Whining our way along the mountain trail
Ernie King
Last August the enemies of fun lost a lawsuit in the state court system. Now let the nitpicking begin. Wednesday night's meeting of the Wachusett Mountain Advisory Council was only missing two things — crackers and cheese to go along with all the whine. The wannabe environmentalists who oppose the Wachusett Mountain Associates (WMA) planned Alpine Park were out in force and armed with letters, photos and signs. For the most part, though, their arguments against the project were so far out in left field, I had to wonder if we all lived on the same planet. Timothy McGuire, an environmental engineer for WMA updated the council on the work being done on the two new ski trails. Prior to McGuire's report, Susan Manero, a member of the council's monitoring board, gave the ongoing project high marks for implementing conservation efforts while working on the two new ski trails. Manero explained the board had a difficult time doing its job because the passionate feelings expressed by people on both sides of the issue. She said the board's job became more difficult when two tree sitters decided to occupy two of the red oak trees bordering the proposed trails for a couple of months. Once their reports were given, however, it was open season on McGuire and Manero. One gentleman — and I use this term broadly — from the Worcester area accused Manero and her fellow monitoring board members of being irresponsible for blaming project delays on the tree sitters and the vandal friends, as well as being concerned for the safety of the two econuts. Another Worcesterite — by the way, why do we have to import our nut cases from Worm Town, don't we have enough of our own GARDing the area — accused the Massachusetts State Police of Gestapo-like tactics and of turning the mountain into an armed camp. He accused them of cutting off food and water supplies to Badger and Dandelion and of harassing supporters. Now I hate to tell this to the band of econuts that attended the meeting because they should know it already, but when you conduct a guerrilla raid on an area and occupy space, you have to expect a military response. One of the first rules in engaging an invading army is to cut off their supply routes and supporting units. Did the tree sitters really think they could break a myriad of state and local laws and no one would respond? Badger and Dandelion should consider themselves fortunate they only had to deal with the state police. I know a number of people who wanted to pull a George Washington and say bye-bye to Badger and Dandelion. If my friends had their way the two polluting tree sitters could have bagged their human waste on the way down to the ground. One of the Worm Town econuts must have great, albeit selective, hearing. He said all of the concerts and other activities that take place on the mountain disturbed him. I'm still trying to figure out how he heard the concerts on the mountain in his Worcester home. Especially, with all of the rock music blaring from Greenhill Park. The dumbest suggestion I heard Wednesday night, though, was to have the federal government take over the mountain. What a great idea — maybe they could turn it into a nuclear waste dump like they want to do to Nevada. On the other hand, this might not be a bad idea. If the mountain glowed in the dark, skiers wouldn't need all those pesky lights along the trails that keep the squirrels up at night. One of the only arguments that made even a tiny bit of sense was the need for hay bales to prevent erosion. It was presented by the representative of the Audubon Society and modified later — after he removed both feet from his mouth. At first he wanted WMA to go in with heavy equipment and rebuild the hay barriers along a meandering stream because it had changed boundaries. When he was informed this would only cause more erosion problems he suggested everyone look at the problem in the spring. WMA has already installed hay bales to protect the stream once, but they were removed or flattened by econuts pretending to be night fighters. Each time WMA replaced the bales, the econuts would remove them. Hey, maybe that's one of the reasons the state police were invited to the mountain. If they do need more hay bales then they should be installed, but my gut feeling is that WMA could build hay bale barriers the size of the Great Wall of China and these econuts still would not be happy. I may be wrong, but it seems to me the argument over the mountain boils down to this: some people enjoy life and like to have fun while others want to decide how you enjoy life and how you have fun. The second group should get a life. And speaking of red oak trees, Phillipston has one that volunteered to grow near the common about 400 years ago. Now the tree is dying and posing a menace to school kids and anyone else who happens to be standing by it. The tree has to go, but here's a solution for those who want to save it. Once that big bubba is on a horizontal plane, salvage the little bit of good wood the tree has left and make a few olde oaken buckets and then sell them using the profits to repair any historical building of their choosing. (Ernie King is a senior staff writer for The Gardner News. His column appears every Saturday.)