It’s pond season again.
I walked over a couple of days ago on the warm Memorial Day, thinking to test the waters—actually, my mettle—and found the latter lacking. I waded out through the yellow pine pollen scum that had blown against the lee shore and stood there kneedeep thinking over the possibility of full immersion. And then thought better of it. Maybe tomorrow, was the conclusion I came to.
I know people who have been swimming since that warm day or two in late April and even earlier. They simply will get in that water, even if, in my view, with water temperatures in the 50s and low 60s, it’s jumping the gun. I find the spiritual benefits of a swim seriously compromised by all the girding of loins, macho plunging and sputtering that usually accompany premature immersion.
It’s been almost eight months since my last swim here in early October. I was one of three pond habitues lying on the dock of the only cottage on our side of the pond, now abandoned by its summer people . The departure in late morning of a spell of bad weather had made the trip to the pond irresistible, but the same north wind that blew away the clouds and rain was making it hard to keep warm after the chilly swim.
A sort of informal committee of the pond people, we last faithful remnant talked about recent, disturbing changes. After 15 or more years of blocking access to a steep bank to restore and preserve the vegetation, the snowfencing had been removed by the Seashore park. That was the good news. The bad news was that it had been replaced by numerous little mock traffic signs featuring the familiar red octagonal: “STOP. Vegetation here grows by inches, dies by the foot. [Get it, the clever little pun?] Human trampling kills plants and harms the pond. Don’t walk here while things grow back.” Grow back? What had the years of fencing been all about? About every ten feet there was one of these signs.
The original erosion of that bank that the fencing was meant to repair was limited by the relatively light use. (You can’t drive to this pond.) Any wear-and-tear seemed to this longterm pond watcher nowhere near as obnoxious as the fence itself. But the fence had weathered over the years to being almost acceptable. The devil we knew was far preferable to this latest touch.
It had us shaking our heads. What are they thinking, those park sign perps?
What would Edward Abbey have done to those signs?
The park is concerned about pollution by trophy house, and they should be. But they do a certain amount of polluting themselves. These signs feel like a deliberate attempt to trash the area: If the message doesn’t do the trick, we’ll drive ’em away with the sheer ugliness of the signs. It’s offensive, an affront. It’s bad manners.
Nobody who cares or regularly uses this pond could treat it so cavalierly. There’s something both arrogant and irrational about park policy: people who never come to the pond except to police it and erect signs (and once in a while test the water), who care about it, if at all, in the abstract, preaching conservation and pond-cherishing to those who have cared about it for decades.
The best thing the park could do is recruit local pond users to consider what are the problems, if any, and what, from the point of view of those in regular and intimate contact with the pond, should be done about it.
A starting point for a more creative relationship to the pond would be to consider the wisdom of paths. Instead of trying to keep people out of an area, which doesn’t work anyway, replace the littering-by-signs with one discreet sign: PLEASE STICK TO EXISTING PATHS.
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