My Adirondack guide grandfather practiced the “leave no trace” ethic before it was a trendy mantra for people who got graduate degrees in trail maintenance. “Leave a place as if you will be coming back to it again and again,” he’d say. Nothing angered him more than people behaving badly in his woods or along his river. And behaving badly went beyond leaving wads of charred aluminum foil in fire pits and cigarette butts alongside the trail. Behaving badly included wanton destruction, from deer-jacking to indiscriminate tree cutting. I can just imagine what he’d have had to say if he found the ill-informed cutting that a chainsaw-wielding trail maintenance crew left along The River’s trail:

 

 
To give you an idea of the scale, those are mature trees crossing the picture. The near tree is moss-covered and fell during a windstorm years ago, but the trees in the far side of the photo were dropped by maintenance crews early this fall. Most are beech trees, but a few maples were dropped, too, and there’s no rhyme nor reason for the felling. Here are some other shots:

 

 

 

 

 

 
The felled trees were all healthy. The beech trees were at least 80 years old—they’re slow to mature, and don’t begin to produce a yield of beechnuts until about the age of 40, when they provide an abundance of fruits which are vital for the survival of woodland animals and birds. Because the trees were killed only weeks before their mast was due to fall, the beechnuts didn’t ripen and are therefore lost. The canopies of the felled trees now form an impenetrable tangle where the forest floor once was beautiful and lush with the blooms of jewelweed, jack-in-the-pulpit, and trillium, with tall ferns growing throughout the area. Now they’re unlikely to re-grow next year, because brambles will shoot up early in the year and choke the woodland floor.

Before the cutting, this portion of the woods was alive with birds and small animals. Chipmunks rustled in the undergrowth, red squirrels churred from the canopies, and occasionally I’d see a fox or cottontail if I was out early enough. More warblers than I can name would flit among the limbs, hunting insects and singing their sweet songs. But since the cutting, I’ve seen no more small animals, and the woods are quiet save for the growl of chainsaws.

 
How many of us take the time to look beyond the beauty strip? How many of us really want to? Aren’t many of us, much of time, content to avert our eyes? After all, what you find around and beyond the strip of natural beauty can be painful. If you ride a bike on our public roads, hike the trails, walk to do your shopping and pick up mail, or paddle on public waterways, than maybe you’re less likely to look the other way.

I’d like to encourage everyone to look through the beauty strip. To that end, every third Monday Outside Up North publish a new Beyond the Beauty Strip feature. Here’s this month’s edition.

 
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