By Patricia Brown, RN
It’s summer in Missouri, the peak time for canoeing on clear Ozark rivers.
Starting Memorial Day, I spent a week camping on the Jack's Fork River. Instead of the beautiful peace and quiet I was looking for, I saw inappropriate overuse of the river.
Because my father was born in Larkin "Holler" of Shannon County (I also have other relatives there) I have visited this area almost every year for the last 50 years. About 30 years ago I stopped canoeing there during the summer because the noisy crowds made it like a Worlds of Fun ride.
More recently, I've witnessed continued deterioration, with even more noise, and scenic disruption, from development of buildings, motorboats that zip by within yards of me snorkeling so that I almost inhale part of their waves, and bulldozers taking scoops of rock gravel beach.
My father had a chance to "get rich" gravel mining, but he valued the rejuvenation powers of those rivers and instead taught me to love them as they were -- which now stirs me to action. When I see things like this, or that red Allley Springs Mill in so many magazine photos, I get a sinking feeling that the memory of something precious to me has been made obscene.
The National Park Service is in the middle of drafting a General Management Plan that will guide management of the Ozark National Scenic Riverways (ONSR) -- the Current and Jack’s Fork Rivers -- for the next 20 years. Missourians should know that now is their chance to speak up about the problems confronting this gem of a river system, home to more first-magnitude size springs in one area than anywhere else on Earth.
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