West of Riegelsville, where I live, are hundreds of acres of rolling fields, divided by dense windbreaks and small woods. I've seen grey and red fox, bear scat, and eagles, as well as tracks of everything that usually lives around here. There is a thick and palatial wetlands, home to huge populations of peepers and bullfrogs, and a shelter for the Merganser ducks who bounce between here and the river. It seems healthy and alive. In winter it is dramatic: cold and windswept, looking east the hills are cut steeply by the river, exposing the hard, ancient rock that is the heart of the Appalachian chain. Great clouds of mist rise from the river in spring and fall, and the sun glances the fields sometimes a full seventy minutes after sunrise, with bright swaths of frost remaining late into morning as the sun finally surmounts the cliffs of Warren County.
Early summer that
Come spring is the plowing, and then around Mother's Day, just as the lilac blooms, the farmers manure the fields. The wave of shit smell is intense, and not altogether unpleasant. At the very least, it means no houses are being built this year. I run throughout those fields much of the year; I know them well and have come to depend on them.
Then the planting. Field after field, in succession, corn, alfalfa, and in the upper fields, soy. And then, the herbicides. Roundup ready seeds, and Roundup applications. I loathe Monsanto.
Roundup's dangers are largely unknown- glyphospate is dangerous, but the other, "inert" ingredient are kept secret. With a company like Monsanto, which has a long history of playing fast and loose with the law, one should worry.
Worse, these seeds- or more specifically, the pollen, contaminates the gene pool of every other corn, soy, and alfalfa planting in the area. For instance, many think that organic soy is no longer possible, as all commercial plantings of it are mixed up with the Roundup Ready gene, the gene or genes that make the plant unkillable by the Roundup pesticide.
So this has driven me from the fields, and I now run in all directions, the Mariton Wildlife Preserve just north, the woods and old mill just south, the cliffs across the river. Me and the dog.
One sees pristine fields, but in truth, it is no less industrial than a factory. The soy and corn is silage, it is pig and cow food. Cow's shouldn't be eating corn (their stomachs do not handle it well), so one has to wonder about the effects down the line on milk and meat when genes are involved. In a nutshell, its the problem with how we produce food in this country.
But the frogs seems fine, for now. Soon I will be inspecting them for physical malformations, I've heard it happens. Also: the milkweed population is huge, and the colonies of insects seem healthy. I don't know. Maybe the dangers are overstated. I don't know.
Being pushed out into the surrounding lands have led to some interesting discoveries: one, the stand of Paw-Paw trees that some people at TAS tried to keep secret (to be honest, they told me where I could find it). It is a lovely little patch, with lots of little ones and some tall ones. They flower and don't set fruit for some reason. But I have a paw-paw secret of my own. I found a large, fruiting specimen. Very exciting. And I ain't telling where it is. Maybe.
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