American essayist, naturalist and poet Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) is best known for his classic Walden, an account of the two years he spent living and working in the cabin he built at Waldon Pond in Massachusetts.
In his essay on — WALKING he offers perspective on seeing wild nature as essential for our well being.
What is striking about his 150 year old comments is they are as relevant and needed today, perhaps more than ever. We would be hard pressed to find a contemporary whose convictions on nature are as strong and deep as Thoreau’s…OK…you’re right…there are many…Jane Goodell and the late Rachel Carson, John Muir and Jacque to name a few.
Yet we need not search the ranks of environmental renowns. We have environmental heroes right in our midst.
Take Peggy Johnson, formerly of Oakland Township, who started the Clinton River Watershed back in the 1960s to combat unregulated pollution and raw sewage discharge.
Today the Clinton provides spawning grounds for steelhead and other game fish as well as the challenge to make it healthier yet.
There is also fellow environmental activist and Peggy’s friend, Alice Tomboulian, who together through foresight, commitment and perseverance helped create the Paint Creek Trail the reality that it is today.
Thousands use the trail for exercise, contemplation and as an escape from our pressing and hectic world.
Keep an eye out next time you travel the trail…you will notice a plaque in their honor around the Paint Creek Mill area.
And we all know the…dig…that behind every successful man is his leading lady. The same homage can be used for Orion Township’s Gerry Rathburg. She moved into a shanty of sorts with her husband Bill back in 1948 on the newly designated 1,100 acre Bald Mountain State Park.
They became the first stewards and caretakers of this precious rare habitat and unique landscape of then rural north Oakland County. Working with and advising her husband, Gerry saw this public treasure grow to over 4,500 acres—with a value that is incomprehensible today.
Saved are upland oak forests, cedar swamps, tamarack bogs, wild fens, prairie open space, ponds, glacial moraines and valuable wetlands, lakes and trout streams. Gerry still lives on the edge of this rare Southeastern Michigan wilderness tract.
Best of all, these dynamic ladies are still busy pursuing and being environmental protection advocates to this day.
Like Peggy, Alice and Gerry, Thoreau saw the future coming and was an advocate for conservation…on page 15 of Walking he writes, ‘At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property, the landscape is not owned and the walker enjoys comparative freedom.
‘But possible the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only — when fences shall be multiplied and man-traps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road and walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds.
‘To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude your self from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days come.?
While parts of Thoreau’s insight and lament may hold true today, we are fortunate that many more like minded people have come along to help us from being totally swallowed up by those evil days.
These visionaries fought hard to create state parks, national forests, county parks as well as local and community parks — parks that are linear (10 miles) and hard packed like the Paint Creek Trail and parks like Bald Mountain that are unchanged since the glaciers made them 10,000 years ago.
Mac Deuparo is a local community activist and a life long student of nature. He will from time to time contribute his thoughts about our ever changing environment. Mac can be reached at mmke111@aol.com.

MacAloha…from the nature nut…no I’m not thinking of Hawaii…though I’ve been there and it’s plenty nice.
No, I’m thinking snow…the deeper the better. What do you think snow was created for anyway? All you cross country skiers and heavy winter contemplators put down your hands.
Some folks have their favorite websites, sports teams, novels or DVD movies that they entertain themselves with. I have my favorite nature spots.
Like the dense cedar swamp along Clear Creek in Bald Mountain State Park or checking out that ancient tree that has stood the test of time on the banks of the Clinton River for the past 300 years…near its headwaters at Independence Oaks County Park.
Then over the Oxford highlands there is the State Game Area off of Oakwood Road that offers a chance to walk along the creekside glades where the Flint River gets its start.
How can I forget that impressive stand of Swamp Oak at Stony Creek Metro Park …not too far off Sheldon Road…where the forested woodland wetland meets the prairies edge.
Yup…in the winter you can go places where if summer…you’d find yourself mired knee deep in muck amidst buzzing insects looking for blood donations.
This brings me (in a round about way) to my favorite topic…the ecological definition called — the watershed. So far, I’ve mentioned rivers, streams, creeks, headwaters, wetlands, prairies, woodlands and forest.
What I haven’t mentioned is how you and I fit into nature’s natural systems.
