Beaver Meadows

Walked the Beaver Meadow Loop near Marienville, PA yesterday, a three mile circle that originates over a dam then crosses through decidous, pine and spruce woods, before crossing a boardwalk at the opposite end of the pond and circling back on the opposite side. The local drought has lowered the water level at the far end, and most of the gulleys and smaller streams along the trail are dry. I have not walked this trail since the dog died in 2018, and found it to be a well defined single track for most of it's length, with sections that once were the railroad bed of a narrow guage train used for logging in the late 1800's. The trail is mostly flat with mild inclines and roots as the worst impediment to hiking, although I wondered why it does not more closely follow the pond circumference. Perhaps the dam-built by the WPA in 1936-once flooded a much larger area so the route delberately avoided old bogs. The campground shown on the map was dismantled a decade ago, and the area is not used much in the present day.

Drill baby Drill

The gasoline tax in Pennsylvania is 57.6 cents per gallon, which here in Warren translates to $3.59 per gallon as I write this. United Refinery Company produces the gasoline in town and manages their 'Quik Fill' chain of stations, which always charge more than in surrounding towns despite being mere yards from the source. Every station in town, which includes an 'independent' Sheetz , charges the exact same price and changes their price up or down within seconds of one another. The same gas in Erie, 65 miles west and in Marienville, 45 miles south, often costs 20 cents less. The gasoline in New York state, about 15 miles north costs 20 cents less, owing partially to a ten cent lower tax rate there. Most local residents assume that price gouging and collusion to maintain a monopoly-perhaps by threats by United to refuse to sell gas to any stations that seek to charge less-is what accounts for the high prices in Warren. Fortunately the cheaper gas in New York means that whenever we go north for groceries or some other reason we fill our tanks there. Occasionally people will drive thirty miles to the Seneca Indian resevation in southern New York where there are no taxes and so gasoline is presently $2.95 a gallon. United procures their raw crude oil from western Canada, although "in larger markets like Erie or Buffalo, gas stations must compete with numerous suppliers, which drives prices down." So Warren's relative isolation and lack of competition allow United to control the market. It is ironic that in this economically depressed area of the nation people consistently pay some of the highest prices in the nation, which at the moment averages $3.18 per gallon nationwide. Still, I witness drivers in parking lots sitting in their cars and trucks with the engine running for fifteen minutes sometimes, so apparently the cost is not so egregious as it seems. Beth and I have considered electric vehicles, but our present travel needs and finances still favor convential gasoline models. My Mirage obtains 47 mpg and the Outback 29-30, but until costs come down-which our government does not allow when it forbids Chinese imports-we cannot justify the purchase except in terms of climate and pollution reduction. Solar panels for the Warren house also would not pay for themselves in our lifetimes, so we are forced to admit our hypocrisy in advocating for cleaner energy while using it only in our bicycles and lawn equipment; our conscience does suffer for it.

Dry July and August

Beth and I rode our bikes on a bike path on the Seneca resevation in southern New York on Monday,Sept 1st, where the Little Valley Creek had dried up upstream of the Allegheny River. Along that path we also passed a large mudpuddle that was filled with hundreds of fish that had been isolated from a main pond. Today I returned to that place and found road access about a mile away, so I walked in with a net and bucket and rescued several dozen fish to the deeper water. I was surprised to find large catfish gasping for oxygen among the smaller sunfish, and caught whatever I could to take to safety. Near the puddle was a great blue heron that had found easy picking among the trapped fish, so Nature's seeming 'cruelty' can be a blessing for another species. As a human being I followed my impulse to help, knowing that droughts are a natural pheneomenon, but also that they are being exacerbated by human climate change. UPDATE: I returned to the puddle today,Sept.9th, where what remained was a muddy pool about three inches deep and six by four feet wide. All but a few sunfish had been eaten by herons and raccoons, yet to my surprise four catfish ranging from 6 to 10 inches were still alive. I netted them and perhaps 3 smaller fish along with two dozen tadpoles and transferred them to the larger pond. With no rain predicted for the upcoming week, the few fish and remaining tadpoles will die. UPDATE: Sept.13th- The first 2 pictures show the dried mud that has become the graveyard of the remaining tadpoles, now being eaten by flies and bees. Less than two weeks of evaporation killed the hundreds of fish and tadpoles that I had originally tried to save...