Climb Out & Scream (Pt. 1)

In a small dirt lot somewhere in Northeastern Missouri, I cracked the window of the rental car and let in a sound. It was a wavering buzz, a chorus of many singers emanating from the trees on this stiflingly hot early summer day. This was a sound I'd driven well over a thousand miles to hear. I looked over at my partner in the passenger seat and cracked a maniacal grin. We weren't too late after all!

Periodical cicadas or "magic cicadas" represent seven different species of cicada that emerge on 13 and 17 year cycles. 17 different broods emerge of separate cycles all across the Eastern United states. In 2024, two broods emerged simultaneously in the Midwest and South- the Northern Illinois Brood and the Great Southern Brood. Collectively, millions of cicadas emerged from the earth, where they spent more than 99 percent of their life, shed their nymphal shucks, and went about doing what sexually mature cicadas do best: screaming and having sex. That's probably what I'd want to do if I'd just spent the last 13-17 years living in the soil too, quite frankly.  Some people aren't particularly big fans of the sound or the bugs themselves. Personally, I think those people suffer from a severe negative attitude problem. How lucky are we that such an incredible ecological phenomena occurs in our backyard? It's such an incredible display of life, a vitally important occurrence in the habitats in which these bugs persist. Throughout parts of their range, some periodical cicadas are not doing well at all. Charles Lester Marlatt, who first assigned Roman numeric designations to the existing broods (as well as 13 others that don't actually exist) noted dramatic declines in the very brood that should emerge in the Connecticut River Valley, attributing it to deforestation and the introduction of house sparrows (Marlatt, C.L (1907). "Summary of the Habits and Characteristics of the Cicada.") Unfortunately, Brood XI was last seen in 1954 and is now extinct, an outright ecological catastrophe most southern New England residents are wholly unaware of.

As I've written about in this blog before, I'm a cicada addict. I adore periodical cicadas and everything about them, from their ornate, jewel like wings to their mechanical sounding call, to their seemingly bumbling flights as they try to evade predators. Of course, it doesn't hurt that fish like to eat them. Fish really like to eat them. Here in Missouri, I was hoping that the fish that would be really liking the cicadas would be grass carp. In North America fisherman often have a pretty poor understanding of what carp are In this area in the midwest it's made no better by a plethora of large native suckers that look vaguely like common carp, and a number of introduced Asian carp species, including grass carp. Grass carp are a bit different than the species that are often in the headlines as Asian carp, which are silver and bighead carp. Grass carp, Ctenopharyngodon idella, are the only species in their genus and look, at least to the trained eye, absolutely nothing like common carp. Nor do they act like common carp, come from the same part of the world (grass carp are from far Eastern Asia, common carp from Europe and far Western Asia. Though both species feed on or near the surface semi frequently, grass carp are built for it a little better with a terminal mouth while common carp have a more inferior mouth (this means that their mouth is on the bottom of their face, not that their mouth is worse). Both are detrimental ecologically in a variety of different ways. Both are also a heck of a lot of fun to catch on a fly rod, but to this point in my fly fishing carrier I'd caught exactly one, this monster from a park pond in the northeast: 

I really wanted more, and I really wanted to catch one without having to throw a bunch of bits of bread in the water. These calling cicadas were singing a promise to me. They were singing a promise that I was surely about to find my fix. I trotted through the brush towards the river, cicadas blundering into branches in their haste to get away from me. Upon reaching the edge of a high clay bank and peaking over, it was immediately apparent that they bugs weren't lying. A half a dozen or so grass carp cruised up and down a bubble line, picking off bugs as they went. They weren't alone though. They were joined by roughly the same number of shortnose gar, a fish species I'd gotten to see for the first time with my friend Hamilton Bell earlier in the week down in Arkansas. They'd snubbed me then (read: I blew a lot of shots), but this opportunity seemed almost too good. And they were eating bugs? What a wonderful surprise! This seemed uncharacteristic for a gar species, but I'm not one to turn down an opportunity at an odd species on a dry fly. Firs though, I had to rush back to the car to rig up. My grin was now twice as maniacal.

There's some minor complexity to catching cicada eating fish, but it isn't so technical as to be prohibitively difficult. Certain fish seem to have certain preferences at different times. I've never gotten carp to eat sinking cicadas well, though I'm sure it happens. On the tailwaters of Maryland during the 2021 emergence, I caught fat brown trout on some sinking cicadas, to exclusion of the dry fly during the midday surface activity lull. I had yet to get the opportunity to put a cicada in front of a grass carp, or a shortnose gar for that matter, but given the methodical behavior of these fish I anticipated a long drift being favorable to a splat-down, and probably minimal action on the fly. And that's exactly what I got. In fact, I was about to have two days of the best dry fly fishing I'd ever experienced. These grassers behaved much like big brown trout do. They chose the same sorts of lies a trout would, holding position in faster water and cycling in the froggy spots. They were selective but not overly so, and they fought incredibly well. They fought astoundingly well too. It was everything I could have asked for. (Short video available to Patreon supporters: www.patreon.com)

I knocked a couple grassers out really promptly, but was immediately keen on sticking a gar. It didn't take too long to find willing participants to grab the fly, they were in fact extremely keen on that, but it did take a little while to get one willing to stick (read: I whiffed a whole bunch of them). When I finally did, it was an elevating moment. My first of a gar species, my third gar species, on a periodical cicada dry fly. That just seemed absurd. But these fish were clearly keen on the bugs. They were setting up much like the grassers were, though they favored cruising the slower water over stationing up. Some were holding lies though, finning in the current and picking off cicadas as they floated by. They showed notable preference for the bugs that were still alive and moving, and in turn for a fly that was twitched like the living naturals. It was just the coolest thing, so cool I had to know if this was a well know phenomena. I reached out to Dr. Solomon David, biologist and gar specialist at the University of Minnesota about what I was seeing. Not only did he respond promptly confirming that shortnose gar are indeed known to feed intently on periodical cicadas, he told me that one of the only pieces of formal scientific literature on the species delved into their behavior while feeding on magicicadas: American Midland Naturalist Journal: Shortnose Gar - Territorial Defense of Profitable Pool Positions. 

How friggen cool is that? Solomon David then asked if I'd be able to contribute any data. I'm always looking for an excuse to provide something that could be of use to fisheries science. If I'm going to go around pricking all sorts of fish in face for fun, some sort of good should at least come of my efforts. Subsequently, for the rest of my time in Missouri, every shortnose gar I caught was accurately measured and photographed. Their behavior prior to capture and exact location were recorded, and I took photos of gar in feeding lanes, cicadas on the water, and overall shots of the river. It added some work on my part, but that isn't unfamiliar. I spent many formative years observing river herring runs to get visual estimates on returns in streams without fish ladders. The amount that can be learned by approaching fish with a scientist's eye, looking for a quantitative analysis, is significant. Fisherman aren't always good scientists, arguably rarely. The goal of catching fish doesn't always necessitate understanding exactly why fish do what they do. It doesn't take a thorough understanding of fish, across all sorts of species and waterbodies, to catch enough to be satisfied. Anglers are often not even that good at telling what species of fish they're holding in their had when they do catch one. So taking a very scientific approach, engaging with the ichthyologists and fisheries biologists, and participating in the collection of data that might further the scientific understanding of fish and their habitat presents a lot of opportunities. I'll jump at the opportunity to take part any chance I get. 

