It is still winter here in the western woods, with boot deep snow on the mountaintops and solid ice covering the dirt roads. It has been a mixed winter of bitter cold interspersed with thaws, but generally it has been below freezing and snowy since December 22nd. Little things turn my eye towards spring and help break the monotony of mid winter, like the chipmunk I saw yesterday and a small stonefly walking on the crust the day before, but February is always the doldrums of the year.
This oil and natural gas substation is one of many scattered around the National forest, and hundreds of new wells have been drilled in the past few years. The companies are required to display their permits and often place them in a mailbox they install near their drilling sites. Although fracking is not yet common around here, some of the blueprints show both conventional and fracking wells among their plans. After the permits are obtained the trucks and bulldozers clear the trees and install the culverts and do all the other preparations required before the drilling begins. On paper the regulations appear stringent, but how well they are enforced miles from civilization I do not know. This particular substation is about two miles from the nearest macadam, and others are more isolated. The building houses a huge diesel engine that powers pumps that move the gas and oil through the miles of pipes buried all over the woods. Many of the individual drill pumps-which can be miles from a substation-are powered by electricity, so no doubt the diesels run generators as well. Electric wires are strung all over the forest, sometimes attached to a tree with a piece of rope or lifted from the ground with a 'Y' shaped branch, so not all of this is high tech. Personally,I have seen no real problems associated with the drilling, for other than the smell of gas near the substations and storage tanks, they become part of the landscape in the same manner that nobody notices telephone poles on a city street. They are there but the eye learns to ignore them. I use many of the logging and gas roads as trails through what would otherwise be a wilderness, and they enable me to keep my bearings. There is so much gas here that the companies are scrambling to find new markets in which to sell it to keep their profits up, although utility companies are claiming they need to raise gas rates-probably to cover their lower margins due to the glut of gas.
POSTSCRIPT: March 14th- Not much has changed in the general landscape, and I walked this morning through two inches of new snow in what to the skin still feels like a January wind. But there are more signs of the coming spring, with streams that are clear of ice and running deep from melt off. On the 9th Beth and I saw the first robins, grackles and red wing blackbirds, and a few crocuses blooming the next day, but those species are in hiding today,buried beneath the snow, waiting for the thaws to become trustworthy.
POSTSCRIPT: March 26th-Still clouds and snow showers and boot deep snow on the mountains, high temperatures in the upper 30's F ...It is a late spring no doubt... I asked an Amish guy what he thought of the snow and he replied "It's time to plow!" ...so most locals are ready for winter to leave...Is this an effect of global climate change-with extremes that we all simply have to adapt to?
It is still winter here in the western woods, with boot deep snow on the mountaintops and solid ice covering the dirt roads. It has been a mixed winter of bitter cold interspersed with thaws, but generally it has been below freezing and snowy since December 22nd. Little things turn my eye towards spring and help break the monotony of mid winter, like the chipmunk I saw yesterday and a small stonefly walking on the crust the day before, but February is always the doldrums of the year.
This oil and natural gas substation is one of many scattered around the National forest, and hundreds of new wells have been drilled in the past few years. The companies are required to display their permits and often place them in a mailbox they install near their drilling sites. Although fracking is not yet common around here, some of the blueprints show both conventional and fracking wells among their plans. After the permits are obtained the trucks and bulldozers clear the trees and install the culverts and do all the other preparations required before the drilling begins. On paper the regulations appear stringent, but how well they are enforced miles from civilization I do not know. This particular substation is about two miles from the nearest macadam, and others are more isolated. The building houses a huge diesel engine that powers pumps that move the gas and oil through the miles of pipes buried all over the woods. Many of the individual drill pumps-which can be miles from a substation-are powered by electricity, so no doubt the diesels run generators as well. Electric wires are strung all over the forest, sometimes attached to a tree with a piece of rope or lifted from the ground with a 'Y' shaped branch, so not all of this is high tech. Personally,I have seen no real problems associated with the drilling, for other than the smell of gas near the substations and storage tanks, they become part of the landscape in the same manner that nobody notices telephone poles on a city street. They are there but the eye learns to ignore them. I use many of the logging and gas roads as trails through what would otherwise be a wilderness, and they enable me to keep my bearings. There is so much gas here that the companies are scrambling to find new markets in which to sell it to keep their profits up, although utility companies are claiming they need to raise gas rates-probably to cover their lower margins due to the glut of gas.
POSTSCRIPT: March 14th- Not much has changed in the general landscape, and I walked this morning through two inches of new snow in what to the skin still feels like a January wind. But there are more signs of the coming spring, with streams that are clear of ice and running deep from melt off. On the 9th Beth and I saw the first robins, grackles and red wing blackbirds, and a few crocuses blooming the next day, but those species are in hiding today,buried beneath the snow, waiting for the thaws to become trustworthy.
POSTSCRIPT: March 26th-Still clouds and snow showers and boot deep snow on the mountains, high temperatures in the upper 30's F ...It is a late spring no doubt... I asked an Amish guy what he thought of the snow and he replied "It's time to plow!" ...so most locals are ready for winter to leave...Is this an effect of global climate change-with extremes that we all simply have to adapt to?
