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What's upstream... was Re: [at-l] GSMNP Proposed Itenerary redux



--- Coosa <coosa@fox21.net> wrote: back on the 16th of June!!!
> Sloey, say what you will, I'm filtering.
> Little story.  I was hiking the AT in Va many moons ago (like I weighed
what
> the Insurance Co's said I should) and met a backpacker who was sitting
> beside a stream heating water on his stove (Svea, I think).  He got it warm
> enough for his drink, but not nearly boiling, and sat and talked to me for
a
> few.  Then he went on, as did I.  Up around the next switchback, which
> crossed the same stream, we found a dead slightly bloated deer laying in
the
> stream -- upstream from where he had warmed his water.  The backpacker lost
> his lunch in short order, and I left him quickly, so that he could regain
> his dignity.
> I'm filtering, Toedie, I'm filtering and remembering that dead deer,
> I can still recall the odor, Coosa
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----from da Toedie
> >Now where does all that [effluent regulation] leave the unfiltered water 
> consumed on the AT before
> >say 1990, to where we are now? You're safer now than you've ever been.
> >Doesn't mean you won't get sick. It DOES mean it's less likely than
> before, when nobody "knew better."
> >In health, >Sloetoe

And today, Sloetoe further expounds (Oh Jeez!):
Pound for pound, Coosa, there's much more death and decay from the animals
you can't see -- from mice, voles, dropping birds, (bird droppings!), and the
biggest single contributing category, by number, species, AND BY WEIGHT being
...
insects. Just think about the workaday earthworm: most soil, including that
which we think "filters" nice clean water is, in fact, worm poop. A bloated
deer carcus, while not particularly appetizing, is the least of your worries.
A stream collects, by construction, all that happens upstream.

Now, aren't you glad you head to the woods?
Sloetoe
"Spreading discomfort through knowledge."


=====
"The tragedy of man is not that a man dies,
     but what dies within a man while he's still alive."

               Mind your soul.

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