They way gar take a fly has always amused me. It's almost adorable, bordering on comical at times. With these cicadas it was no different. The fly would plop down, perhaps two or three feet ahead of the fish. Either it would respond to the fly landing or I'd twitch the bug. The gar would turn, angling toward the fly, and nose right up to it. By nose up, I don't mean put their snout under the fly. They get it next to their eye almost, next to their jaws on one side of their head or the other. If they could they'd probably be squinting at the fly at this point. If a moment passes and the gar doesn't  commit, I'm inclined to give the fly little twitches. This is usually all it takes, the gar's fins kick a little and it closes whatever gap it has between it and the fly. Then is snaps at it, opening its mouth and jerking its head to the side. Can you picture it? I've seen it countless times from four different species of gar, everywhere from Vermont to Florida to Arkansas. It's very specific, and frankly very funny. 

My satisfaction with life is heavily contingent, probably too contingent, on laborious exploration of places I've never been with either a fly rod or a camera in hand. There isn't necessarily anything relaxing about it at all, sometimes I wear myself down to zero. I beat myself to a pulp wading twelve miles of river one day and had to pull over on the side of the highway because the cramping was too severe to drive through. I forget that my body even exists in favor of paying attention to everything else instead. And when an event is ephemeral and temporary, or my time in a place is short, I can be almost frantic about it. Not so frantic that I don't take time to be completely stationary though. 

Standing on a high, sloping bank above one long, slow pool, I could see a few grassers larger than the one's I'd been catching working the surface. The rock below my feet was sheet thin layers of sedimentary strata, layer down millennia ago when this whole place was underwater. Not much had altered it since it had hardened as it was near perfectly level and didn't who much at all in the way of signs of metamorphosis from heat or pressure. The river had carved at it though, revealing the time it had been laid as step-like layers sloping down to the riverbed. On top of it was a less old form of the same process- layers of sand and clay that had been dropped by the river when it was younger. The rock made a good seat, I decided to watch the fish feed for a bit and take in as much information as I could while I had the opportunity. The larger fish were definitively wearier than the smaller ones, and didn't spend as much time hovering right under the surface. Since the water was extremely turbid they were only really visible as dark, long smudges with wavering tails. Some of the little ones stayed up and cruised around. But the larger ones, some of which were probably in the high 30 inch class, rose up from the gloom and held position for a moment or two, picked off a couple cicadas when they came by, and then sank back down. They were clearly favoring proximity to shad, though they didn't seem to need to be in it all the time. Fish treat shadows as cover,, because it is. I couldn't see them well at all when they were in the shade, but could see them fairly clearly around the periphery of it. They seemed to want to remain close to that shadow as a quick escape if it became necessary. Eventually sensing a pattern of movement with the larger fish there I eased down to the water's edge. From that level seeing the fish before they surfaced to eat was nearly impossible, so I waited with fly line in hand to make a quick but long cast. When one topped, I let it fly. The bug landed, a few seconds passed, and white lips opened around it. I held ground until the lips closed and the head turned to go back down and lifted the rod. The pool then erupted as an angry grasser mad it's feeling about being deceived known. 

I repeated the process over an over that second day, scrambilng up and down steep banks, watching fish, and walking river in deck boots and shorts, hunting and hunting some more until I was fairly satisfied with the results. I'd come, I'd seen, and I'd caught. I watched birds hunt the cicadas and seen a few snakes slide away into holes. I'd done some minor gar science and bent an eight weight on more grass carp than I'd caught up until that point prior. Understanding that the time had come to push northward, we said goodbye to Missouri- as place I'd not had anywhere near the respect for that it deserved until driving it's entire extent from south to north. But there were more bugs, more fish, and more places to be. The clock is always ticking, and I needed to find more to keep that maniacal grin on my face. Though there was a tornado to be chased in Nebraska first, the next stop on the cicada pilgrimage was Illinois. 

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Courtney, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor and Eric for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

Vernalis

 It took a fair bit of effort to get to the cleared, grassy hilltop my partner in field herping, Bruce, and I walked on warm, sunny late summer eve. Admittedly, Bruce had done most of the research, pouring over research papers, range maps, and even birding forums for what clues they might contain. It that was careful online sleuthing, more than a few highway hours, a night in a junky motel, then a variety of other chaotic transport that had led us to this place. Bruce and I were probably a few hundred feet apart at the time, just walking slowly in the grass and looking at the ground in front of us. To any passer by, we probably looked like we were looking for a lost wallet or phone. That wasn't our task though. We were looking for one of the most striking native animals in the northeast, and I was about to see one in the weirdest way. 

I zigzagged along, slowly, looking carefully for something pretty much the same color as the grass. I happened to look up though, in the general direction of a utility building. It was a fairly plain, windowless structure with reddish lap siding. There was about a foot and a half gap between the siding and the ground below it, and I watched as a roughly ten inch long bright green snake dropped out from the gap under the siding to the ground and slithered quickly into the vegetation. Watching this from a distance of a couple hundred feet, I cracked a smile and chuckled lightly. I wouldn't have believed it if someone told me I would see such a thing, but this place was so loaded with smooth green snakes that it wasn't as shocking as it might otherwise be. 

The smooth green snake, Opheodrys vernalis is native to the Northeastern US, Canadian Maritimes, great Lakes Region, and Upper Midwest, as well as scattered, discrete populations in Northern Mexico, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico. They are small, dainty snakes that typically max out at 20 inches long, most being quite a bit smaller than that. Their standout trait is their bright green coloration, which can vary from olive to almost chartreuse. There's a few examples of tan colored smooth green snakes from Wisconsin, affectionately called smooth tan snakes by some herpers. When a bright green vernalis dies, the yellow pigmentation in their scales breaks down and the snake turns blue. Both living and dead, a smooth green snake is a creature that looks out of place in the northeast. Finding one, particularly for someone like myself that absolutely adores wild animals and appreciates the aesthetics of a brightly colored scale and the way light plays on it, looking under a stone and seeing an almost absurdly bright green snake in a perfect coil underneath never fails to inspire awe. Smooth green snakes look like they should come from the rainforest. And yet Bruce and I had traveled substantially northward to try to see as many as we could. Even before that one dropped out of the side of the building, we'd had a phenomenal amount of success with a variety of snake species, and smooth greens were the most numerous. 

