So my sister Eileen took me on a whitewater rafting trip almost as soon as I got to Upstate New York for the month of July....we drove up to the Adirondack Mnts to go whitewater rafting on the Hudson River. The trip was fun...I'd never been whitewater rafting before, and it was a hellava good time going over catagory five rapids in an inflatible rubber raft with a group of strangers, two of whom had been in Iraq; but it was also depressing in a way....for one thing, the rapids we encountered where entirely man-made. Like most rivers these days, the Hudson is a series of dams...dams used to prevent flooding of farmland, dams built in the days when loggers used to float logs downstream from the Adirondacks, and because they where dependant on river levels being predictable, so that they could float their logs when they need to, they built dams. Now logs don't get floated down the Hudson anymore (they are trucked out of the Adirondacks instead, we passed quite a few trucks carrying giant trees both on our way into and out of the park, and as always happens when I see dead trees, I got choked up,) but it was decided the dams could be used to spur the tourist industry, since the rivers where controllable for rafting.
So the tour guide seemed noticably nervous when I asked a few well-placed questions about the dams and the environmental impact of the dams...she stammered "well the dams where already here, and people are used to the water levels changing predictably, so we decided we can make use of them for rafting..." (She said nothing about wiether or not nonhuman residences of the Adirondacks are used to the predictably falling water levels or not, and how the dams effect them.) Anyway, I felt a little guilty after that that I was on the raft trip, but my sister paid for it, and it was a wonderful way to be out in the woods with my sister, so I went along. Also, I was disturbed by all the talk about how much the rocks along the river bank where worth....not that they where beautiful, or amazing in their own right, but that they where worth such and such and that this quarry and that quarry brought much of the "needed income" into the Adirondack economy. My brain kept screaming "how much more exploitation can go on?! Here we are in a beautiful state park, one of the only forested places on the East Coast, and we are still trying to get as much 'economic value' out of the rocks and trees and river as possible!?" Will we ever learn? Will we ever change?
In other news, my sister gave me her old suturing kit and taught me a thing or two about suturing; with a little more practice, I feel confident that I could suture a wound with no problem, a skill that comes in handy in both midwifery and probably in my life as an activist.
Love ya,
Carrot
