The Loss Of A Good Friend

On Tuesday evening, August 1, I heard the first of this summer's katydids. I heard the katydids singing in both the Sinnemahoning and Cameron areas that evening. Interestingly, when I checked my notes, August 1 was the same date that the katydid made its debut last year.

From now until the first hard frost of autumn, the serenades of this insect cousin to grasshoppers and crickets will fill the nighttime air, offering entertainment to anyone willing to take the time to listen.

To me katydids are a symbol of summer. August just wouldn't be the same without them. Like fresh sweet corn and plump, juicy blackberries, without the nightly katydid choruses, the second half of summer would be missing an integral component.

The katydid is a prophet of sort. When it announces its presence on the summer scene, it speaks of what is to come. Its choruses faintly hint of the coming autumn and of cooler nights. The elk rut, bucks shedding their velvet, and archery season are just around the corner, it proclaims to those who willingly listen, to those "who have ears to hear and eyes to see."

If you close your eyes and listen close enough to this insect's cadence, you can almost smell a crisp clear autumn afternoon. Concentrate hard enough and you will see a landscape of beautiful yellow goldenrod fields and brightly colored maples. Listen closely and you'll see a bushy-tailed gray squirrel high in a hickory tree or a large buck crunching through dry leaf litter.

The arrival of the katydid shows us that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It offers hope for the autumn lovers and to those who could live without the heat and humidity of summer. And I don't know about you, but I could use a reminder that the weather is not always going to be as hot as it was this past week.

----------------------------------

On June 30 and July 1 I lost a close friend. For him it was a slow, agonizing death. It was a terrible thing to happen to anyone, but for it to happen in the prime of life-nobody deserves that. The worst part is that there was nothing I could do to help. I just stood by and watched helplessly as life ebbed away. Everyone in Cameron County lost a friend the day the Driftwood Branch and Portage Creeks were flushed with pollution.

Like many deaths, I try to remember the good times and remember the stream for what it once was. I was fortunate to have spent the last two days of its life canoeing the Driftwood Branch from Cameron to Huntley.

I'm not much of a canoe enthusiast, at least not competitively like many in our county, but I do enjoy a relaxing, slow pace trip down the river. With flows up during the end of June I decided to take advantage of the situation.

Traveling a stream by canoe gives you an entirely different perspective. You understand the true nature of the river, because you travel it downstream, the way its water flows every day. You round each bend, just as the water flowing in the stream does day in and day out.

Those two days in particular were gorgeous. The Driftwood Branch was teaming with life. Kingfishers, blue and green herons, mergansers, and other waterfowl were in abundance on the stream. Fish rose for the hatching mayflies. We even saw two bald eagles on June 29, one immature and one adult. The adult was perched on a hemlock tree over the stream. We practically floated underneath it before it flew away-an incredible experience, one likely not to be seen on the Driftwood Branch for some time. On Friday we saw the adult eagle again.

It is by these images that I will try to remember the Driftwood Branch. I will try to remember it as a bountiful stream teeming with all kinds of life.

On the afternoon of Friday June 30th when we canoed the Driftwood Branch I knew the pollution was coming. Yet, I knew there was no way it had made it downstream this far, so we canoed anyway. It was weird being on the stream, seeing it all full of life, yet knowing that this was all about to change.

The actual devastation far exceeded anything I would have imagined at that time. But then again, we were being told that about 16,000 gallons of sodium hydroxide solution had spilled, not the 44,000 gallons that actually went into the stream.

I try to remember the river as it was, but what mostly comes to mind are the images of thousands of dead fish that were laying throughout the stream on the morning of July 2.

I hope someday the stream will recover. I pray that my children will know the same Driftwood Branch that I knew growing up. But I have no solace now. This past week as I walked the stream and looked down into its waters, it was devoid of life except for a small minnow or two, but these were too few and far between.

----------------------------------

When Bill Crisp wrote this past week in the Cameron County Echo that there would be a ripple effect as a result of the loss of the fish community in the Driftwood Branch, he hit the nail on the head. Regionally, this is an unbelievable loss to have fish populations wiped out over so many miles of streams.

I can't even begin to comprehend how this will completely affect the regional food chain. Mergansers, blue herons, kingfishers, and any other animal that relies on fish will shift their efforts to small tributaries of the affected streams. Fortunately for the wild trout in these streams, flows have been up helping them to avoid such heavy pressure.

Additionally, the loss of the Driftwood Branch fishery will have economic ripples throughout the area.

Unfortunately it's going to be a long road to recovery.