This was especially exciting for us because smooth green snakes are a much declined species across much of their range in southern New England, where Bruce and I spend most of our time looking for snakes. The species needs meadowy, low brush, grassland habitat to persist. This can come in the form of coastal habitat where salty, dry conditions, sandy soil, and wind keep vegetation relatively low, old farmland that is lightly maintained and kept grassy and lively, and mountain top balds where trees grow slowly and open low brush persists. Unfortunately for green snakes, the way southern New England has developed hasn't favored meadows. A lot of farmland has now been developed, and some areas that were allowed to remain early successional habitat have now become wooded. Without easy travel corridors that they once would have benefited from, isolated pockets of smooth green snakes must make do with diminishing habitat and can't move to re-populate areas that change to become more favorable. The species' diet has also given it problems. Vernalis favor grasshoppers, soft bodied caterpillars, and spiders. Pesticide and insecticide use has taken a significant toll on these wonderful little snakes. Mosquito spraying, pesticide use on crops, and other chemical use in their habitat mean that otherwise suitable land often no longer has green snakes.  To find the abundance we'd dreamed of, we had gone somewhere that never had pesticide use, was built on very minimally, and had plentiful open habitat. It was a shame we had to go so far, nor should we have had to. Not that long ago they were more numerous in Connecticut, on Long Island, along coastal Rhode Island, and into Massachusetts. It isn't uncommon to run into older folks that will tell you "Oh, those green grass snakes? We used to see lots when we were kids". 

The habitat we searched had an exceptional abundance of another species I see in Connecticut but generally have to put a lot of effort into: the Northern redbelly snake. Redbelly snakes are not the most popular among the recreational herping world, they're widespread and can be quite numerous and are a diminutive species. But they are variable, often vibrant, and in my opinion photogenic. They can also be quite secretive, often going undetected for years even in fairly populated areas with a significant number of eyes out looking. 

Overall, the abundance of wildlife and native flora was robust in this place. It was refreshing when compared to some of the habitat left in CT that still holds a few green snakes, much of which is loaded with invasive plants and suffers from a compromised food chain, with perhaps too many of some species and far too few of others. One of the sites I visit that has records of vernalis is progressively more and more packed with bittersweet and large stands of mugwort. Another is so surrounded by development that it's hard to imagine that it could last forever, though the species does manage too eek out an existence in narrow corridors of habitat even in natural circumstances. That said, those populations don't have to worry so much about being hit by a car, chopped up in a mower, or poisoned by chemicals. In Connecticut, this has led to the species being listed "Special Concern", a designation that doesn't give a species a ton of protections, but means that its habitat is limited and the species isn't stable because of it. 

The story of the smooth green snake in much of Southern New England is subsequently a sad one, one made of lists of places that had but no longer have the species. There was even a time when human activity wasn't harmful but helpful to the vibrant snakes. Widespread land clearing coupled with slow moving farm equipment, no pesticide use, no motor vehicles, and a lower human population density meant that the special likely thrived in the farmlands and grasslands not long after colonization. They were quickly overtaken by the industrial revolution, though, and then really took hits as insecticides like DDT became heavily used, suburban sprawl continued, and traffic increased. The decline of any species is a sad one, much less such an iconic and vibrant one. Many New Englanders may never get to see that shockingly green flash of scales as a skittish smooth green snakes vanishes into the grass. In Missouri, where there hasn't been a report in more than 50 years, there is little to no hope or the species. In some other midwestern states they are listed endangered or threatened. Hopefully, with awareness and care, we can stem the tide. 

If you see a smooth green snake, observe and appreciate it for what it is. Take steps to reduce your impact in their habitat, like avoiding moving rock (cairns suck!) and logs or trampling low brush. And fight against further development that could continue to extirpate these animals from more and more of their range. 

Walking through town on our last day in the promised land of green snakes, I noticed a little bit of plastic tarp overlapping a rock wall at the edge of a garden. I gently lifted the corner of it and spotted the largest individual we'd seen all trip, a robust female that was thick from her head to her cloaca and had incredible coloration and robust crocodile jaws. It was one of the most stunning snakes I'd ever laid my eyes on and it was just under some plastic tarp in a garden. If we encourage the right behaviors, there's no reason there can't be diversity right in our backyards, whether it be brightly colored little snakes, bobcats, or butterflies. A lively yard and diverse, healthy habitat is much better for the soul than plain, mowed lawns devoid of diversity outside a few Lyme carrying ticks and some ants. This place was rife with that, liveliness was abundant, and everyone that lived there was happier that most Southern New Englanders I'm used to running into on the day to day. It's hard not to draw some correlation. 

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Courtney, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor and Eric for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

Into the Abyss

 My shoulders slumped and I lifted my chin, eyes closed, as piping hot water ran down my back. An ex-girlfriend of mine used to say she liked extremely hot showers so she could "practice burning in Hell". I'm not sure why I like hot showers. I know I don't believe in Hell though, so it isn't that. Perhaps the heat sometimes shocks me to my senses. Or maybe it does the opposite and lulls me into comfort. I was in a bad place now though and was really hoping the heat would do something to help. Opening my eyes, I reached for a bottle of shampoo. My hair wasn't actually wet enough to accept a good lather yet, but my mind was wandering as it had done an awful lot of for quite a few days. I leaned back again, trying to undo my error, and a glob of bubbled shampoo splatted on the floor of the bathtub next to me. Closing my eyes, a song crept into my brain, an accelerating tempo and guitar riff, growing in eagerness and intensity. I shocked out of literal existence suddenly, eyes wide open again and my breath stolen away . The reality around me suddenly whirred away outside of the shower like someone were flicking a flip book of my life and things I'd seen. The shower was materially there, and I couldn't actually see out of it. But I was fully cognizant of the rolodex of worlds flicking by outside. For a moment it was an open field, then a rotting penitentiary, then my partner's house. As many places as I recognized there were some I didn't, and some I just couldn't see as my multidimensional travel was just too fast. I began to get dizzy and had to brace myself against the tiled wall. The tempo reached a fever pitch and I recognized the song, "Piper, Piper, the red red worm. Woke last night to the sound of the storm. Her words were the words I sailed upon" blared in my brain in neon letters from Trey Anastasio's mouth. It seemed, then, that my shower had arrived at it's destination. I stepped out apprehensively, leaving the water running. Water dripping from my still naked body rehydrated the dry mud that I stepped out onto. It was now completely dark and silent. Above me unraveled a cathedral of blackness studded with stars and planets. Around the perimeter but somewhat distant arose hills covered in pines, birch, and maple. I couldn't see them clearly in the dark but I knew they were there because I could smell the diversity of the foliage. There wasn't much around my immediate person but dry, cracked mud with a few sprouts of some sort of grass poking through. The shower behind me was now gone. I was left in this ethereal plain without any understanding of how I'd gotten there or how to leave it. 

