LONDONDERRY — Whap!
I turn hard to my left, startled by the noise. I glance through the forest, aware that this is the first day of moose season. I take a few cautious steps and then:
Whap! Whap.
Again, I look left, and this time I see water gently splashing against the trees and underbrush, then a small ripple charging away. It's a beaver alerting me to his presence, and he's dammed up a stream to make himself a home.
I step forward. Soon the dense brush opens, and I realize the beaver dam has created a new pond covering several acres. Water spreads over the trail, and I leap across. The water is already several feet deep in places, and it's quickly killing the underbrush and poisoning the trees with an unhealthy pH.
If the new dam survives the coming winter, this land will be facing a major ecological change. Trees will die, and swamp will replace dirt. More beaver will arrive, they'll knock down more trees, and perhaps create a proper pond where the swamp once was.
Together, the beaver can easily obliterate a few dozen acres of pristine forest and make it their own. The trail will disappear.
This land is in the Lye Brook Wilderness, a part of Vermont's Green Mountain National Forest that is allowed to exist naturally. National Forest Service rangers who oversee this tract are no doubt aware of the new dam and the threat to a beloved hiking trail, but federal policy will probably allow the beavers to manage the area without human intervention.
* * *
This land has history. A hundred years ago, it was a dense forest that attracted loggers. They quickly clear-cut the trees and sent the wood on a temporary rail line, where it was used to build New York City and Boston.
Trees regrew, and the land became forest again. There are still hints of the abandoned rail bed and signs of a few small fires that have reshaped the ecosystem in the decades since the loggers moved on. The trail takes hikers like me into the depths of the woodland, and it gives hunters access to the wildlife.
But the humans who walk on the trail are seen as a threat by the beaver, which assert ownership by slapping their tails on the water to scare away the intruders.
It's interesting to watch a forest reshape itself. Trees can take root on open land and close out the light. Tiny insects can consume the trees and bring the land back into the open. Beavers can create ponds where once it was dry. And ponds can disappear when drought falls on the forest or the beaver dams fail.
* * *
Change itself isn't harmful, but the scale of change can be.
I try to remember the lessons of the forest when I sit on a regional planning commission and review human-scale development projects. We're part of the landscape, too, but unlike the beaver that is reshaping the forest, we can change the entirety of the planet.
And so I wonder: is a request to cut a small road through the forest a reasonable change that fits within the historical pattern of growth, or does it excessively alter the ecological balance?
Does a solar-energy farm plopped upon prime agricultural soil forever damage our ability to farm the land, or does it serve a sufficiently higher purpose?
Is a complex of new vacation homes necessary to support the economy of the region, or does the development simply spur even more development, and more development after that?
The forest teaches us that a healthy environment is never stagnant. But in a natural forest, change is generally measured in acres rather than miles. And change within a forest is reversible in decades rather than centuries.
A muffled gunshot cuts in the distance, and perhaps a local hunter has taken a moose, as hunters have done here for hundreds of years. The beaver splashes in the new swamp, now aware of my presence but no longer directly fearful.
I try hard to listen.