Stories of the Susquehanna River

At least 12 years ago, maybe longer, I first came in contact with a river that didn't make sense to me. The Susquehanna River, can be up to a mile wide in certain spots,yet is shallow enough to wade across the better part of it during the warm months of summer. Coming from the mountains of Western Maryland, I was used to fast flowing but relatively small rivers, but I was nonetheless intrigued by the beauty of this wide, ancient river. Considered the longest non-navigable river in North America, I have since had a number of experiences with the Susquehanna in the past decade that have significantly shaped my education and future interests.


My relationship with the river began with canoe trips with my father on the mid-Susquehanna and its largest tributary, the Juniata, and has now found me studying on its banks at Bucknell University in quiet Lewisburg, Pa. Several of my academic projects have been directly related with the river, which I would like to share here.

Last summer I had the privilege to participate in the Bucknell Susquehanna River Initiative's undergraduate research program, the Summer Writers Institute. Over the course of that summer, I had the opportunity to travel from the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania to Harrisburg, the state capital, investigating the policy and impacts of the Marcellus Shale natural gas boom. Because of concerns over the environmentally questionable practice of hydro-fracking, along with water contamination, habitat fragmentation, and the impact of thousands of wells to be drilled in the state over the coming decades, this is a leading environmental issue for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The products of that program will be online shortly, (and I will post a link when that happens) but just today this video was posted on the University website, explaining some of what we were planning to do as of early last summer.


Right: One of MANY natural gas wells in Tioga County because of the profitability of the Marcellus Shale Gas boom.


(Unfortunately some new multimedia ways of sharing things don't turn out to be as wonderful as intended. The code for "sharing" the video isn't working, so just follow this link: http://www.bucknell.edu/x68.xml and watch the "River as Classroom" video.)


Also, I participated in the inaugural Bucknell on the Susquehanna (BotS) program, a multi-disciplinary program that exposed 11 students to a wide variety of experiences and issues within the Susquehanna River watershed. I wrote a blog for the University website, journaling our travels through 9 states on both the East and West Coast of the Continental United States. With 23,000 words in the blog and 900+ publication-worthy photos, I am currently looking to publish a large-format book featuring all of our travels, which I will probably write more about as time progresses. Maybe in time it can be required reading for a class like these books were for BotS 2010.

All Woods Must Fail

O! Wanderers in the shadowed land Despair not! For though dark they stand, All woods there be must end at last, And see the open sun go past: The setting sun, the rising sun, The day's end, or the day begun. For east or west all woods must fail.

-J.R.R. Tolkien

Written for Middle Earth, Tolkien's poem, spoken through Frodo, is unfortunately not reflected very well in this world. For Hobbits, Dwarves, Humans and Elves alike, their forests were deep, dark, and full of mystery. And while some grew to embrace that, an endless wood was something to be wary of at the very least. In our world, I would honestly like to find more forests that could are as deep and mystical as the ones imagined by the brilliant but somewhat incoherent English Professor we know as J.R.R. Tolkien. Our woods, such as they exist, are increasingly fragmented, and shrinking in size, being replaced by an even more labyrinthine maze than the glades which our ancestors used to fear: Suburbia and the Urban Jungle.

In centuries past we feared the wilderness because it was so much larger than us, but at 7,000,000,000+ citizens, we are now clearly the majority. As a geography major with a focus on environmental studies, I am deeply concerned with how the human race is dealing with our superiority of technology and influence in the natural world. In centuries past, what did it really matter if an edge of the forest in Medieval Europe was felled to make room for fields? Or what difference did it make if refuse from an 18th Century ship was dumped into the ocean? Nature was so gigantic, and our influence so insignificant, that any poison was merely swallowed up by the enormous mass of the world we inhabit.

I write this journal to track my continued academic interests, as well as personal interests in the field of environmental studies, journalism, and geography. This is also a spin-off from a series of articles I wrote for the Bucknell website (http://ots.blogs.bucknell.edu/author/dmm048/), chronicling the travels of a unique interdisciplinary program at Bucknell University, so you may be familiar with some of my writing already. I look forward to sharing with you in the future, so please stay tuned as I intend to update this at least weekly.

We must away! We must away!
We ride before the break of day!

-Over the Misty Mountains Cold