A watershed is a geographic area where water originates or collect and drains from higher elevations to lower. We live within the Clinton River Watershed.
At the non-profit Clinton River Watershed Council webpage www.crwc.org it says a watershed is an area of land that drains into a common body of water.
The Clinton River Watershed covers 760 square miles and includes over 1,000 miles of streams in addition to the 80-mile long main branch and it all drains into Lake St. Clair.
More than 1.4 million people in over 60 municipalities inhabit our watershed. This is where we come into the picture. Land use within the watershed is varied: the southern portion is urban, the middle section is made up of rapidly, developing suburbs and the northern region is rural.
Conservation, protection and preservation are not concepts that penetrate our craniums very easilty…we may take it for granted that big brother (the government) is protecting us.
Yet everything we do affects mother earth. Earth seems to gobble up everything sooner or later…yes, and so do the plants, animals and fish…which we gobble up in the end.
So what’s the point? I think you already know. If not…continue reading and you will better understand why heavy doses of environmental education is needed to help our creative children to better deal with all the stuff we and past generations have left behind.
Here is what they will face and inherit. Within the Clinton River Watershed sediment (dirt and sand run off), poor storm water quality (parking lot and lawn chemicals) and bacteria continue to be the most prominent pollutants challenging water quality and habitat.
More than 200 sites within the Clinton River Watershed are listed as contaminated, with 27 on the Environmental Protection Agency’s ‘Superfund? list and four on the National Priority List.
The lower watershed which drains urban southern Oakland and Macomb Counties is listed as one of the 42 Areas of Concern in the Great Lakes.
Sediments contaminated with heavy metals, PCBs, oil and grease are polluting Bear Creek and the Red Run Drain. Degraded biota, low dissolved oxygen, heavy sedimentation, excessive nutrients, pesticides and fecal coliforms are also problems here. (Source: www.crwc.org webpage)
Our task is to prevent what happened to the southern stretch of development from happening in the northern parts of the watershed.
Stay tuned as we learn how we can all get involved in little ways to improve and protect our watershed. And hear how one local family has been trying to protect a cold water trout stream from bureaucratic practices that favor the rubber stamp of development with little consideration of the natural consequences.

Hi The Nature Nut is back. You probably didn’t even miss me.
No, I wasn’t in Florida. I fell into the environmental blues. You know, the kind of depression that grips you when you feel powerless, like when your factory closes and moves to Mexico.
You read stuff like people spend 90 percent of their time indoors and wonder why people should care about nature anyway.
Or who wants to believe 725 scientists from the US who confirmed global warming, where the sun’s radiation can’t fully reflect back out into the solar system and gets trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere. This is caused from carbon dioxide emissions of coal, gas and oil carbon-based fuels that are building up in the atmosphere. (www.climatesolutions.org)
I was beginning to understand Galileo’s pain. He claimed the earth traveled around the sun and the church (power at the time) said the sun rotated around the earth. Or Newton who figured out gravity, and others before him who dared to say the earth was round and not flat. They were considered extremists of their day.
Those 725 scientists had the nerve to further blaspheme, saying 4.5 percent of the world’s population (Americans) produce over 25 percent of its greenhouse gases.
Did you know that for every gallon of gasoline your vehicle burns, it puts 20 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? Neither did I. Source: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) www.fueleconomy.gov. This site also has helpful hints for cutting gas consumption and the 2004 vehicle gas mpg ratings.
What really makes global warming so hard to understand is you can’t even see the stuff, but believe me, you don’t want to sit in your car with the engine running and the garage door down. If you do, your experiment will leave you a lifeless Martian blue.
So what’s up? In a nation of choices where are ours? It’s 2004 and a new SUV vehicle gets about the same mileage as my dad’s first new car, a 1959 Chevy Biscayne did.
My spirits were temporally lifted when I saw some early returning robins and redwing black birds the first week in March. But that peace didn’t last long.
Being on the environmental junk mail circuit I read about the water run off problems caused by urban sprawl (www.crwc.org) and the effects of factory hog farms overflowing waste ponds polluting streams (www.farmaid.org) and how the EPA wants to reduce air quality and water discharge standards. I put on an old Neil Young record, Helpless, helpless, helpless.
