Take a look at West Virginia's Dolly Sods wilderness on a Google Earth map and you'll see one, maybe two stray roads cutting through what is otherwise a vast expanse of hundreds upon hundreds of acres of untouched forest.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF ED LEONARD
Leonard works to split a tree that's fallen across a trail in the sprawling Dolly Sods Wilderness in West Virginia.Leonard (left) with the other members who made up his group of Wilderness Volunteers during his 2012 trip to Dolly Sods.
While spending seven days performing manual labor in that wilderness, miles from even a hint of cell service, might not sound like the ideal vacation for some, for former PequannockPolice Capt. Ed Leonard it's not only a getaway, but also a chance to give back to the natural world that he has devoted so much of his life to.
Leonard, 64, has always been a self-described outdoorsman who could "sit in the woods and watch the trees grow all day," but on his most recent trips, he's been actively helping the park services maintain its thousands of miles of trails through the programs run by an organization named "Wilderness Volunteers."
According to its website, the group was created in 1997 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to work with public agencies like the National Park Service (NPS) to organize volunteer trips into "America's wild lands" to assist in performing upkeep work that might otherwise never be done.
Leonard, who lives on Manor Avenue, is a trail supervisor for Pequannock's Mountainside Park and is long accustomed to performing those tasks. Introduced to the Wilderness Volunteers by his nephew, Mike Leonard, he seized what he thought to be a "great opportunity" and took his first trip in 2011.
On that expedition, he and a handful of other volunteers hiked 7 miles into the 47,815 acre Cranberry Wilderness in the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia, set up a base camp, and for the next week, reconditioned about a mile-and-a-half of trail.
West Virginia storms can be brutal on the narrow paths. Washouts, fallen trees and limbs, and the total disappearance of the marked routes can be a regular occurrence. The volunteers' job, he said, was to go in and clear them out by removing rocks and fallen trees, rebuilding trails, and reinforcing them with stone where necessary.
"It's pretty strenuous," he said. "You have to be in a little bit of condition to do it."
Leonard, who admits that it takes a "certain breed of person" to go into the woods entirely dependent on what they're carrying in their pack, was hooked, and he returned this past October to a different part of the park — Dolly Sods — with another group of volunteers to once again rely on their axes and the strength in their spines to give something back.
By the time the sun sets, workers are eager for dinner. The food, said Leonard, is provided by the National Park Service and is surprisingly good. Afterward, they use their leisure time to talk, take pictures, fish, and unwind however they so choose.
The program is not without danger — in the interest of "keeping it wilderness," he said, the trails are sparsely marked, and no power tools or mechanized vehicles of any kind are allowed. If someone gets hurt, they're a long way from any kind of help.
"We stress that when we're out — be careful with the equipment. If you fall down and break a leg, it could be six or 10 hours before you get help," he said.
On his 2012 trip, he said, the NPS gave the group a small pocket device with a satellite connection that could send out an SOS if necessary, but that doesn't shorten the trek in.
Despite that danger, Leonard said that the sense of purpose that clearing a trail gives is immensely rewarding.
"It's such a feeling of accomplishment at the end of the week. You feel like you made a difference for the trails, and for the people that you'll probably never meet but you made the trail better for them," he said. "It's a good feeling."
Leonard and his group have already been invited back to Dolly Sods, he said, and he suspects that he will wind up there again in 2013. Of course, he is also considering visiting a more adventurous site somewhere in Colorado or Arizona.
One thing is certain, however: when he goes, he's going on his own. His wife, he said with a laugh, does not come with him.
"She understands my love for the outdoors and she's very supportive with it…(but) she's not a hiking/camping-out person," he said.
As a child, my fascination with American history, and the Civil War in particular, could not be sated.
I had watched all of the movies and read all of the books, and did my best to tear the words off the pages and form lucid pictures in my head of what the scenes in America’s epic wars must have looked like.
Nothing, however, was comparable to the extraordinary experience of visiting a battlefield itself.
Though it may seem a dreary and boring chore to some, I loved walking along the ground I had read about so often, and tried hard to imagine the sights and sounds of war, though they were difficult to conjure against the often picturesque landscapes that exist so many years later.
Of all the places I visited, however, none held the same allure as Gettysburg.
The small hamlet has an aura about it that cannot be explained; it’s as if history rises up through the ground and floods the streets, enveloping every crack, every facet of its residents’ lives.
Bullet holes still festoon the buildings’ brick walls, and the hotel in which Lincoln composed his immortal Gettysburg Address still stands.
The gently sloping hills and slender ridges around the town where the battle was fought are quiet now, in stark contrast to the broiling hell that consumed them over three brutally hot days in July of 1863.
From July 1 to July 3, the South’s Army of Northern Virginia and the North’s Army of the Potomac clashed in a battle that was so indescribably horrifying, so sadistically violent, that by the end of the fighting, 51,000 Americans were considered casualties.
8,000 of these were killed outright in the fighting, and left their corpses to bake and rot under Pennsylvania’s summer sun.
These were men—American men—with families, with children, who gave up their inauspicious lives in Maine and Minnesota, in Alabama and Virginia, to fight for what they thought was right, and paid that ultimate sacrifice.
If there is any holy ground in this country, any land that should remain untouched as long as America stands, it’s the acres of dirt that once soaked up the blood of these hardened American warriors.
But, as a recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer points out, not everyone holds this view.
In this case, the proposal calls for a $75 million, 600-slot casino to be built just a half-mile from the southern edge of the 6,000-acre Gettysburg National Park on a section of the battlefield that saw action, but isn’t owned by the National Park Service.
It’s being proposed by former Conrail chief executive David LeVan, who had a similar request for an even more massive casino shot down by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board in 2006 due to heavy opposition.
LeVan seems to have a special interest in building this monstrosity next to the battlefield— not surprising considering the weight that the Gettysburg name carries in relation to tourism.
The typical developer claims have been made: the casino won’t be visible from the battlefield, it will bring jobs to the economically depressed area, etc.
But, if there’s one thing we’ve all learned living in North Jersey, it’s that developers will say whatever they have to in order to get approval to build something, but when that something is complete, it rarely works like the developer said it would.
There are many who are far more intelligent than I that feel the same way, as nearly 300 historians, including more than one Pulitzer-prize winner, have signed a letter protesting the development to the Gaming Control Board, saying that its construction would be an "insult to the men who died there."
They are exactly right.
Can you imagine the outcry if LeVan wished to put a casino right on top of Ground Zero in New York?
Or maybe, a strip club inside of Independence Hall?
Should it be approved, the casino would be the prime example of capitalism run amok, destroying that which should be sacred to a people in the name of jobs, money, and profits.
Perhaps LeVan would be otherwise convinced if he read the words Lincoln spoke when commemorating the Gettysburg National Cemetery in November of 1863, for no one could say it better.
"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here."
Do not forget what they did, Mr. LeVan.
Find somewhere else for your casino.
As a child, my fascination with American history, and the Civil War in particular, could not be sated.
