Take a walk on the wild side
- Randi Pokladnik
- May 17, 2018
- 2046
Recently our son gifted me with a hand-crafted pendant that was inscribed with the words, “Going to the woods is going home.” Most of my friends and family know that being close to the forest has always been extremely important to me. As I wrote in one of my previous columns, a strong connection to the forest has always made me want to protect and nurture the forest ecosystems.
I, along with many other environmentally conscious people, often get caught up in our struggles and battles. Sometimes we lose sight of the reason we are pouring our hearts and souls into these battles. When that happens to me, it is a wake-up call. It’s time to go home to the woods.
This week my husband and I decided to go back and visit some new areas of West Virginia as well as return to some familiar places. We stayed in a little cabin in Holly River State Park, about a four-hour drive from our home.
This park was one of the state parks that was recently in the news. The West Virginia senate had proposed lifting an 80-year ban on commercial logging in West Virginia’s state parks with SB 270. That meant most of the parks could have seen logging of their big trees. Luckily the immense public outcry from all across the state and other states as well stopped this legislation from being considered.
Holly River State Park is near the center of the state in Webster County. The area where the park is located was once denuded by the extensive logging that occurred all across the state in the period from 1890-1920. Old black-and-white photos show millions of acres of bare hillsides with little to no topsoil left.
For a short period of time afterward, the area was used for farming, but this practice was abandoned as the soils were too poor to support many crops. Shortly after, restoration of the land was initiated by federal and state governments.
The state park system was started in 1929. The land which is now Holly River State Park was salvaged in 1937 for the purpose of reforestation and stream reclamation. The first cabins were built in 1938. Throughout the years additional buildings were added as well as a unique octagon-shaped pavilion in 1992.
If you want to see big trees, this is a great place to go. I needed my binoculars to identify the trees as their branches were so far up I could not make out the leaf shapes with my un-aided eyes. There are numerous creeks, rock outcroppings and some waterfalls in the park itself. The park is nature at its finest.
The next leg of our trip took us to what one might call “nerd heaven,” The Green Bank Observatory and Science Center. Although the town of Green Bank is deep in the forested hills of West Virginia, its mission is “out of this world” so to speak.
This is the home of the world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope, the Green Bank Radio Telescope. Built in 2000, the 17-million-pound telescope is not an optical telescope. It receives the radio frequency portion of the electromagnetic spectrum emitted by astronomical objects. The telescope parabolic dish is 2.3 acres in area and is constructed of reinforced aluminum panels.
All of the eight telescopes in the observatory are radio telescopes, not optical telescopes. Like giant ears, they listen to incoming radio waves. One of the many ongoing projects conducted at the site involves Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence.
Because the scientists are looking at radio waves from very far away locations, any type of interference must be reduced if possible. Therefore, the observatory also is the center of the National Radio Quiet Zone. Designated in 1958 by the U.S. government, this area is a 13,000-square-mile zone where minimal radio signals are allowed.
The entire time we were in this region we could not get cell phone service. That meant no internet and no texting. The interference that electronic devices create in radio telescope data collection is so sensitive that even a faulty microwave or a FitBit can cause errors in the data.
After we left the observatory, we took a giant step back in time to a place that might resemble what West Virginia looked like before saws felled her old-growth forests. Atop the mountains near Durbin, West Virginia, close to Gaudineer Knob, sits a small pocket of old-growth red spruce. This 140-acre tract of virgin and second-growth spruce managed to escape the logging that timbered most of West Virginia’s forests.
Many of the red spruce are well over 250 years old. Unfortunately time, weather, diseases and insect invasions have weakened the old growth, and much of the giant trees have fallen. The decaying bodies of these giants provide nourishment for the next generation of spruce.
Being able to observe an old-growth forest that has seen little to no interference by the hand of man is very rare. Most trained foresters are wedded to the “management” paradigm, insisting that forests cannot survive on their own without harvesting, herbicides and the hand of man.
Gaudineer’s old-growth spruce counter that argument. Although they are slowly dying, they are doing so via a natural process of succession and regeneration. In spite of all the technology that man has developed, he cannot duplicate the marvels of nature. This forest serves as an example of that untamed wildness.