Someone said that I am too impatient and intense when discussing conservation of natural resources and pollution of water and air and destruction of fertile soil, the removal of trees and other vegetation from stream corridors and the general sloppiness of construction practices in Northwest Arkansas.
This Web log and some of my 30 other online sites offer evidence that there is truth in that comment. But this tendency didn't begin in the Internet era. It predates the first time I ever saw a television set or a computer and apparently before I had even mastered the skill of reading. Failing to cure the problem with the one story, I have been doomed to repeat my message forever, it seems.
Several times I have been asked when I became "an environmentalist."
One of my answers went back to age 3 when I asked my parents why there was no sidewalk on a muddy bayou bank in Louisiana and got an answer from my father that clarified what he thought should be a more appropriate attitude toward nature.
Another answer I have given was that seeing oily backwater areas of Caddo Lake with dead cypress trees when I was 13 years old made me feel strongly about destruction of the environment.
Those are sample memories. But there was no single epiphanic moment I can pinpoint. Heck, I may have been born that way. Logically, it would seem that every living thing is born with a love for the earth, because every living thing depends on the earth's resources for life.
Human beings, however, began to try to "improve" on nature. So far, there is no human invention or activity that I can cite as "improving on nature" without having to acknowledge side effects and drawbacks.
Nearly 6 decades hunting, fishing, hiking, floating streams, photographing every wild thing that will be still long enough and just generally enjoying the natural world has only confirmed what my father said to me all those years ago.
Anyway, I don't have any written evidence of the beginning of my lifetime devotion to the protection of natural resources, but I have subscribed to an online site that offers old newspaper articles from our local Northwest Arkansas Times, full-page views, actually, from decades-old microfilm records.
Here is a sample of something of mine published in that newspaper when I was half my current age:
"Tuesday, May 14, about noon there was a stream of
silt-laden, muddy water running across Razorbaek
Road at the corner of Nettleship Street. The mud was
coming from a construction site west of Razorback and
south of Nettleship.
"A witness asserted that the muddy stream was
two feet deep for a time a little before noon. The
water was substantially deeper than one foot at 12:15
p.m. When the heavy rain ended, a coating of slick
mud and gravel was left across most of the street.
"Water from that area drains into a small and
formerly clear and pretty stream which flows south
and east to help form Town Branch, which runs even-
tually into the West Fork of White River, near High-
way 16.
"Town Branch has provided many generations
of children a place to get their toes wet and to catch
crayfish and small fish. In fact, an occasional adult
angler may be seen stubbornly seeking catfish, bass,
or perch from its water."
Source at link below
This is the second part of a column that began on preceding page of the Northwest Arkansas Times.
Arkansas Ponds, Stream of Mud Page 9C of Northwest Arkansas Times May 26, 1974, with second part of Aubrey Shepherd outdoor column from Page 8. First column about the Town Branch and muddy runoff.
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