Backside of Summer

By Bob Lusk

School has started. That used to be a big deal around our house. Now, with all our kids grown, with their own brood, it’s a big deal around their house. Of course, my wife, affectionately known to all 13 of our grands as “Meems”, wants to be there for each little darling’s first day of school.

Me, not so much. I’m more excited that we’ve made it most of the way through this latest summer. Looking forward to college football, cooler ponds and, fingers-crossed, not many calls about someone’s fish dying in hot water.

As I age, I’m even more intrigued about the interrelationships between different ecosystems, ponds, lakes, and how all that biology stuff affects each other as much or more than itself.

Conveying that to our readership is the balancing act. Each issue, our writers dig into their knowledge base, bolstered by experience, to share their thoughts. Part of our job, as readers, is to grab the nuggets we can use in our own circumstances. Another part of that role, because it’s fun and will make more sense as you go, is to begin to decipher how all these things hold hands.

How does the food chain benefit from a plankton bloom? What are the side benefits of a bloom? If you feed the fish, is the only consequence that your fish will grow?

What about those plants that sprung up along the shore over the years your pond has been there? Are they impacting the pond?

Once we all understand that what goes on under water also impacts what happens around and above it, then we gain more wisdom to help us figure out what to do next.

Our ponds are similar to today’s society. The dynamics are changing. The more we see it, the more we can drive it in the direction we want.

A good friend, biologist Mike Mitchell, from Longmont, Colorado, put it best many years ago. “Managing a pond is like pushing a giant beach ball up a mountainside. You push it and then it starts to lean to one side, so you go over there and push. It does it all the time. You can’t get it up the mountain unless you shift with it.”

He’s right.