Hopeful lessons from the colder north

President’s Day weekend has developed into a great family tradition of going to Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, New York, which is about an hour and a half drive north of New York City. People who live north of Albany may not consider that upstate but city dwellers have the right to call it “upstate” if it’s one inch north of the Five Boroughs.

Hiking and enjoying the outdoors should be done in all seasons. While it may be tempting to be house-bound during the colder months, too much time in doors will lead to a stifling madness and rotting sloth.

Among the activities there are guided hikes around the large Mohonk Preserve that surround the sprawling yet still rustic resort. Mohonk is surrounded by beautiful wooded mountains. My Father-in-Law and I went on a hike designed to track white-tailed deer. I thought maybe I could pick up some hunting tips that would serve me well later in the year.

We did see some deer tracks and learned a good bit about the eating habits and other behaviors of delicious deer, but there was a lot more to see. Our group’s guide, who is the official naturalist of Mohonk, gave us a lot more information that was useful and some that caught me by surprise. The one piece of information that struck me as particularly hopeful was this one:

When Mohonk was founded in 1869, the founders could look for miles in each direction and not see any trees. Almost all of the surrounding countryside had been clear cut. In the early 1900s, Daniel Smiley, from the family that founded Mohonk, noted the sighting of a porcupine on the surrounding woods, meaning that after 50 years of recovering, the forest was now healthy enough to support porcupines living there.

To see the surrounding countryside now one would think that it has been left in pristine condition since European settlers first came to these shores. But not so. The demands of a growing country took its toll on the natural beauty that we take for granted today, and the beauty of upstate New York is the result of a concerted effort of many years ago.

People fought to rebuild and restore these woods, many of them did so knowing that they would not live long enough to see the full benefits of their work. Today in New York State Adirondack Park is the largest publicly protected area in the contiguous United States, larger than Yellowstone, The Grand Canyon, and the Everglades combined.

It is a sign that with effort and time, we can recover and rebuild. That with enough planning and care, even a ravaged and abused land will recover if allowed. The Earth may be very troubled, but the Earth is also very resilient.

At a time when the country and world around us appears in total conflagration with unending violence and dysfunction, evidence of our ability to renew and improve our surroundings may appear to be in short supply. But the verdant areas not far outside our teeming metropolis is a point of evidence that people living in divisive times can still unite and do great things that will pay off for future generations.