Pristine ponds -- possible?

Search in this area has intrigue

By DENNIS APRILL, Outdoors Columnist

Some discoveries are made through a planned scientific process; the vaccine for polio comes to mind. Others are just happened upon. Finding a fish like a coelacanth, thought to be extinct for 60 million years, off the coast of South Africa by a fisherman in 1938 is one example.

On the more modest local level, I once thought the discovery of a pristine Adirondack pond would be an incredible, if not impossible, find -- that is, until recently.

The idea of discovering such an unspoiled pond is not a new one. Back in 1997, I interviewed and wrote about Paul Smiths College Professor Curt Stager's ongoing research in looking for an untouched body of water in the Adirondacks. The story was published in the May/June 1998 issue of Adirondack Life magazine. At the time, Stager had done computer analysis of some Adirondack ponds and sediment studies of others, all to no avail.

The problem is defining what is pristine and, more important, the connotation put on the word.

Do we want to use the first Webster Collegiate Dictionary definition: "belonging to the earliest period or state," a definition closer to Stager's and a condition that may be impossible to find?

Or, perhaps we should use definition two: "uncorrupted by civilization; free from soil or decay; being fresh and clean."

Even finding a pond or lake that meets these criteria is difficult.

Walt Kretser, who in 1997 was in charge of Adirondack Lakes Survey Corporation, a scientific-research organization that operates under the aegis of the Department of Environmental Conservation, felt then, as he does now in retirement, "The important factors (for a pristine pond) are water purity, low Ph and indigenous species, and not whether humans have paddled on the waters."

Such a pond would not be overly acidic, show good buffering capability and contain some native fish like brook trout or round whitefish and insects like stoneflies and caddis flies.

Even with this broader definition of pristine, I came away from that article doubting a pond like Kretser described could be found in the mountains, even on a closely watched private estate, and I certainly never expected I would ever run across one. Then, about a year ago, all that changed.

In July 2001, on one of my trips to an out-of-the-way place in the mountains, I came upon a newly constructed beaver pond that blocked a small brook that I'm sure was away from any possible form of land-based pollution. This tiny trickle of water did hold some small native brook trout prior to the impoundment, so I figured, with the deeper backwater, they would grow to a much larger size.

Just getting to that pond was a chore, and I was glad I wore waterproof boots and had a good sense of balance, since working my way over the pointed spears of beaver cuttings sticking out of the mud that constituted the dam was no easy task.

From its center, however, I realized that this beaver pond, and those like it, might be the only bodies of water in the Adirondacks that could truly be called "pristine" because they were recently constructed, had not been altered by humans (even with my visit), and were too new to be impacted by acid rain or airborne pollutants.

This may be stretching the definition of a pristine pond a bit, for in a few years, after the beaver have debarked all the hardwoods surrounding this pond, they will move on. Then, the unattended dam will eventually give way, the swollen impoundment once again becoming a small brook in an out-of-the-way place.

But, until then, I like to think I had discovered, if only for a short period, one of the few pristine ponds left in the Adirondacks.