As I pondered my sudden transportation to this unknown location, the darkness began whispering to me. A wind started up, blowing straight into my face carrying with it an intense chill. I was told that this was it, I was seeing the end. I was being cursed with the precise knowledge of the end of the human species, everything I loved and cared about, and my own life. It was being revealed to me in complete indifference as ineffable facts, completely uncaring, just true. The gravity of it brought me to my knees and I sobbed. I crumpled further into a ball, wailing "why, why, why?" to myself. Dust from the dry mud covered my wet skin and got into my mouth. It tasted like chalk and iron. Then there was light, suddenly. Not bright light, but I was aware of luminousness that hadn't been present before. I looked skyward into a wavering aurora. Red, purple, and green curtains wavered  in the sky. Immaterial though they were they danced like fabric. The wind blew harder still, and I knew had to leave. I got to my feet, heavier now with the weight of understanding I hadn't asked for, and plodded out across the dry mud flat. Each footfall was more and more resolved. The wind, now a veritable howl that I was pushing into without remorse, dried the tears from my cheeks leaving streaks of grey mud. I was clothed now- not of my own will or action, it was just suddenly there -and my hands were planted firmly in the pockets of a black hoodie. The face I wore was a stern one, with my lips pursed tightly in a straight line, cracked and dry as though I'd not had a sip of water in days. I knew this was the face that I'd carry internally for the rest of my life, that any smile that crossed it would be simply for the benefit of others. I couldn't smile for myself anymore knowing what I now knew. My eyes shifted from my feet to the dark abyss ahead, the Aurora reflecting through my glasses, and I continued forward into new horrors. What else was there to do?

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Courtney, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor and Eric for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.

Whales, Windmills, and Activism Gone Amuck

 Frank Mundus fished for monsters. Monsters meant one thing: sharks. The living inspiration for Captain Quint, Mundus was apparently a fittingly eccentric individual to be a pioneer of shark fishing charters out of Montauk. According to Mundus, at the time he started, if shark charters were offered, people turned up their noses. But get people on the deck with the selective marketing of a "monster charter" and they have a lot of fun catching sharks... and probably want to come back and do it again. And some of the sharks Mundus brought to the dock in the years prior to the prohibition on fishing for great white sharks truly did embody the monstrous designation with their shear stature alone. Not to mention how some of them were caught. Mundus' largest white shark weighed in at 4,500 pounds and was harpooned next to a whale carcass off of Block Island in 1964. There's a photo of someone, who at least to me doesn't look like Capt. Mundus himself, standing on the floating humpback whale carcass while a white shark gnaws off a chunk of blubbery flesh. That grainy image, which is hard to find online and only as a photo of the framed photo, captivated me for years. The idea of finding massive sharks grazing on the megalithic carcass of one of Earth's largest living creatures was hard to shake. At the time, whale carcasses were far from unheard of, and finding the odd carcass has long been an effective strategy for finding sharks. 

Then, many decades later, whale carcasses started to become a bit more common. In 2016, what NOAA calls a humpback UME (unusual mortality event) would begin that has at this point not met its end. At this time, 229 humpbacks have died along the east coast. That tally is increased when large numbers of other cetaceans, including two critically endangered Atlantic right whales, are added to it. It's a heart breaking statistic that brings a stall to what had been a successful recovery of many cetacean species along the Eastern Seaboard, and a crushing one for anyone that adores whales and dolphins. When I was a younger lad I was drawing whales obsessively... in the time period just before I was drawing tornadoes obsessively. And, if you asked, I'd say that Atlantic right whales were my favorite animal. I'll never forget seeing my first baleen whale in the wild. They are remarkable creatures, and seeing them makes me feel far less important as an individual of the human species.  But it wasn't until after 2020 that I noted the whale strandings starting to make waves in the fishing world, and for interesting reasons. 

A humpback surfaces within sight of the beach at Race Point on Cape Cod, July 2020

"Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is announcing the 10th approval of a commercial-scale offshore wind project. With this approval, the nation has now approved more than 15 gigawatts of offshore wind projects – enough to power 5.25 million homes, and equivalent to half of the capacity needed to achieve the 30 gigawatt goal." -White House press release, September 05, 2024. 

With a high level of climate related anxiety, much of it warranted, and an example set by countries that have embraced wind power, both offshore and onshore, a democratic administration made a fateful decision to lease the ocean floor to both domestic and foreign energy companies in hopes of adapting the domestic electrical grid to a less carbon intensive form of power. That has become an extremely contentious decision and is especially hotly debated in the saltwater fishing world in the northeast. And in  merely engaging in this debate, I put myself in an unfortunate position. The political climate in this country has become so volatile, so contentious, that I know I stand to anger and lose some of my audience with this post, potentially even run off a client or two, shake up friendships, and risk future revenue streams for my business. But, frankly, I can be silent on this no longer. This issue and the way it is debated anger me to the core, and I need to speak out. I have already lost friends over this, lost them of my own accord. I could no longer stand by and watch people make unsound argument after unsound argument, preaching to a choir instead of making claims with a legitimately strong basis of facts and research to an audience that would actually change their minds, if fed the information in a form that didn't come off as unhinged lunacy. If I dared to say anything contrary to their point, even if I was in agreement broadly, they'd deflect to an entirely unrelated note. So I've had enough, I'm coming out with what I know and what I believe about offshore wind on the Atlantic coast. 

"Green energy" is the term often used to describe non-carbon emitting, renewable energy. Immediately that definition gets sloppy, as the existing infrastructure to build any energy source, whether that source emits carbon when up and running or not, emits carbon, as does the maintenance of it. The "green" also invokes a feeling that such an energy source will be good for the environment, despite the fact that developing undeveloped space is, without fail, going to be damaging to the biome it is built upon. So it becomes clear that green, or in fact clean, are relative terms in this respect. Hydropower burns carbon upon it's initial construction, then creates a barrier that both negatively impacts the hydrology of the river in question and prevents fish species from effectively migrating. So despite the carbon free and often very affordable and efficient product ("The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of hydropower worldwide has remained relatively stable throughout the past decade, amounting to 0.06 U.S. dollars per kilowatt-hour in 2022. Hydropower had an average cost of around 6.1 cents per kilowatt-hour that year." -www.statista.com) us anglers in particular have come to consider hydropower very un-clean, and dams are coming down all over the US and Canada. Though the product of finished offshore wind facilities doesn't emit carbon, how much damage occurs to get there, and is it worth it? That's the big question. 

