Into the Light of Day

 May 24, 2022 

First Day at Lake George 

Today was filled with the kinds of chores that go with opening up a camp after winter: cleaning out the spaces just abandoned by the mice, working through a yard and garden that look lovely in nature but have to be recovered, making sure the water pump and hot water heater are ready to live in happy harmony, and wondering whether a repair here and there should be delegated to Flex Seal® tape instead of to my ham-handed craftsmanship.

 

Pulling my guide boat out of my neighbor’s small barn across the road was on my to-do list today if only to take stock of the repairs that I’ll need to attend to before I push off in July. I’ll trust Jason and Ian up at Adirondack Guide Boat to get at the structural stuff because to approach a boat of theirs with a roll of Flex Seal would be a felony, even if it worked.

Gentle Reader, I try not to pitch high and inside for commercial establishments in my blogs and I’ve never taken any sponsorship money, but I’ve GOT to tip my broad-brimmed hat to the folks up at Adirondack Guide Boat ( adirondack-guide-boat.com ) in North Ferrisburgh, Vermont. I’ve said it for fifteen years and over 4,000 miles of adventuring, and I’ll say it again: my guide boat enables me to take these trips. One can load it with gear, settle in with those beautiful nine-foot cherry oars, and sustain a good pace for hours on end through water and wind that might be otherwise troublesome. Guide boats were designed for hauling stuff, and their seaworthiness and efficiency make them a great choice for duffers like me. So before I get too far into this year’s adventure, I want to thank Ian and Jason for keeping me going. I hit things, I run over things, and I live a slovenly life while aboard, and once in a while my boat needs, shall we say, a tune up. 

Today’s barn find reminds me that I’m at that “once in a while” moment.  

So, Ian and Jason, thanks! You and your boats rock!

I’m a retired English teacher, and I see much of life these days through the lens of literature, much in the way I encouraged my students to experience the joys and travails of others’ lives through reading. Great books teach empathy. After two decades of working with young people, I’ve come to believe that empathy is the too-secret sauce of healthy relationships and responsible citizenship. 

Anyway, an English teacher might describe the recent developments in the proposed ProcellaCOR chemical situation at Lake George as the “rising action” of an increasingly troubling drama. For those of you following the story (and anyone interested in environmental stewardship in general and the challenges of working towards solutions in particular should be following this process), the Lake George Park Commission (LGPC) has been heading towards a test of ProcellaCOR, an herbicide proven to kill Eurasian milfoil, and the Lake George Association (LGA) has sued the LGPC and others to prevent the “test” until more lake-specific fact-finding can take place.  

In my last blog entry I wrote that “as truly excellent environmental organizations face off against the very authorities charged with the protection of the lake, I feel like I’m watching an argument between two best friends who agree on a Destination but differ in the all-important Route.” As I read and listen further, though, I’m not sure this situation is as simple and clear-cut as that. 

A sense of urgency around a timeline in ink has pressed the use of ProcellaCOR into the courts. The temperature of the debate is rising, and I would recommend the last two issues of the Lake George Mirror (5/13 and 5/20) as excellent reading for gathering insights on positions.  This is, indeed, “rising action” right here at home…

In a clear and compelling essay in the 5/13 issue of The Mirror, Jeff Killeen and Peter Menzies of the LGA offer the basis of the LGA’s objections to the impending use of ProcellaCOR. To the Mirror’s credit, a week later, on 5/20, Ken Parker and Dave Wick of the LGPC presented their position on the planned test along with significant context, and Anthony Hall’ typically excellent synopsis resides in a separate column. 

One would do well to read these articles back-to-back, along with Tony’s commentary, to gather foundational facts on the way to forming a responsible position. There’s a lot more to learn.

 

The background for ProcellaCor is compelling; it’s easy for a layperson like me to see it as a long-awaited silver bullet, one that has a track record elsewhere and advocates in high places. Yet it’s what we don’t know (yet) about its application in the lake - especially about the ramifications of even a successful test against milfoil- that concerns me. I myself hope that cool and collaborative heads prevail, taking the time necessary to answer what we don’t know (or to ask what has yet to be asked) while, at the same time, keeping the long term health of the lake as the paramount concern. 

