Pleasant Mound. That’s a good name for a cemetery, isn’t it? Conjures up images of a properly bucolic final resting place, with a songbird chorus celebrating each new dawn and a gentle breeze whispering through the treetops. And the view from the road doesn’t belie the promise.

I came in search of two lonely graves, tucked into a hollow along the boundary of the county forest. I hadn’t been able to find out who was buried there, and I hoped to photograph the stones in order to facilitate further inquiries. A dirt road loops around the back of the cemetery. I followed it as it climbed gently. Then, just as I crested the hill, I was greeted with this sight:

I’ve pieced this panorama together from several wide-angle photos, which explains the unusual perspective and the stitch lines. The cemetery proper is just out of sight to my right, with the nearest maintained graves at the top of the hill. The two gravesites I’d been seeking are hidden behind chest-high brambles, on the left of the panoramic photo. To their right, you can just see an informal dump for household refuse and garden waste trash, the whole scene dominated by a denuded hillside, a relic of heedless logging.

I started down the hill, wading through the brambles and swatting deerflies, very glad I was wearing heavy hiking pants and sturdy boots. I paused halfway to shoot a second panorama:

You can just see the periphery of the informal dump on the left. I was tired of doing battle with the brambles, so I changed tack, continuing downslope through an apparently open area, carpeted in leaves.

It was a bad decision. The leaves weren’t so much a carpet as a trap. I sank to my knees, while branches buried deep beneath the surface snatched at my feet and ankles. I staggered and lurched back toward the brambles, but not before I shot this picture:

The object on the left is a discarded mattress and box spring, surrounded by more grass clippings, leaves, and pruned branches. Plus plastic flowers in plastic flowerpots, several broken statuettes, paper cups and plastic plates from a picnic, and scraps of plastic sheeting. My long lens captured this pleasantly bucolic scene:

I turned away and headed toward my ultimate destination. More brambles lay in my path. By the time I reached the two lonely graves, my legs were bleeding freely, despite my pants’ heavy fabric.

Here I found the small gravestones that I sought, lost among the brambles. One bore the bronze emblem of the G.A.R., marking the final resting place of a veteran of the Union Army.

I shot a few more photos and spent some time with the graves, trying unsuccessfully to decipher the faded markings on their weathered stones. I was no closer to learning why they were set apart from all the others. Finally I pushed back into the brambles and up the hill, my original plan to walk out through the country forest thwarted by a seemingly impenetrable barrier of logging slash, the legacy of a recent clear-cut.

The sun shone down unabated, and the cool morning air was invigorating, but I couldn’t shake the pall of melancholy that had first descended on me while I fought my way down to the two lonely graves. Then I saw this:

More trash, dumped along the roadside within sight of the town transfer station, free of charge to all residents. And the crowning touch? This…

I stared at the discarded toy for a long time, wondering who it had belonged to and how it had ended up here, a rotting discard among the emerging Canada mayflowers. Pleasant Mound didn’t seem at all pleasant now.

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, the things you find when you look behind the concealing curtain can be painful. Still, if you ride a bike, hike, or paddle, or even if you just walk to the store to do your shopping, you can’t help but see what lies before you. And that’s not really such a bad thing, is it?

We’d like to encourage everyone to open their eyes and look around them. To that end, every third Monday of each month you’ll find a new “Beyond the Beauty Strip” feature at Tamia Nelson’s Outside. But don’t make us do all the work. If you have an example of something hidden from view that you think ought to be brought into the light, please send it along. It’s bound to be an eye-opening experience.

 
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The local dump—it’s actually a “transfer and recycling station,” but everybody still calls it a dump—is free to residents. You heard me right. There’s no charge for dumping your household garbage. But free is still too high a price for some folks. Want a for-instance? OK. Take a look at this little stream, only one half-mile from the dump:

A pleasant sight, isn’t it? A delightful little pocket wetland. But now look more closely. What do you see? An informal dump, littered with scrap wood (complete with exposed nails), long lengths of lawn edging, plastic sheeting, and broken flower pots, the detritus from somebody’s abortive home beautification scheme, no doubt. How ironic.

And that’s not all. The bank of the stream is carpeted in leaves, the accumulated lawn sweepings from who knows how many years gone by. And while these will decay in time, they all but choke the little waterway now—as well as concealing other, less benign trash.

Of course nature is fighting back…

And now it’s getting a little help. Someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to collect the worst of the refuse and prepare it for pickup:

The plastic urns are an especially nice touch. Of course, much more trash remains, buried deep under several years’ accumulation of limbs, leaves, and grass clippings. And much has been lost in the process—or more accurately—much has been squandered. A pocket wilderness has been despoiled. A tiny but productive wetland has been reduced to a dump. And all within walking distance of a real dump.