Tell me…haven’t we been experiencing more summer Ozone Action days in recent years? And hasn’t Metro Beach been frequently shut down from bacteria overload from the Clinton River? Hey wait a minute, isn’t this an election year.
Well, being a believer and an eternal optimist, I figure problems are only opportunities in disguise! I know we have the creative and intellectual capacity in our youth and the technology to change the world.
The sun popped out and I put on some Jimi Hendrix, All Along the Watch Tower. To learn about global warming visit www.undoit.org.
Locally, the Friends of Bald Mountain State Park needs our help. One of our community’s most precious natural resources is under attack from non-native evasive plants, illegal dumping and selfish individuals who are tearing up wild non-motorized landscapes with their four wheelers and dirt bikes. Call (248-693-6767) to pitch in and get involved.
Also, mark your calender for June 12. The Village of Lake Orion will be the site (Children’s Park) of the second annual River Day. There will be many activities planned to celebrate the great gift and natural resource our creeks, streams and rivers provide for us commercially and recreationally.
Do you feel my pain…global warming?????
The Nature Nut can be reached at mmke111@aol.com.

The nature nut has come out of hibernation. I can’t take all the credit for digging myself out. I owe this one to the younger generation. A friend’s son in college led me down a new path.
Thanks to his insights he helped rekindle my fascination of nature.
Terry Ladd told me about the exploits of this character’Tom Brown Jr? taught the ways of the Apache Scout as a young boy, who documented his experience.
Come to find out, Tom Brown Jr. has the best selling wilderness series in America. I never heard of the guy, but our discussion rekindled far-off memories of back in the early 1970s.
As newlyweds, we experienced one of those God sent detours and took in a sacred Lakota Indian Tree of Life ceremony (pow wow) on the Ogalala Indian Reservation out on the prairie in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, once bountiful buffalo country. Adding interest was a fascination with my own Indian lineage’Grandpa was born in the 1880s at the Indian Town at Cross Village, MI.
Curiosity had me going. I wondered what Mr. Brown learned from Stalking Wolf, his adopted grandfather, Indian scout and teacher. The outcome was of the born again nature, quite captivating. Brown’s books, Tracker and Way of the Scout had my mind doing cartwheels…thinking this should be mandatory reading for every eighth grader in America. Appreciating and understanding nature 101 should be up there with reading, writing and math.
Tom’s story brings out insights, wisdom and knowledge of nature bordering on unbelievable. Remarkably, all he shares was gleaned from a man who was one with nature’and the spirit that lives in all things. Stalking Wolf’s teachings and awareness is quite incomprehensible to us today.
Reading Brown was truly good medicine and motivated a new year’s resolution. Pledging to observe nature more and helping Mother Nature this year in as many ways as I can. Starting with my own backyard! We are blessed with a good sized one.
Mr. Brown’s Field Guide to the Forgotten Wilderness’illustrated that there are wild places in cities, vacant lots and drainage ditches. His travels reveal how nature fills even the sterile places when given the chance.
This spring I’m going to make some habitats around the yard for brown mice, bats, voles, leopard frogs, rabbits, red squirrels, chipmunks, snakes and birds alike’the owl, hawk, fox and weasel will follow.
It’s going to be a coffee can hanging here, some uncut grass over there’and pile of brush and branches under the tree and a compost pile way over there. It will all add up to good hiding places and habitats for insects, birds and mammals alike.
Move over, woodchuck’I’m still a little sleepy’let me ponder all that has been shown to me’amen!
P.S. The Friends of Bald Mountain Recreation Area are looking for volunteers to help protect and enhance our most valuable community resource. Join the annual spring clean-up Saturday, April 28th at 9 a.m. Meet at the Park Office, located at 1330 East Greenshield Road. Call (248)693-6767 for more info. Happy Trails!

By Mac Deuparo
Are you looking for something to do?
As of May 16, 2005 more than 700 illegal dump sites have been identified on Michigan’s public land. ‘A list of these sites can be accessed on the website: www.cleanforests.org under ‘Interactive? and ‘Search Dumpsite Database.? ‘The database is searchable by county, township, trash type and many other ways.
Environmental awareness is a constant battle. While we old folks get tired of hearing about it the young ones love it. Just take’em by a lake, stream or pond and they become Isaac Newtons of experimental research. They love to watch a rock disappear into the water. Where did it go? What is that stuff? A million questions go through their minds while we stand with our hands in our pockets and wonder what happened to our pensions and social security.
