DAY TRIP--Hawk Mountain

While my husband and I enjoy traveling, usually when we talk about a trip, we mean A TRIP—you know, somewhere away that takes multiple days. For example, we could travel to San Diego or to London.

What we have not done as much of is take day trips. Pennsylvania, where we live,offers a number of delightful destinations for day trips. And October is such a lovely time of year in the northeast, where leaves turning brilliant colors make a perfect backdrop for a day trip.

This week we set out for Hawk Mountain. We have been members for years, maybe even decades, but have never traveled there.

The story of Hawk Mountain is one of the power of individual effort and the need to respect and preserve nature. It began with a young man named Richard Pough who had recently graduated from college. He was a budding conservationist. Having heard of a place near Reading, PA called Hawk Mountain, he decided to visit.

At that time, the Pennsylvania Game Commission had placed a bounty prize on the heads of goshawks--$5 a head. The thinking was to eradicate any predator in the wild, including birds. (It is a huge irony that humans, the greatest predators of all time, would make such a determination to try to exterminate other predators.)

Pough* found a scene of incredible destruction—hundreds of raptors shot dead by hunters. He returned the following weekend with a camera, gathering up the dead birds which he lined up and photographed.

The photos helped galvanize other like-minded people, including a New York philanthropist named Rosalie Edge. She had the means to secure the land around Hawk Mountain. She first leased it, and 1934 she installed a warden to keep hunters away.

Within a year, all hunting there had ceased. She went on to purchase the 1,400 acres and the next year opened the Sanctuary. She then deeded the site to Hawk Mountain Sanctuary which incorporate in 1938 as a non-profit organization. Today, the bulk of funding for the place comes from member support.

That makes Hawk Mountain the world’s first—and largest— refuge for birds of prey.

Why Hawk Mountain? The mountain, part of the Appalachian chain, sits right in the middle of one of the North American flyways. The sanctuary is well-developed with trails to various lookout points over the valley below.

On a clear day, such as the one we traveled on, the unobstructed view across the valley is some 70 miles. The main trail is about one third easy walking and two thirds climb over rocky terrain. One mile out to the North lookout point, and one mile back is a good walk in the woods.

We didn’t see too many raptors. The turkey vultures were out in force, riding the thermals with such ease, almost mockingly. One kept swooping in right where we were sitting as if to say “Look at me. You can’t do this.” We also saw red tail hawks, an American kestrel, and a bald eagle in the distance.

The two primary lookout points have volunteers and interns during all the hours the Sanctuary is open. They do a daily count, which you can see here. Sharp-shinned hawks, the ones most prevalent during the first week on October, were not to be seen during our trip.

Day trips? Yes, we plan more and I will photography and report on each.

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*Art Pough went on to lead an amazing life as a conservationist. He helped found the Nature Conservancy. As his obituary in 2003 notes (he lived for 99 years) he served “stints at the National Audubon Society and the American Museum of Natural History… he wrote a series of Audubon guides on birds; helped to get a law banning the sale of wild-bird feathers; became one of the first to warn of the dangers of DDT; established several important preservation groups; and inadvertently established the house finch population of the eastern United States.”

Happy Trails to You!

I have a file on my computer where I store blogs that I am writing, or have written. As I get ideas, I jot down the basics of what I might want to write about, or maybe even begin writing a few sentences. I am very serious about blogging--perhaps as serious as I would be if I were a writer earning my livelihood from writing. So, trying to hold on to ideas (which usually occur to me when I am nowhere near paper or a computer) is essential.

So, I was reading through this file tonight, and up came something I had written over a year ago. What prompted this tirade was a story in our local newspaper where they interviewed drivers standing by the gasoline pump complaining about the rising price of gas.

How is it that the "man on the street" is deemed an expert on anything? But there was the reporter, talking to Joe Average who was filling his truck at the gas station.

So, here's what I wrote:

How predictable. Another story about the high price of gasoline! And no mention of the one thing we Americans COULD do: learn to conserve. Most people exhibit a bumper sticker attitude: how did our oil get under their land?

Oil is a worldwide precious commodity, and yet, we continue to act as though it is OUR gas as we drive gas guzzling behemoth vehicles. For entertainment, we watch drivers race endlessly around race tracks, consuming who knows how much fuel. For shopping, we go to malls where we DRIVE from one store to another, instead of walking. Is it any wonder oil prices keep rising?

Beyond our wasteful use, there are many reasons why oil prices are rising. For example, there is the growing economy in China and the sudden rise in personal automobile ownership among China’s 1.3 billion people. Increasing competition from other countries will continue to play a role in long-term oil distribution. So, we must stop acting as though it is our oil.

Perhaps, next time you do a story on the rising cost of gas, you could identify what TYPE of vehicle the person on the street whom you quote is driving? One man you quoted (in the July 6 story) was interviewed while filling his truck. Really?

Until we switch to, no, demand that all vehicles be fuel efficient, and until we buy these vehicles and don’t buy the Hummer 2, we have no grounds on which to complain about the high price of gasoline.

I was fired up enough that I sent this off to the local newspaper and they published it as a letter to the editor. The next day, I saw a colleague at a meeting, and he asked if I wanted to go for a ride in his Hummer. I stood there with my mouth open--then realized he was twitting me!

Recently I read a study of the healthiest cities to live in--I wish I remembered who did the study, but I don't. One of the cities that ranked high was New York City, and part of the reason was the amount people walk there. When we have visited our daughter there, we walk a lot. Most New Yorkers do walk a lot, every day.

When we have visited Europe, we are struck with how conserving people are in using personal vehicles, how much they depend on mass transportation and how much they walk.

My husband's workplace has recently undertaken a simple effort--each division is engaged in friendly competition with all other divisions by simply counting the number of steps they walk every day. All employees taking part in this competition got basic pedometers so they can see how much they walk. The goal is to walk 10,000 steps a day, or the rough equivalent of three miles.

This last Christmas, I asked for a pedometer as one of my gifts. When my husband got me one (a nifty high tech model), I began wearing it each day. There are some days when I walk 10,000 steps, but most days I am down around 7,000. The pedometer helps to spur me on to more walking.

Sorry for this loose connection of thoughts--now I have to try to see what LABELS I can put on this post! While I think, why don't you slip on your walking shoes and hit the trails?