Cross Creek Lake: The Poisoned Park

There's a kind of beauty in it, but I'm a melancholic who always finds sad things beautiful. Cross Creek Lake is a big, semi-wild park owned and operated by Washington County. There's a nice lake there, and at this time of year, the frozen surface is crisscrossed by ice-fishers' trails running from the beach to the little tarp huts where they spend their winters. [Indent] Winter has its many charms, and one of them is the silence of a deserted world. The solitude, too. I love the muffled quiet of an empty landscape. And the winter birds. And the animal tracks in the snow. [Indent] Many acres of land surround the lake. Some woods, a nice playground, a large picnic area. Most of the park seems to be hayfields, strangely enough. At least I think they're hayfields. They're vast expanses of contour-plowed fields alternating between fallow and harvested segments. I'm sure they look like a strange quilt from the sky. And it's fun to explore the lonely landscape. [Indent]

But this is Washington County--ever the slut for mineral extraction. There are exactly 14 marcellus shale gas wells being dug on the park lands. Fourteen! At 15 acres each, not to mention the many access roads being cut through the area, this once pleasant park will soon be another industrial wasteland. The diggers have already spilled massive quantities of their noxious chemicals, resulting in fish kills in the lake. It's nothing compared to what lies ahead. [Indent] But someone recommended this lake for ice skating and--come summer--kayaking, so I came to check it out. I liked it okay. There was a kind of windblown sanctity out there on those snowy fields. But mostly, I don't think I'll be coming back here much. The whole marcellus shale thing is such a depressingly shortsighted grasp. [Indent]

In this final shot, you can see the lake off in the distance. There's a kind of beauty here, but touched with the sorrow of impending ruin. The silence will be broken by endless convoys of trucks and the pounding of the "frack" drills. The beauty will be destroyed by access roads and tall wells. The air will be destroyed and toxic to anything that needs to breathe it. And the water will be poisoned for generations to come. It's all a grab for shortsighted gain. [Indent] I had a solitary winter picnic at the pavillion in the top picture. I love pretending that winter isn't real, treating January just like July.