Water quality and water related issues are growing in awareness and in all the right places? in our schools and in our children’s conscious. It is important we teach our children about protecting Mother Earth. God gave us a mind to solve problems.
There were people 100 years ago that thought about us’Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir, and Rachael Carson. They worked to protect the environment so someday we could enjoy it and have it as pristine as the day it was created
Some places should just be holy sacred ground’to the Plains Indians that was the Black Hills of South Dakota’to the nature nut and others of my kind the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge is such a place.
So when you buy stocks and bonds think about whether you are building bombs or solar panels’at least let it cross your mind. There are all kinds of ways we can change our lives and the life of the planet. Rome was not built in a day’so every tiny step makes a big difference times six billion of us!
Change is always the biggest challenge in life. So for a change’come on down to the river and bring a kid. Once again the Orion Art Center, the Village of Lake Orion Downtown Development Association, and the River of Life Watershed projects in conjunction with the Clinton River Watershed Council is sponsoring and celebrating National River Day.
Come join us at your very own community Paint Creek Fest on June 11.
The Lake Orion Lake Association will be cleaning the creek from 9 to noon. The festival runs from noon to 5 p.m
Kicking it all off at noon will be bag piper extraordinaire’Bernie MacDonald with many other guest appearances from the likes of Bull the frog, Rattle the snake, Wing the hawk and other animals from Moose Tree and Howell Nature Center as well as the traveling Bat’s from Cranbrook
They will join us on the banks of the Paint Creek at Children’s Park. Arts and crafts for the children will be back again and new this year is old fashion games. There will also be guest performers at the gazebo’and people like Joe Bevirt and his wife who re-established the old Indian Midland to Mackinaw Trail’with the help of the Boy and Girl Scout volunteers who work together to keep it open today.
Well maybe change isn’t that hard’Joe and his wife were in their 70’s when they started their project’they’re in their 80’s now and still working the trail. So if you are driving the back roads and see a pile of trash you can enter the sight yourself by logging on to www.cleanforests.org and for a change call some friends and clean it up…its all for the good.

By
Mac
Deuparo
Hi there, even Mr. Snow the Nature Nut himself is ready to shift into spring. Have you noticed the birds have been way ahead of spring this year.
Went cross country skiing for the last time this season and what a great one it was! Didn’t have to drive up north for snow had plenty of it around here, did go snow shoeing to the UP once though.
I just got back from a brief hiatus to Florida and I ask, wow what happened to that state, where did it go? Talk about paving paradise and putting up a parking lot!
On day three I couldn’t take the sun worshiping pool scene any longer and found the 53 acre Secret Woods Nature Center in the heart of Fort Lauderdale.
What a contrast from what God created and the neon jungle of high rise condos, super expressways, miles of strip malls…and the intercoastal with millionaire yachts galore and gated communities to keep us undesirables out.
It looks like they need a tax break, yeah right. Thank God for hurricanes. We haven’t tamed the oceans yet, so when you look at the sea at least you can still see water!
Ever wonder where all those cigarette butts go that are tossed from a passing car? According to the No Butts About it Litter Campaign, it takes 10 years for one cigarette butt to biodegrade. So, what happens to the 176,000,000 (million) pounds of discarded butts in the United States each year? That’s a lot of filter fiber going into our sewers, drains and streams. I’m all for a penny a pack cigarette tax going into an environmental cleanup fund, how about you?
What is it about nature that attracts people? Last year the Michigan Nature Association (MNA) experienced remarkable growth with over 1,000 new members joining the effort to protect Michigan’s precious natural areas. MNA manages 160 sanctuaries state wide with several in Oakland County. WWW.michigannature.org
Did you also know the Michigan Coalition for Clean Forest runs an Adopt-A-Forest campaign whose purpose is the ridding of illegally dumped trash from Michigan Forest? Its fall newsletter reported volunteers removed 650 truck loads of trash from 89 square miles of public land, including 4,000 scrap tires in just nine months last year. In addition, 55 percent of the trash removed was recycled.
Question: Does any local church or community group want to adopt Bald Mountain State Park? See WWW.cleanforests.org to join.