The offshore landscape is no stranger to the sort of development and surveying that goes into making a wind farm. The first drilling in saltwater occurred in the Santa Barbara Channel in 1896. Nearshore drilling began in the Gulf of Mexico in the 1930's. Soon the interest in maintaining control over oil deposits was changing the ownership of the ocean floor when President Truman extended the American ownership of the seafloor out to the edge of the continental shelf in 1945. Today, offshore drilling works like this: the government leases out a section of seafloor to a company. That company then surveys that piece of seafloor using seismic blasting, basically using sound to map out the seafloor and what is underneath, looking for deposits of oil and natural gas. If that company finds a profitable deposit, they will likely extract it using some form of drilling platform, some of which are fixed, some float. The crude oil is then piped or transported to shore. Throughout this process, these companies are regulated and observed to prevent potential environmental impacts. Of course, there's no avoiding negative impacts. The seismic air guns used for oil and gas surveys create a sound at up to 250 decibels, and is shown to be potentially harmful to marine mammals. The drilling process, construction of an oil rig, and pipelines to move the oil also disrupt the ocean floor and existing marine life. Personally, I'd argue that this process is disruptive and not worth it's yield (About 14.6 percent of crude oil and 2.3 percent of gas in the United States were produced from offshore drilling in 2022 -nrdc.org). At this point what already exists it isn't removable in the near future, nor would it make sense to, but each presidential administration brings forward a new set of offshore leases for oil and gas, including the Biden-Harris administration (His Interior Department, which oversees the federal oil program, outpaced the Trump administration in approving new drilling permits. At the same time, Biden leased the smallest amount of public land for drilling in his first 18 months in office than any president since Harry Truman. -Politico) So the proverbial whoring off of the seafloor is neither new nor ending, though to those of us looking out into the Atlantic seeing wind turbines it may sure seem new. I, personally, am not comfortable with these offshore leases in any context and have argued against both oil and gas and wind offshore leases. But let's be careful with equivalency before we've got the facts straight.

Here's where the whales dying along the Atlantic coast comes in. The construction of wind turbines offshore also requires sea floor mapping using sound, and the leading argument against the offshore wind leases is that this surveying, as well as the noise created by the construction itself, are responsible for the rapid increase in strandings of marine mammals. The data to indicate that is occurring is quite scant. There are some that would argue that this is intentional, that it is being suppressed maliciously to push an agenda. And this is where I'm going to lose a few people, even though I'm going to try to convince you all that these windmills are the wrong move ecologically and economically regardless of your stance on climate change, whales, or clean energy. Once someone believes the truth is being suppressed, and that that's why there isn't data, it's very hard to dig them out of that belief. But belief not only in the absence of evidence but because of the absence of evidence is problematic, improvable by it's nature. We lock into it with such gusto as humans, almost as though it were a biological imperative. Should I interview a psychologist about that? Maybe. I could also prop up any belief with the same claim if someone disagrees to exactly the same effect. Don't believe in Sasquatch? It's being censored. FACEBOOK IS HIDING MY POSTS! THIS ADMINISTRATION IS LYING TOOO YOUUUUUU!  I'm not impressed by the main stream media, but the online world isn't remotely trustworthy and if you can't back up your claim without resorting to claiming censorship or pointing to extremely questionable sources that have absolutely no provability, I'm going to dismiss your claim and I'm not sorry about that.  

The people that have already dug in their heels are going to scoff at this. But I don't see much real evidence of censorship or hiding the truth. It's too conjectural, and most of the people involved with collecting the data are not partisan enough to bother "hiding the truth". What truth we do have is that the surveying methods used for wind farms have not been proven to be harmful to cetaceans in the way seismic air gun surveys for oil and gas have, though in most areas where offshore wind development has already been underway for an extended time there are very few large whales to effect anyway. So the data isn't there yet. Even boat traffic noise has been proven to have extremely harmful effects on whales and dolphins ("Researchers placed tracking and noise recording devices on northern and southern resident killer whales in the Salish Sea that sits between British Columbia and Washington state between 2009 and 2014. They found that louder ship noise resulted in longer hunting times for the orcas (Orcinus orca). 'Vessel noise negatively impacts every step in the hunting behavior of northern and southern resident orcas: from searching to pursuing and finally capturing prey,' said lead author Jennifer Tennessen, a senior research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for Ecosystem Sentinels, in a press release." - Boat noise hampers orcas’ hunting ability, September 26, 2024, The Wildlife Society). Add to that the fact that NOAA issued incidental take permits to offshore wind companies for multiple cetacean species. So, though absence of evidence is a concern, it isn't evidence of absence, and the actions of the regulatory body among increasing cetacean strandings are suggestive that even they aren't confident that the projects aren't harmful to these species. I do have a concern that the surveying and construction process is killing some whales. There are some efforts being made to prevent it, but my own personal bias when it comes to industry and protecting the environment says its simply never enough, regardless of whether a project is billed as "green". Industrialization kills, period.

The problem for these activists is that even if the windmills are killing whales it certainly isn't all of them, and many among the crowd claiming to be in favor of the whales turn a blind eye to many known, proven hazards that definitely are killing whales, including the boat noise  they themselves make on their way to fish offshore. In fact, I found an article about the very orca study I shared above because one of the activists I was once friends with shared it. When I commented, they immediately deflected to wind despite the fact that nothing in the article discussed it, nor the study, nor is any wind lease underway where it took place. Now, anytime a whale, dolphin or porpoise floats up dead or strands, hundreds of people jump to the conclusion that offshore wind killed it before any data is available at all. That is completely in spite of the fact that whales have been floating around since the days Frank Mundus killed white sharks with harpoons and well before. If you argue against something on such shaky ground, no matter how passionately, you are going to look like a fool. The totality of the stranding events hasn't lined up completely with the surveying or construction, though some data extrapolation suggests some concurrence. Clearly, many of the dead whales fell victim to boats and lost fishing gear, both of which are proven hazards effecting marine ecosystems around the world. Another confirmation bias exists as well: more cetaceans are present in the inshore waters of the northeast now than 50 years ago. More whales and dolphins total, more whales and dolphins show up dead. There is more at play here than just wind development, and the rest vitally needs to be addressed too as there is no sign of this unusual mortality event stopping regardless of what happens with the wind industry. That is a heartbreaking fact, and I wish I could do a lot more to stop it. I truly do love marine mammals and whales especially, and it hurts me to see them dying due to any human impact. Ideological consistency, knowledge of the many threats to whales today, knowledge of the history of commercial whaling past and present, and arguments against the countless other things killing whales are scarce among many who have made whale deaths their primary calling card against offshore wind. I wonder why that is? An argument made frequently without definitive data, in ignorance of other issues, with clear biases is an argument that turns people away, even if at the core what you're arguing for has validity. 

