The Tri-County Journal
& Chattahoochee Chronicle
PO Box 850, 71 Webb Lane
Buena Vista, GA 31803
229-649-6397
tjournal@alltel.net

   As a boy I thought we had a wonderfully healthy and verdant outdoors in which to work, play, hunt or fish. We first lived in a simple frame house with oak shingled roof, used wood for heat and cooking, and carried water from a spring. Yet a great trout stream ran through the fields below the house, fat rabbits populated hedgerows, and every hollow around were full of squirrels. What more could a kid want?
   I recall working with my dad, Neal Justus, in a cornfield by the creek. At the end of the cornrows next to the creek we paused to rest a bit and I bragged to Dad about the fine rainbows I had caught in the “Stump Hole,” a pool that produced many trout through the years.
   “Son, you should have seen the way it was when I was a kid,” Dad said words to this effect. “See that spot,” he pointed at the bank. “The creek’s flow is lower than it used to be.” Papa Jesse recalled times before the original forests were cut for timber and large groves of native chestnut trees furnished nuts by the wagon load and long lasting rails for fences. Thus the last generation seems worse than the one before.
   If Dad could see that creek now he would feel sad. Mud and silt fill most of the pools and the banks are caving off. Cattle wade in the creek and crops no longer grow in the bottoms. Houses or mobile homes dot the fields and pastures and more houses are cropping up on wooded ridges. A rounded wooded hill in the midst of the lovely valley is about to be sold and turned into a subdivision. A steep hill at the foot of the valley is already scabby looking with trees cleared away so fine homes can be seen from afar. Across the ridge a runway fills once pristine
   Little Creek Valley. I still recall those lovely brook trout.
   I love to walk in Pitts Park in Clarkesville, GA, alongside the storied Soque River. Today it is about the only spot on the river that the public has access to except for a short stretch of US Forest Service land higher up the river. Once I waded in the river when a clear flow ran over sandy bottoms and gravel bars often revealed shards of Indian pottery and projectile points. Schools of minnows scooted about, while frogs and snakes abounded. Today most of the river’s bed is coated in mud and silt and few minnows, frogs or snakes are seen any more. I no longer can find relics, unless one counts plastics, broken bottles, cans, and old tires as relics.
   Over a period of about 10 years brothers and friends had a hunting club in Buncombe Co., Ga. We crossed Broad River below Elberton coming and going. In that time this stream began to run red with North Georgia soil both winter and summer. Near the end of our fine years on a productive hunting tract (turned into a subdivision) the Broad River silted up until mud bars appeared. How much of our precious soil now lies under the waters of lakes and rivers?
   Alex, my 10-year-old grandson, and I recently drove to Stephens County where Panther Creek enters the Chattooga River and hiked up it about a mile to fish for trout. The tents of campers clustered around the trailhead, and music from a radio contaminated the airwaves. Where a few years ago I caught several plump trout today we saw the creek bed coated with rusty brown silt, many muddy shallows and only a few pools worthy of holding trout. It was hot and muggy, fish did not bite, but mosquitoes did, so we soon left feeling let down.
   We call it growth and progress. More and more people are crowding into areas that are soon impacted by four-lane highways, malls, subdivisions and the resulting problems of drugs, crime and traffic deaths. Since growth feeds upon itself like exploding cancer, those who make money from rapid growth are happy, while local officials are never prepared. They lag far behind the need for adequate controls over growth to minimize damage to the environment and must raise taxes for more schools, police, roads and utilities.
   It was said on TV recently that global warming may be the cause of more destructive wildfires. That may be true but the influx of people into the mountains and countryside may cause many fires. The same goes for floods. Vastly more people live in harm’s way today, in forests, on steep slopes, along rivers and streams or ocean fronts. We cannot blame all the environmental problems on global warming. The earth went through other periods of hot spells between ice ages.

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