Community nature news: The Stony/Paint Creek Subwatershed inter-governmental committee has been meeting for the past year with support from the Clinton River Watershed Council. Look for news on their watershed findings and educational efforts in coming months. For more info log on to www.crwc.org see subwatersheds.
Mark your calendar: The Friends of Bald Mountain State Park www.orion.lib.mi.us/fobmra are trying to increase their membership as is The Orion Art Center. Together they are sponsoring a photography contest called Capturing Bald Mountain Beauty. The deadline is July 22 with cash prizes of over $1000.
For entry packets call the art center 248-693-4986 or visit its web site www.orionartcenter.org
The Paint Creek Trailways on April 7 will have its first meeting to create The Friends of the Paint Creek Trail support group, call 248-651-9260 to become a member or visit http://www.paintcreektrail.org/aboutus.htm.
Also write in the May 21 and 22 Flower Fair held in the streets of the Village of Lake Orion. And don’t forget June 11, bring the family to the third annual River Day Paint Creek Fest (noon- 5:00 p.m.) held on the banks of the Paint Creek in the lovely Village of Lake Orion. Enjoy arts and crafts, music, nature exhibits and hooked on art contest. Contact Reggie Harrison at the OAC to volunteer or learn more about the events at 248-651-9260.

Nature and Development
Its been an interesting and unexpected year for the nature nut. Little did I know that those tree and bird books my mother gave me for Christmas,
Easter and birthdays would take me down the road to nature advocating and activism.
I assumed everyone loved nature just like me and that thing were designed in a relative higher value structure that favored God’s creations. Boy was I wrong!
While catching tadpoles as a youth I never knew about the adult world of money, wealth, power and ignorance (little part of it in everyone). Maybe that is why Jesus loved kids so much and wanted his followers not to corrupt their youthful spirit.
I made two trips to Lansing. Once for a DEQ (Department of Environmental Quality) hearing and again for a DNR (Department of Natural Resources) public comment. I think my mother would (is) really be proud of me.
But what makes me proud, is to know that there are people out there like Gerri Rathburg and her sons. As reported in past editorial comments Gerri and her husband Bill (first Bald Mt. State Park supervisor) have lived on the edge of this wild land since the late 1940s.
They were the original care takers of this natural treasure in our midst and know the area inside and out.
As the story goes, for the past 10 years the Rathburgs have been fighting city hall (Orion Township) to uphold their rights to help save Spring Creek’s ancient aquifer springs.
Spring Creek begins its eternal springs on the west side of M-24, crosses under the road and through the Rathburg’s land and on into Bald Mountain recreation area and some of the most sensitive and special natural feature areas of all Southeastern Michigan.
Spring Creek travels its downward cross through upland oak forests, lowland spruce and tamarack forest and on to water absorbing and filtering cedar swamp, bogs, and cattail, grass and sedge fins. So pure is this water that in a time of disaster it would be used as potable water for us citizens.
Equally important is it is one of the few natural trout spawning streams left in Southeastern Michigan.
Gerri went to meetings, wrote letters, and made phone calls advocating and warning of the spoilage of this God given treasure to no avail as she appealed that her private rights be protected.
Development pressed forward at the cost of this natural area’s destruction. Condominiums were built and the washouts and silt came to the Spring Creek headwaters areas as Gerri predicted.
As justice was closing in, the builder filed for bankruptcy and moved elsewhere. Funny how those loopholes work. Gerri’s rights were once again violated a second time when she gave no permission to her neighbor for riparian (water) drainage rights to cross her property as required by state laws. The development went head anyway.
This project has potential to degrade Spring Creek even more. Gerri exercised her rights for a hearing with the DEQ and got one with the outcome still questionable.
Ten years, many would have caved in and given up but not Gerri. She has spent countless hours and money to stand up for what she believes in. She has that old fashion grit and determination that the individual still counts, that spirit that once made this country great.
I’m sure over at the township offices Gerri is considered a thorn in their side by some. But when you are as passionate and dedicated as Gerri you have to speak up for the protection of God’s sensitive and most vulnerable creation (water) and the gift of life it provides.
The state should use this water resource debacle as an example to stop this from happening in other communities with sensitive ecosystems, wetlands and habitats that are the source of our creation.
There mom I said it.