On a more unified but no less important front, the LGPC is moving ahead with a focused and transparent process to establish basin-wide standards for septic system inspection, and this is uncontestable good news and vitally important. As faithful readers of this blog already know, my admiration for the folks at Keuka Lake is sky-high; their basin-wide commitment years ago to septic system monitoring literally saved their lake from dramatic decline (and saved their tourism, their property values, their health, and their sense of what it takes to do anything across many constituencies!). I hope that the Keuka Lake success story becomes a part of the Lake George public dialogue when this worthy initiative gets to that stage.

And, tomorrow, when I get in my boat for the first time this season, I hope I remember how to row.

More later….

Plastic

Our inland lakes have their troubles, that’s for sure: HAB’s, invasive species, wastewater and runoff management…the list is long and troubling, the problems relentless and complex. But yesterday I took a long walk on an isolated beach while here on a long-deferred trip, a stretch of golden Caribbean sand that faces the Atlantic and whose far shore is over 4,000 miles away. Looking up and away towards the horizon, nothing could have been lovelier: the azure sea breaks onto gently sloping beaches while pelicans and terns and the occasional frigate bird soar overhead like feathered sailplanes, hovering effortlessly in the on-shore breeze, checking out the buffet below.

I was first here fifty years ago as a college student tagging along on my girlfriend’s invitation to join her family on a sailing adventure. That girl is with me now, walking on this beach, saddened as I am about what we see half a century later. For rolling in the warm waters, undulating on the sand and basking at the high-tide line is a scourge of our time: plastic. As remote and as far-flung from activity as we are, the evidence of negligent prosperity is everywhere. I bend down to sift a handful of sand in my palm and feel a ridge of plastic, a “safety” ring of the kind that captures the cap of a bottle. Did it drift here from a cruise ship? From the Azores? From Europe? As we walk up to the high-water line, it is impossible to sift through a square meter of sand that does not carry some vestige of man. Our tailings are everywhere, broken down by abrasion and sun and time to almost granular sizes and stamp-sized shards. But it’s there, these plastic nodules, more dangerous to the environment and to animals in microscopic form than they were as bottles or intact rings. I’m told that the microscopic plastic residue is ingested by the “wild” fish that we eat and, once it’s in us, it’s come home, full circle. 

My impulse at the moment is to apologize to them, to the birds. 

I do. I’m sorry, I shout. We have spoiled our nest, and yours. It’s our doing, all of it. We’ve invented, produced, and even legislated our way to low- cost ultra-convenience. We’ve adopted our throw-away mentality as a habit, even as a right, oblivious to the fact that there is no “away” anymore. And the idea of a manufacturer being held fully accountable for the true life-cycle cost of its product would be laughable in Congress. If we can’t summon the resolve to control guns, for goodness sake, when will plastic show up on their to-do list? (Or, wait. If I looked into it, perhaps I’d find that we’re being more proactive about plastic than about guns as a public health issue?) 

It’s daunting to know that one is part of the problem simply by being a cooperative member of the species. My shouted apology to the birds is hollow, even hypocritical. The plastic in my life is ubiquitous even though I try to be mindful, environmentally responsible, and accountable. 

I’m ready to return home, back to inland lakes where “away” is as close as a neighbor’s shoreline and where our neglect, choices, and progress are more immediately apparent. The plastic and refuse I’ve seen on the beach today is distressing, especially since it has taken only 50 years to invent, manufacture, and fully distribute. 

There’s hope closer to home, I think, and models to show what is possible when we pull in the same direction. I’m grateful to the folks at Keuka Lake, for example, for the example of their shared resolve and action. In 2015, their eight municipalities rallied around the idea of the common good as they implemented a basin-wide policy to address septic and wastewater issues. It’s worked. I rowed their lake last summer and it was delightful, especially as I came to learn the story of their commitment and collaboration. Keuka Lake is an example of how the needs of a distressed eco-system can and must transcend political divides. It’s an idea that needs to arrive elsewhere, and everywhere, and soon.

Sorry about the rant, folks. But if you saw what I saw on the beach today, you’d be tappin’ the keys, too.

I’d better get on the water soon and start writing about a row, yes?      

 May 3, 2022

Baltimore

In seventy days I’ll start to row my Eleven Laps Around the Finger Lakes. My boat still rests in its winter quarters in the barn out back, my writer’s hands are soft, my arms feel like the jellyfish you see on the late-night ads for Prevagen, and my oars need a bit of varnish. But other than that, I’m rarin’ to go.