Whales aren't all there is to the environment. Like drilling rigs, fixed wind turbines have a large footprint on the seafloor and in the largest planned offshore wind farms there are going to be a lot of them. Some are leased on extremely concerning ground. One often contested has been the Revolution Wind project, part of whose lease extended onto Cox Ledge, an area of vital importance to an already struggling cod fishery. ("BOEM, NOAA Fisheries and fishermen have long debated how to protect cod habitat in the region if turbine arrays are built, with NOAA experts specifically pointing to likely impacts around Cox Ledge. The often-bitter debate was one factor in the Sept. 1 mass resignation of the Rhode Island Fishermen’s Advisory Board, whose members charged the state Coastal Resource Management Council is too deferential to wind development interests at the expense of habitat and fisheries impacts." - Activists seek lockdown on New England wind project, April 25, 2024, Work Boat, Kirk Moore) NOAA designated an area including Cox Ledge as an area of particular concern due to it's value as cod spawning habitat on March 6th, 2024. There are also concerns that fish may not cross the high voltage cables that will bring power ashore from the turbines. There is some data that suggests certain fish species have aversions to or are impacted by these cables, but the data is not very complete as the abstract from one Harvard study on multiple fish species interactions with cables indicates: "Despite this concern, few studies have investigated these effects in free-living species." Wyman, M. T. ; Kavet, R. ; Klimley, A. P., 2016. The mere fact that these concerns are being dealt with post-leasing, and without broad study of the potential impacts, is troubling. Environmentally, from my perspective, this is the biggest screw up. Some will tie it to mal intent, everything I see suggests negligence, haste to catch up to other nations, failures of bureaucracy, and failures of industry and it's urge to obtain more capital quickly. This is also nothing new, environmental studies around drilling leases both in the ocean and on land are not taken as seriously as they should be. We don't always know how the construction, operation, or existence of some infrastructure is going to effect wildlife before it is approved, and at times that means well meaning people approve projects without knowing how detrimental they are going to be. That's not evil, it's dumb. It's a kind of dumb that crosses party lines, trades, ethnicities and disciplines all around the world. It's a part of the human condition. Connecticut recently proposed a bill that would allow housing projects to be pushed through regulatory barriers quicker, which sounds all fine and dandy if you're struggling to afford housing and the housing that gets built doesn't immediately get swept up by corporate landlord... but sounds really bad if you're a box turtle, spadefoot toad, or eastern hognose. Thankfully that legislation did not come to pass, yet. Point being, development without fully taking into account environmental impacts is far, far too common across the board. Even when research does exist, it doesn't always mean regulatory action does everything possible to prevent conflict either. 

This adult timber rattlesnake exists in a population that is losing foraging habitat and more and more prone to road crossing mortality due to development, despite years of radio telemetry study and being listed as endangered in the state of CT.

Environmental impacts came to a head in July of this year when one of Vineyard Wind's recently constructed turbines had a blade fail and crumble into the ocean. Beachgoers have been finding debris on the Cape, the Islands, Rhode Island, and Long Island ever since. I've seen debris from this failure myself in both Rhode Island and Massachusetts. For one of what is to be hundreds of turbines to fail and spew debris into the ocean that has lingered for months is not in any way a confidence boost that these projects are in fact "clean" and "green". CNN reported that this wasn't the first time a blade built by the same manufacture failed in this way ("Several GE Vernova blades have broken on onshore and offshore turbines in Germany, Sweden, Lithuania and the United Kingdom in recent years." -The broken wind turbine near Nantucket was ‘highly unusual and rare.’ But it wasn’t the first,  Ella Nilsen, CNN, July 20, 2024). This incident pulled even more people into the advocacy against windmills, and for good reason. It was an unsightly source of pollution and environmental mess. 

It seems to me that wind isn't a step down enough from the negative impacts of carbon-based offshore resource extraction, but how exactly does it scale on a cost effect basis? Wind isn't going away, after all, it is a legitimately renewable resource. But building and maintaining large pieces of infrastructure in the turbulent Atlantic is a costly effort. Vineyard Wind's project is estimated to cost 4 billion for 62 turbines, Ørsted had put 4 billion into two projects in New Jersey that were expected to cost 10 billion. but have now already been canceled, and many billions are being invested into other projects, some of which is being federally subsidized. Offshore wind consistently ranks among the costliest sources of electricity. ("The levelized cost of electricity of a subsidized US offshore wind project has increased to $114.20 per megawatt-hour in 2023, up almost 50% from 2021 levels in nominal terms, according to BloombergNEF calculations" -Soaring Costs Stress US Offshore Wind Companies, Ruin Margins, BloombergNEF, Atin Jain, August 1, 2023). Land based wind, solar, combined cycle gas, and geothermal are all cheaper per mega watt hour and are efficient and may in cases be comparatively cleaner and greener than offshore wind.  As is always the case, consumers are going to foot the bill when costs are high. Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont is already wavering on contracts that Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut were slated to enter over concerns of the high cost and how it will impact Connecticut residents ("Lamont said he’s concerned about the price the states will receive from vendors. His decision comes as customers continue to raise frustrations with a July 1 electricity rate hike, but Lamont said his concern goes back longer than that." -State not joining regional wind power purchase amid price concerns, Mike Savino, NBC Connecticut, September 18, 2024).  

So offshore wind is expensive, may be being built without enough environmental scrutiny, and already some turbines are crumbling into the ocean. What do we do, then, if someone doesn't think offshore is detrimental, what's the best way to convince them? For me, it was political sycophancy that kept me away from the topic for a while, and that's what I watched a whole slough of fisherman settle into. Some reading this who don't know me well could possibly be working backwards from a conclusion. I'm against offshore wind. Donald Trump is vehemently against offshore wind. So I must be voting Trump?

There are people who are doing that; that's one of their biggest reasons for voting and publicly advocating for the republican nominee. For me that couldn't be further from the truth. Conservation is indeed one of the biggest issues I vote on- without healthy ecosystems, clean water, biodiversity, and so on we are screwed. Almost every detail I see doesn't paint the potential future republican presidential administration in a very pro-conservation light at all. Those voting based on the candidate's position on offshore wind apparently are blind to the fact the he has out-rightly advocated for rendering species extinct. A "tiny little fish" as Trump once said at a rally in 2016, the functionally extinct delta smelt is a signifier for the health of the vitally important and endangered Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta. Water diversion from the delta to agriculture and cities in California puts the ecosystem, and restoration efforts for the delta smelt, in jeopardy. With reintroduction efforts struggling, the small species became a talking point for Trump, who essentially argued that sucking the Delta even drier for the sake of feeding the water-starved industries and people of California was much more important than a species on the brink. This rhetoric revolved around the idea that water was being let out to sea instead of used, failing to take any consideration for exactly how the existing reservoir system works or how the delta itself functions. If less fresh water were allowed to flow through the delta, saltwater would back-up into the tidal estuary, rendering a lot more of it less usable by agriculture. So it's kind of rich to see anyone hitching their anti-wind car to the anti conservation train of a pro-extinction, completely science illiterate candidate whose platform has included fully eliminating the EPA and NOAA as well as landmark environmental protections like the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, and who already eliminated protections for vital sea-floor habitat in the Atlantic not far from where these wind leases exist. There's inarguably more at stake from the expanding of oil and gas drilling, mining, selling off public lands, ignoring climate change, and putting lobbyists and businessmen in positions of authority in government agencies controlling environmental regulation than in offshore wind alone. There's some reasons to support Trump that I understand (but don't agree with), but conservation? It's laughable, and it's one of the reasons many of those fighting the fight against windmills struggle to gain ground among those that don't already agree with them, aside from just making bad arguments unjustified by data and just being outrageously despicable to the people that disagree and even threatening the marine biologists that work on examining stranded marine mammals and saving those that are still alive. 

