the town of Easton for his efforts in cleaning trash from the headwaters of the Tred Avon. As part of “Doc Kuntz Day” he was also inducted into Boy Scout Troop 532, as he had worked with the scouts on several occasions. Later Doc confided to me proudly that not only is he now the oldest member of Troop 532, but that he found in his closet an old scout shirt with a patch on it reflecting his attendance at the 1937 Boy Scout National Jamboree held in Washington. Doc is a sprightly eighty-six.
On October 26 Doc led another cleanup effort, this time with eighth grade students from The Country School, removing debris from the North Fork of the Tred Avon near the junction of St. Michaels Road and the By Pass. At one point the students discovered a large tractor tire embedded in the stream ditch. Doc and Drew both shook their heads and told them to leave it, that they’d never get it out. A half hour later Doc looked up and three kids were rolling the 150 pound tire to the trash heap. When ten days later Doc and I addressed Easton High School’s Ecology Club, Doc had prepared a power point presentation including a photograph of these kids rolling this tire up the bank with the caption: Never Underestimate the Power of Young People . He also showed an overhead photo of the town of Easton and pointed out to the students how the headwaters of the Tred Avon, the North Fork and the South Fork, seemed to encircle and hold the town in an embrace. Doc asked the ecology class to help find ways to return the river’s embrace by helping to keep it clean and free of pollution.
Lately, as I have been talking with various constituents around our river community, trying to understand better the issues that threaten our waterways and how we can best approach them, I have been taken aback a bit by the tendency to blame others for the decline of the rivers. The scientific evidence seems overwhelming, for example, that agricultural practices throughout the Delmarva Peninsula over the past fifty years have led to devastating nutrient loading in our streams. Yet several farmers I have spoken with seemed only interested in blaming others. “It’s the goose waste,” one farmer vehemently argued at the town hall meeting with Attorney General Doug Ganzler. Other farmers have argued to me that waste water treatment plants or lawn fertilizers are the real problem. Developers I have talked with who are seeking to obtain approvals for new projects similarly are equally quick to point out that agriculture is the problem, not development. And riparian landowners who want the right to cut down trees in the critical area, or fill in wetlands to improve their property, or heavily fertilize their lawns right down to the water’s edge argue that airborne deposition is the problem.
At CREB Conservancy (www.crebconservancy.org) we are trying to build an organization that will give the rivers in our community a voice— a strong voice, in fact. And if our rivers could speak, how would they answer all of these claims—claims that somebody else is always the culprit? There is, in fact, little to gain by pointing fingers at others. We are all part of the problem. Each of us needs to recognize this fact and find ways to change our own behavior in order to give our waterways the opportunity to heal themselves. When those kids, with Doc Kuntz cheering them on, rolled that tractor tire out of the wetland, they weren’t thinking about who to blame for putting it there; they were simply finding joy in rising to the challenge of helping to clean the river. And if an octogenarian and a bunch of second graders can take up the gauntlet and clean a riverbank on a blustery morning, the rest of us ought to find the will to do our part as well.
Those of us fortunate enough to live here have the opportunity to become familiar, even intimate, with this natural landscape of rivers, forests, and farms, to know it in spring and winter, in storms and sunshine, in the light of the pre-dawn over a waving field of wheat, and in the red flush of a falling moon. Partaking in such a place, studying the creatures that abide here, watching the osprey in a dive over Harris Creek, the rockfish spawning up at Gainey’s Wharf, the wild geese catching the wind, infuses our lives with beauty and a form of spiritual nourishment beyond measure. As a community, as farmers, builders, landowners and citizens, we must protect this gift that we all share. This requires us to act, to each make changes, to each make sacrifices. So be it. We must all become stewards of this legacy.