Even when we don’t want to, we leave a pretty big footprint on Paint Rock. Or to be more precise, tire print.
Yes, we chose the Sharp Bingham Preserve many years ago for our research program because – among other things – its forest seemed relatively intact, and undisturbed by the kind of wholesale human disturbances that affect many forests.
At the same time, the forest is accessible to research precisely because it has the most disturbing of human intrusions …a decent road network.
The challenge of maintaining these roads almost makes us feel like we run our own DOT. Paint Rock gets 70 inches of rain a year, and roads are washed out frequently by the increasingly heavy rains that have developed as climate changes. Many creatures are reluctant to cross even dirt roads, and so we are creating isolated populations that may develop genetic issues. Roads are freeways for invasive species, and clearly affect the trees, plants and ecosystems for a great distance around them, while pouring silt and mud into the fragile cave systems.
In the past few years, we’ve tried to greatly limit car and truck traffic in the forest, which requires bigger and bigger roads and degrades those roads more quickly. We now move about strictly in slightly smaller 4-wheel-drive UTVs.
But even these leave a serious scar. Hunters have long appreciated that deer and turkey scatter at the sound of these loud engines clattering down the roads. You can imagine the challenge of trying to study birds, reptiles and other forms of mobile wildlife. And like everything else in the human sphere, the buggies just seem to get heavier and heavier, wider and wider, degrading the road almost as much as cars and trucks.
That’s why Joe Ruf is standing by that pretty pale blue bicycle on the cliffs of Paint Rock.
Joe is a rocket scientist (yes, they have the real thing in Huntsville) and an avid cyclist. His friend Dave Drenning is a cardiologist, and equally enthusiastic about cycling. And when we let them know that we wanted to try to develop more appropriate transportation for the Paint Rock Forest, the two of them threw themselves into research, and came up with what we believe will become a primary work tool in Paint Rock – one of the new generation electric cargo bikes.
A bike with a name like “Surly Skid Loader” sounds like it ought to be pretty rugged, and it is. It manages the rough sections of our roads better (and faster) than many buggies would. We liked this bike because it was obviously designed to carry lots of gear, and we’ll probably be investing in a trailer to carry even more. You can carry a hundred extra pounds or more of research supplies without breaking a sweat. Joe’s huffing and puffing beside me on his non-motorized bike was a useful reminder of how much a boost even a novelist cyclist can get from the electric motor.
But best of all is its footprint, a tiny fraction of any of the four-wheelers now in the forest. No gas, no exhaust fumes, and virtually no noise. You can hear the rustle of leaves, drops of water dripping off the cliffs, the quietest calls of spring birds as they settle on Paint Rock.
Thanks to Joe and Dave for starting us on a whole new way of seeing Paint Rock.