By the same token, I won't be a sycophant for the Democratic Party's environmental failures. Though the Biden administration made some significant improvements and provided funding for some projects that will preserve the sanctity of some habitats and species, it wasn't enough. In the case of offshore wind I do believe its a step in the wrong direction. I long ago understood that under any administration I'll be fighting a hard- often even losing -battles to protect habitat and species. It's just a matter of who will make things measurably worse across the board for that battle. That leads me to the solution... if it isn't wind, how should we modernize our electrical grid, to diminish reliance on carbon based energy and preserve as much habitat as possible, while also keeping the cost to the population down? Obviously any solution is going to be complex and multi-facetted, but I'd argue that solar power should be a huge part of the equation. Specifically, solar on existing developed infrastructure instead of solar fields on what could otherwise be preserved woodlands, meadows, or farmland. There are acres upon acres of land that we've already paved or built on. Somehow, we need to integrate solar energy production into that already developed land ("This is how it typically goes with solar arrays: We build them on open space rather than in developed areas. That is, they overwhelmingly occupy croplands, arid lands, and grasslands, not rooftops or parking lots, according to a global inventory published last month in Nature."-Why Putting Solar Canopies on Parking Lots Is a Smart Green Move,  Richard Conniff, Yale Environment 360, November 22, 2021). The infrastructure would blend well into the modern landscape anyway, and could likely be integrated into the grid in a way that is less susceptible to both damage from severe weather and foreign interference. Strong, modernized nuclear power, though it has a wide cost range and can be very expensive, does have a place in filling the void given the intermittent nature of solar power. Geothermal energy also has a fitting place despite some complexity issues. We also need to be advocating for less energy intensive development and simply be using less as much as possible, moving away from suburban sprawl, adapting cities and towns to walkability and public transportation,  and so on. These are workable goals, and if more of the electorate were informed and advocating for them we could be in a far, far better place across the board with environmental issues, energy efficiency and safety, cost to the public at large, traffic, jobs... the list is extensive. I think the fishing community, which is predisposed to activism in many ways, has a real potential to make positive impact. The problem is we keep falling prey to the conspiracy ridden world of being chronically online. Information is spread quickly and without forethought or real insightful skepticism. Nuance and complexity is also often thrown aside. Many view these issues and the world as black and white, which they absolutely are not. That mindset and the bad arguments it breeds taints the conversation, scares away people that would otherwise be great advocates, and results in losing ground that didn't need to be lost. My advice is simple: get the hell of social media, read scientific literature, get involved hands on with real conservation groups with proven track records of in-field work, take steps to mitigate your own impacts, actually listen to people that have something to say that is contrary to your own opinion, but be critical of whether something is factually based or just an opinion. It's also okay to be wrong. In a world where ignorance is used as an insult and everyone is ignorant to most of the vast swath of knowledge there is to know or not know, we need to change the perception of ignorance. You definitely are ignorant. You reading this... you are wrong about something. You might even be very, very wrong about something. That's okay, as long as you're willing to allow room for your mind to be changed. It's when ignorance is willful that it becomes problematic. I'm definitely wrong about things, no question. But I'm also entirely willing to have my mind changed and will do so when the facts dictate it. We need to be less certain as individuals. And just fucking be kind for God's sake. I ended my last post with this sentiment and I mean it: We can do better. We need to do better. 

Appalachia

 Winding roads swung through the hilly back woods of the American South, taking me closer and closer to a land I'd dreamed about for years. North Georgia sits at the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains, a range often sneered at by westerners for being hills rather than mountains... and maybe that's true, but these old hills sure are special. And you can still get lost here, whether you want to or not. At this moment I was trying to get lost, temporarily, in a drainage that held fish species that I'd never caught before, black bass and shiners isolated from even relatively nearby drainages long enough to evolve into something distinguishably different. Because the Appalachian Mountains effectively divide many watersheds, draining in almost all directions, the region has incredible diversity of freshwater fishes. From various redhorse, to a broad variety of darters, to minnows, to the redeye bass complex, it seems the deeper you dive into Appalachia the more interesting it gets. The diversity goes beyond fish of course. From Georgia to New York, the variety of salamanders, dragonflies, mushrooms, and trees is striking. From the small and slim Southern zigzag salamander of the south to the robust and vibrant Northern red salamander, it's remarkable what critters have evolved here. And the diversity of peoples reflects here too. Isolation has meant that odd little cultural pockets exist in Appalachia. The dialect of Southern Appalachia is distinct enough to be the source of mythology, some claiming it to be a relic of Elizabethan English. You can certainly hear odd twangs of Scottish here and there, though plenty of other dialectic influences have played into what you'd hear today. The seemingly quirky way Appalachians speak is, unfortunately, often pegged as uneducated or crude, ignoring the history of language in favor of looking at the often subsistence living and poor population of the region as backwards hillbillies. But when an Aussie uses "reckon", do we think them a backwards moron? Of course, some place names don't help... who the hell named the Left Fork Right Fork Little Kanawha River? The people that live in these hills aren't stupid though, you can't carve out an existence here and be dumb. They may be left behind though, of no fault of their own. 

Dropping into the valley carved by the Chattooga River, the natural border between Georgia and South Carolina, I said goodbye to cellular service and pulled into an empty parking lot to rig up and get ready to catch fish I'd never seen before. The water was both familiar and not. Once you've seen enough freestone rivers you get how they work- hydrology changes very little. The bedrock here was from a formation I'd never tread on, and it wasn't recognizable stone to me. But it broke and tumbled and formed the shape of the land much in the same way as plenty of rock I had seen, so reading it was no struggle. I fished my way though boulder strewn pools picking off small Bartram's bass and warpaint shiners. The bass were a little bit like creek smallmouth bass, but not quite. They held in similar water, and were aggressive, but very much one hit wonders. I think they fought harder than smallmouth of the same size. The warpaint shiners were a little bit like spottail shiners, but not quite.  They held in small schools, though in somewhat different water, and they ate small flies with impunity just like spottail do. 

Though those were new species to me, both one's I'd wanted to catch for years, what struck me most was a species I'd caught plenty of in other states. In fact I've caught redbreast sunfish everywhere from Maine to Virginia. But the redbreast in the Chatooga River? In my unprofessional opinion, that's a different fish. And it's a prettier fish too, I think. The coloration on each redbreast I caught, with vibrant deep red bellies crackling harshly into a turquois blue, was just astonishing. 

I didn't expect to find that, those redbreast sunfish were a very pleasant surprise. After having my fill of gorgeous redbreast sunfish, fiery Bartram's bass, and elegant warpaint shiners, I packed it in to meander through parts unknown to me. My time in southern Appalachia has been limited, and I'd never yet been to Tennessee. I decided to meander through North Carolina toward Johnson City. 

A funny thing happened as I went. The winding, steep roads and their hairpin curves were drawing me out of the country I'd idealized and wanted to see. Small plot farmsteads, tight communities perched on the edges of hollers, and robust mature forest began to give way to huge homes scattered across hillsides, wider roads, golf courses, and progressively more and more traffic. The infrastructure was new and shiny and unfitting. No Trespassing signs pocked with bullet holes began to be replaced by large "For Sale" signs. A clear, tumbling spring paralleling the road gave way to a muddy ditch running silt out of a cul-de-sac still under construction. 