What do I think about all this? Well, many years ago, a friend with whom I was fishing looked up at the shoreline of the ‘Flow and saw an all-too familiar sight: a spreading fan of household garbage, reaching right down to the water’s edge. He shook his head silently. Then—apparently thinking that some comment was necessary—he muttered three words: “Real North Country.” Just that. “Real North Country.” And he shook his head again.

It was only three words. But it told the whole story—a story of people too lazy to cart their garbage to the dump, too stupid to understand the damage that their slovenliness does, and too blinkered to see the difference between beauty and blight. Real North Country, in short. That just about says it all.

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.

We’d like to encourage everyone to look through the beauty strip. To that end, every third Monday Tamia Nelson’s Outside will publish a new “Beyond the Beauty Strip” feature. If you have an example that you’d like to share, please do send it along.

 
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Spring came early to the Adirondacks this year. There’s still snow on the High Peaks, but sun and wind are gnawing patiently away at what’s left. Meltwater now swells the Saranac River and hurries it along toward Lake Champlain. The state highway (NY Route 3) between Cadyville and Riverview gives any traveler who cares to look plenty of chances to watch the water’s headlong rush.

No setting could be lovelier, could it? The scene is framed by white-capped mountains, towering spruces, and bare-limbed maples and beeches.

There’s history on offer, too. A state marker in a pull-off just west of the hamlet of Redford reminds passers-by that the river was here before the road:

And that it, too, was once a busy highway.

Of course, this was a long time ago. But even though commerce may have abandoned the river, mergansers still patrol the shallows, fishing for minnows to rebuild their reserves after the long flight north. There’s plenty of action elsewhere, too. Woodpeckers hammer tattoos on trees deep in the woods, while chickadees flit through the riverbank alders on the prowl for incautious insects. Farther out, islands divide one part of the river’s tannin-stained flow from another, but the enforced separation is short-lived, and the waters rejoin just downstream in a noisy, joyful embrace. And the pull-off gives the weary traveler a ringside seat for the whole show.

It’s a refuge of sorts for the tired motorist. An oasis of comparative tranquility in the hectic slog between work and home, home and work. A place to savor the everyday beauty the lies just beyond the highway shoulder. Or at least it could be. But a lot of the folks who stop here aren’t looking for a refuge, and they’re certainly not moved by the beauty of the place. Nope. They’re looking for somewhere to toss their garbage.

And the prospect doesn’t improve when you leave your car and walk toward the river. The slope down to the water is littered with old tires, waste paper, windblown plastic bags, discarded diapers, and empty oil jugs. The state marker describes this as a historic site. That may be true. It is true, in fact. But it’s only a half-truth, at best. Nowadays it’s really just a dump.

Other visitors have left their mark, to be sure, but the damage they do—if it can properly be called damage, that is—will be short-lived. The plastic trash will still be around long after the beaver-gnawn stumps have rotted away to dust.

Is that all? Just some garbage alongside the road? Well, it’s enough, isn’t it? Why do we blight the land we claim to treasure? But there’s something much worse than mere squalor here—strangling tangles of discarded monofilament. Once it was some fisherman’s best friend. Now it’s the deadly enemy of nearly everything that swims or crawls or flies. Leave No Trace obviously hasn’t made much headway in Redford. Or anywhere else in the state, for that matter. It seems we New Yorkers are happiest when we’re surrounded by our garbage. Go figure.

Does this matter? Soon new grass will spring up, wildflowers will bloom, and leaves will unfold from swelling buds on countless shrubs and trees. They’ll hide the trash from tourists’ eyes till winter once again strips the landscape bare. This will make the Chamber of Commerce happy. But hiding our garbage isn’t the same thing as cleaning it up, is it? Maybe you remember the old Garrison Keillor number, the one where he described the real motives for settling the New World. You know the history-book story, I’m sure: we came here seeking freedom from the oppressive constraints—social, political, and religious—of the tired Old World. And so forth. But Garrison had another, simpler explanation. He suggested that what we really wanted was a place where we could get drunk and throw away our garbage.

When I first heard this, many years ago, I laughed long and loud. But I’m not laughing now.

The Empire State? I don’t think so. There’s nothing very imperial about New York today. So maybe it’s time we took another look at the state flag. There’s that eagle, for one thing, its wings proudly outstretched. It’s got to go. And while we’re at it, let’s trash the pristine, free-flowing river at his feet, too. Then let’s replace them both with more fitting emblems. An overflowing trash can, say, and a monofilament-strangled goose. If New Yorkers no longer have any pride, we can least have truth in advertising. Whaddaya say?

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.

We’d like to encourage everyone to look through the beauty strip. To that end, every third Monday Tamia Nelson’s Outside will publish a new “Beyond the Beauty Strip” feature. If you have an example that you’d like to share, please do send it along.

 
Send a Comment