The Shenandoah Rail Trail, the conversion of the unused almost 50-mile rail line between Broadway and Front Royal into a multi-use path, has many obvious benefits in community connections, alternative transportation, health and wellness and economic development.
And, because the trail has over 40 bridges, it will also provide an opportunity for more people in our community to experience a connection with water, whether that is public access to the North Fork of the Shenandoah River through access points like at Strasburg Town Park, gazing down at streams or rivers from one of the iconic bridges or catching a glimpse of the wildlife that depend on clean healthy water for habitat.
Here at the Alliance, we believe that in order to be motivated to protect a resource, one must have a personal, intimate connection, and the Shenandoah Rail Trail will create opportunities to inspire clean-water stewards up and down the Valley.
It’s one of the many reasons we continue to advocate alongside partners and the community for the trail.
Stories of Water Play
A Lesson in Creekside Joy
The most entertaining project from my years at Loudoun Valley High School was a creek study in my senior biology class assigned to my bestie, Laura, and me. We loaded up with gear from the school’s science lab and headed through cow pastures down to the South Fork of Catoctin Creek.
Photo book relics of Christy collecting water samples for the school project.
The plan for the study was to compare and contrast three sections of the creek, including such measures as velocity, depth, temperature, turbidity, CO2 content, along with the plant and animal life both in the water and on the banks.
I write now like I knew what I was doing, but Laura was the real brains behind the project. I was the lab assistant and comic relief. We had too much fun for something that was supposed to be a school assignment, and we wrote it up like the adventure it was, complete with photos.
Just a few years ago, Board Member Christy Hartman’s (Warren) beloved biology teacher Lyle Skarzinski, who sent them on the mission, returned their report after having saved it for 30 years. It’s a guess, but Christy suspects she wanted other students to see the report not as an example of scientific rigor–it most certainly was not–but for the joy they clearly had learning how to appreciate the environment. And for the record, Laura has been teaching science ever since.
Days by the Stream
On the farm where I was raised, there is a spring-fed stream that provided me and my eight siblings countless hours of enjoyment. This spring provided water to our house through a buried network of pipes to a spring box (concrete box with a lid to keep water clean of debris) before going into the house.
We loved to catch the crayfish that found themselves trapped in the silty bottom of the spring box. We knew our play had gone on long enough when Mom would holler from the kitchen that the water from the kitchen faucet and running into the washing machine was now a murky brown!
The stream still flows and continues to be a source of entertainment for Board Member Carolyn F. Long’s (Shenandoah) great nieces and nephews.
Top photo by Chris Anderson.