For a short time a couple years ago, the internet seemed insistent on advertising real estate in North Carolina to me. I don't know what algorithmically made any sense about that, but it got worse, because at least for a little while I engaged with it out of curiosity and a not insignificant degree of disgust. It was all about horridly ugly McMansions on large land plots, many a significant commute out away from the larger population hubs. The selling points were a mild climate, mountain views, and a quiet setting. My disgust came from a place of knowing what that land was, or in some cases still was, as the advertising was for whole tracts to be subdivided, and just how insanely and unnecessarily impactful this development was. Instead of leaving these lower hills intact and biodiverse and building convenient, architecturally sound multi-family homes closer to where both work and necessities exist, these developments were sprawling out into what was some quite wild land not that long ago. Disdain is the appropriate description for how I looked at all that real estate advertising, the people profiting from that land development, those who were moving into it, and the powers that be that fail to prevent land waste from occurring.  All of that advertising had made me aware that this sort of rural gentrification was happening, but seeing it in person was brutal. I clenched the steering wheel and gritted my teeth more and more as I continued Northeastward toward Asheville. 

Asheville itself is a small city, sitting at a population of 95,056 in 2023. The whole metropolitan area totals over 410,000 people  It's growth has been more or less steady and has been predicted to continue. Asheville has seen a few booms and busts through its history. Tucked up into the hills at the broadest part of the Appalachian chain, the town was a perfect outpost location. The first real boom that pushed Asheville toward being the city we see now occurred in the 1880's as rail travel made it accessible and it became a safe and beautiful escape and started to attract exceptional wealth. George W. Vanderbilt's famed Biltmore Estate occupies a 120,00 acre piece of land in Asheville. In the image of the huge estates in England, Biltmore is a striking piece of architecture. In  1916, Asheville thrived off of its textile production and other industry until the Great Depression, which hit it like a ton of bricks. The town stagnated into the 1980's, with the lovely side effect of much of the historic architecture remaining. That history, the tolerable climate, and a reputation for being quirky and weird in a wonderful way have lead to the cities revival and economic improvement in the time since. 

On Friday, September 27th, 2024 around 6:00pm EDT, the French Broad River in Asheville peaked at 24.67 feet according to USGS. The previous record from the same gauge was 23.1 feet. Around the time rivers throughout Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee were breaching their banks and sweeping away roads, bridges, homes and business. Rain from the dissipating Hurricane Helene, all moisture picked up by the monster storm in the Gulf of Mexico, was pounding the landscape mercilessly. It completely overwhelmed standing infrastructure, blowing out culverts and embankments that were never constructed to handle such volume. In the more developed area like Asheville, improved surfaces exacerbated runoff rates, and land that had once been mature forest turned into sheet-flow, worsening what would have been a dire situation anyway. Roads- everything from major highways to dirt tracks -electrical infrastructure, and water mains crumbled, cutting off some small communities. Hundreds would die. Those left in the wake of the floods stand in towns forever changed. Some of them had lost everything to the turbid waters. As we stand now, time estimates on vital infrastructure repairs, even including major highway bridges, extend out a decade. 

This devastation was in stark contrast to years of Asheville and some other similarly situated towns being dubbed "climate havens"- places immune to devastating severe weather and harsh seasonal temperatures. The media push to label such places certainly didn't discourage their growth, and many areas have seen population and development booms in turn. Nowhere is really immune though. I'm not here to suggest that Helene and a major Appalachian flood event couldn't happen without human-caused climate change- it certainly could, the gulf of Mexico has been spinning up violent hurricanes forever. Asheville experienced a similar but slightly less impactful flood in 1916 from the remnants of another dissipating tropical cyclone. But the idea that any place is a haven from dangerous weather? All it takes is one storm, and the more people and their dwellings, businesses and infrastructure are distributed about an area, the worse the toll will be. Failing to take into account possible extremes is human nature. We build in ways we shouldn't in places we shouldn't... like covering an entire slope of a mountainside with huge mansions, long paved driveways, and barren, open grass lawns. The land can't take this, and neither can we.

 As I curved back west out of the pre-Helene, busy and prosperous Asheville and the landscape slowly lost signs of recent development, I began to relax again. Crossing the border into Tennessee, the landscape was breathtaking. 

There's a haunting beauty about the wooded East, in more ways than one. The history stretches back plenty far to build up centuries of lore, much of it steeped in fear. From serial killers stashing bodies back in the hills, tales of UFOs and aliens, ghosts with malicious intent, perhaps the most wonderful regional name for sasquatch (wood boogers), and a number unsolved disappearances and solved but gruesome murders, there is a lot to capitalize on in the weird and disturbing realm when it comes to Appalachia. And ragging on how spooky and even dangerous the region is has become quite popular among the click bait riddled realms of modern social media. Throw some clips of foggy woodlands, run down shacks, and sepia tone AI generated images of moonshiners together with foreboding music and you're sure to please the masses. Just days ago I heard some creator's narration "we all know how dangerous Appalachia is" at the start of some TikTok video while my partner was scrolling. It makes me chuckle a little with its absurdity. Dangerous compared to what? We seem so keen to make everything scary. Crime is up in the cities! Move out to the country, where a hillbilly will dismember you and feed you to his pig while he's talking to the demon that lives in his well. Everywhere is dangerous, really. There are indeed be some back hollers in West Virginia where the locals are none too thrilled at the idea of outsiders showing up. But can you blame them? A lot of that demonization revolves around poorness, as it so often does, and nobody likes to feel looked down upon. People, no matter where they live, are neither a novelty nor something to be treated as inferior. It seems to me much of the media revolving around Appalachia doesn't take that to heart at all. 

In the wake of Helene, the residents of Appalachia are picking up the pieces. They're resilient people and community oriented, but it can't be easy. Places they've known and loved don't look the same and may never again. They've lost family and friends. The scope of the damage in both severity and area, as well as the rugged and remote nature of some of the mountainous southeast have made recovery and response an exceptional challenge. And on top of that, in a brutally contentious election cycle, they've been used as political pawns as conspiracies spiral over FEMA funding and weather control. None of it helps put back the pieces. If you'd like to actually be a good participant in the community and can spare a dollar, look to donate at local charities, the closer to the endpoint the better. Here are a couple region-wide relief funds to consider: East Tennessee Foundation, North Carolina Disaster Relief Fund. Another good move is just patronizing businesses throughout the region that were impacted. Recovery efforts are at a point now that many areas are re-opening, and visitors aren't so much in the way. Don't go to gawk at the damage and people's misfortune, go to appreciate one of the most beautiful parts of this country, it's history and culture, and some of the incredible fishing that exists there. Book a trip with a guide in Western NC, Eastern TN, or Southwestern Virginia. You can also search the hashtag "fliesforappalachia" to find some tiers auctioning off flies and donating the proceeds. Kudos to Ryan Waldrep for getting the community involved. 

We can do better. We need to do better.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Courtney, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, and Trevor for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version.