Amazing: One hundred years ago, a visitor to Pine Creek Gorge would have found nothing but mud in his hands. Men had stripped the whole range bare, sending the lumber to growing East Coast markets and to the shipbuilders in Baltimore. The rivers were poisoned with tannery waste and mine acid. The mountainous lands that today attract tourists were once known as the Pennsylvania Desert.
It would have been hard to watch a mud slide in 1909 and imagine recovery for such a place.
But some people did; they insisted on it. So there is a massive swath of green in north-central Pennsylvania today, a land reforested, on the way back to its pre-industrial abundance.
Of course, leaving lands alone to become green again is easy compared to Chesapeake recovery. A century ago, there were only about 3 million people living in the watershed; there are 17 million today, and all of us have to eat, all of us flush toilets and most all of us rely on energy from fossil fuels.
Still, maybe this time, an order from the White House will make a difference - if the rest of us do our part and demand sustained commitment by the politicians we elect and the businesses we support as consumers.
It's Father's Day, and I get to go fishing again. As I do, I try to look downstream and imagine the Chesapeake Bay in full recovery: the blue crabs plentiful and heavy, the waters safe for swimming, bay grasses expanding, dead zones contracting, and Bernie Fowler's tennis shoes visible in four feet of the Patuxent, maybe more.
Dan Rodricks' column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. He is host of the Midday talk show on WYPR-FM.
