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Column: Revisiting the Mianus Gorge During a Drought

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The Gorge’s S.J. Bargh Reservoir, which feeds water to the North Street Reservoir, is down 30-feet. (Anne W. Semmes photo)
The Gorge’s S.J. Bargh Reservoir, which feeds water to the North Street Reservoir, is down 30-feet. (Anne W. Semmes photo)

 By Anne W. Semmes
Sentinel Columnist

Down the road there’s a great escape in this fraught world—the Mianus River Gorge, where can be found “the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks/Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,” as poet Longfellow described a like setting.

Ages ago, on my first visit, it had been the ancient hemlock grove that drew me, and who it was named for, Gloria Anable, who I was privileged to meet before she died and had her ashes scattered there. Gloria and her husband, Tony, had made their home near the Gorge, knew its extraordinary value and worked to turn the Mianus River Gorge into this country’s first registered Natural History Landmark, and first land property of the then fledgling Nature Conservancy now celebrating its 65th anniversary next week.

“We refer to Gloria as our patron saint,” says Tim Evnin, who I found as a hiking companion on last Sunday’s freely offered walking tour of areas of the 784-acre Gorge preserve normally not open to the public. Evnin, who serves as board chair of the Gorge, and this reporter were two of the 40-odd hikers come to see the Gorge’s southern preserve, a primary research area, with its meadows, vernal pools, streams and deep hemlock forest. Our leader was Rod Christie, executive director of the Gorge.

Rod Christie in center of hikers tells of the Gorge’s Anne’s Meadow “that has been mowed since civil war days.” (Anne W. Semmes photo)
Rod Christie in center of hikers tells of the Gorge’s Anne’s Meadow “that has been mowed since civil war days.” (Anne W. Semmes photo)

I learn, alas, from Christie this hike will not include passing by the Gloria Anable Hemlock Forest and seeing its Gloria Anable sign—the hemlock tree it was attached to has died and been removed, along with the sign. I would wish for others to remember this brave as well as conserving woman who, on her birthday in 1932, climbed into a four-and-a-half-foot wide steel ball called a bathyscope, the world’s first underwater research vessel, and made history as the first woman in the world to descend a quarter of a mile into the ocean off Bermuda. (The man’s record was a half-mile, made by her colleague William Beebe.)

But Christie was quick to engage us all on water matters on our walk—how the lack of water is affecting the natural wonderland of the Gorge. Our walk crosses the Havemeyer Stream, which has no water. “And Havemeyer Falls has no water either,” he says.

“With dry summers, there is a lack of color in fall leaves,” he notes. He speaks of how Stamford and Greenwich have water use moratoriums and that we are in for a shock when we see our destination, the S.J. Bargh Reservoir.

He takes us into Anne’s Meadow, named for a member of the Hubbell family, which donated the meadow to the Gorge preserve. It is lovely with its sweep of little blue stem grass. “This meadow has been mowed since civil war days,” says Christie. In its midst is a 100-year-old blueberry “tree,” “likely the biggest blueberry bush you will ever see.”

“In late summer this meadow is covered with butterflies,” he says, but there is a shortage of asters and other wildflowers. Over the years as many as 250 wildflowers have disappeared, so Christie is busily growing a selection of wildflowers to return to the preserve.

Walking uphill and down we learn about the wildlife of the Gorge. “No dogs are allowed. We have an active coyote program, with cameras set up on coyotes. Coyotes are everywhere now. They are a beneficial thing. They co-exist with large predators. They are starting to predate deer.” A hiker from Stamford interjects that he’s heard of a coyote taking a deer on the Stamford-Greenwich border. Coyotes are helping to control an upsurge of voles and chipmunks and white-footed mice. “And white footed mice are carrying Lyme disease.”

A giant moss-covered rock in the Gorge has the Polypody fern able to grow as it is too high for the deer to reach. (Anne W. Semmes photo)
A giant moss-covered rock in the Gorge has the Polypody fern able to grow as it is too high for the deer to reach. (Anne W. Semmes photo)

Bobcats are present in the Gorge, says Christie, which appeals to the hikers. But Christie gives the hikers bad news. “There is going to be a bobcat trapping season.” He believes “It’s a bad policy to take out the bobcats.” But on a positive note, he adds, “We have a deer hunting program—with bow and arrow,” with some 30 harvested in a season.

It’s those deer that take away the underbrush that so affects all other life in the primeval forest. Christie points to a giant moss-covered rock that has a pretty polypody fern growing on it, out of reach of the munching deer. When trees die and open up the forest, the invasives arrive that we pass by like the Japanese still grass, brought in on the treads of a truck or by birds.

The hemlocks we see look skinny and small, though 100 years old; they are slow growers in the shade. “We have 400-year-old Eastern Hemlocks that are very rare and unique,” says Christie, with only a few as old elsewhere, “possibly in the Catskills and the Adirondacks.”

Seeing the Bargh reservoir with its tiny rivulet of water is indeed a total shock. Set within the dry bed of the entire reservoir are ghostly hemlock tree stumps, long preserved in water, having been cut in 1954 when the reservoir was created to protect the Gorge’s conserved land and virgin hemlock trees from flooding. This was done after the Greenwich Water Company of the time built a dam on Mianus River in north Stamford to provide a source of water to now 130,000 people in Greenwich, Stamford, Rye, Rye Brook and Port Chester.

This reservoir water would be flowing from here into the North Street Reservoir, and we all know how empty looking that Reservoir looks—but this Bargh Reservoir has a pathetic trickle of water. “The waterline is down 30 feet,” says Christie, the lowest since he took on his directorship in 1999.

Also revelatory was learning from my fellow hikers the international cast of ownership of our water! Apparently, it is a French company, United, that owns our water and sells it to the Australian/Canadian Aquarion company, which brings it to us and charges us for its use! What would Chief Myanos think of this—he who gave his name to the River and Gorge, and who lived by it in a village and subsequently died by it at the hands of the English?

At least the Chief would be proud we have preserved 784 acres along with some conservation easements. And if there are those wanting to enlarge on this preserve, board chair Tim Evnin says that if you would put a gift of $25,000 or more in your will for donating land, a conservation easement, or acquiring land, you can become a member of the Anable Society and join others “passionate about helping secure the future of the Gorge, its old-growth forest, and the quality of its surrounding watershed.”

For those wishing a free introduction to the wonders of the Gorge, an Owl Walk is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 15, at 6:30 p.m. and a tour of South Lockwood, another property not normally open to the public, located behind Mianus River Road and E. Middle Patent Road, is scheduled for Sunday, Dec. 4, at 11 a.m. To sign up, visit www.mianus.org.

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