I’ve written about this before, namely the efficacy of mental preparation in lieu of physical exertion…me, sitting behind a keyboard with a cup ‘o Joe instead of flogging a rowing machine and lifting some weights. I could crow about how of late I’ve replaced the morning’s Apple Danish with a bowl of Grape Nuts, but you’d not be convinced that this is material progress. Neither am I.

But by mid-May I’ll be up at Lake George and will be able to “train” most mornings….as if rowing 2.2 miles up to Brian’s each morning for coffee and an Apple Danish (…oops. No, wait. Let’s make that a bowl of Grape Nuts) counts as training. But getting on the sliding seat and awakening the musculature, such as it is, will be a start. I’ll be ready.

Keen-eyed readers will note that my written-in-pencil plan has already changed by a couple of days. I’d like to time my lap around Keuka Lake with the weekend of the Antique Boat Show in Hammondsport (7/16). I was there last summer for the ultra- rainy day version, so I’m certain this will be a lovely weekend. Parenthetically, for those of you who have not visited either Hammondsport or the Finger Lakes Boat Museum https://www.flbm.org/, each is worth the trip. The Museum resides in the former Taylor Wine Cellar- an incredibly elegant site- and their collection ranges from fishing skiffs to Fay Bowens and everything in between.

Way cool, and wonderful people.

Right now my Lake World is abuzz with tension between those who plan to test Procella, an herbicide intended to eliminate Eurasian Milfoil on Lake George, and those who believe that the environmental impacts of Procella have not been sufficiently explored. It’s a tough but important debate. As truly excellent environmental organizations face off against the very authorities charged with the protection of the lake, I feel like I’m watching an argument between two best friends who agree on a Destination but differ in the all-important Route. There’s that old saw that says, “The best compromise is one where neither side is totally satisfied,” but the trouble with this one is that the next step is binary: the chemical is either going into the lake in a test, or it’s not. Right now, it seems like it will.  

I’ve got a lot of reading and listening and learning to do in this conversation because while milfoil is indeed a serious threat to the Lake, our hubris and urgency for quick fixes have gotten us into big trouble in the past. As a beloved business school professor once said in a class on Decision Analysis, “A decision not to make a decision is a decision.” My gut tells me that there would be no overt harm in holding off for now while conducting the research and testing sufficient to answer the questions on the table; the downsides of a too-hasty application are significant and the costs of deferring, for now, seem minor?

I read this article in the May 7^th edition of the Orlando Sentinel; compared to our Lake George situation, it’s an apples-and-oranges situation, I think, but like so much of today’s news, you have to read it to believe it…..    

Ya’ gotta love the language here, right? “…a few thousand….trash fish…were impacted…” After all, what’s “a few thousand” when there are probably so many more? And….what’s the fuss about, anyway? After all, these are “trash” fish. And does “impacted” mean…ummm, like, they were killed?

I’m imagining that this is the kind of story that those urging great caution in the Procella debate fear could emerge if we run too quickly towards a solution to our milfoil problem. But then, this is Florida. It could never happen here, right?

Like I say, there’s lots of reading and learning still to do as this topic explodes in my own back yard. I expect that I’ll learn a lot more about environmental challenges and policy and advocacy during my row across a wide swath of New York.

Last summer, for example, I learned how the Keuka Lake Association and other environmental allies, along with every municipality surrounding this 22-mile gem of a lake, banded together to enact effective septic regulations that will protect and preserve their lake for the future. Their commitment to these regulations came from their hard-won experience that prevention is a lot more effective – and a lot less costly - than remediation after it all goes bad.

What a terrific model of collaborative commitment the Keuka Lake community presents for Lake George…and others! Rhetorical Question: What will it take for the Lake George basin to act as the ecological entity that it is rather than as the political patchwork that we have made it? Keuka discovered that Harmful Algae Blooms (HAB’s) are better prevented at the source(s) then combatted at the shoreline. I worry that unless and until we adopt the best practices of our neighbors, we’ll have to live through the tragedy of environmental degradation before we get to the work of remediation and recovery, even if that will be possible. What a shame.

Whew. Enough for now. Gotta’ get back to training for the row. This is about a row, remember? J