Blunt Mountain mint, Pycnanthemum Muticum, transplanted from the Harmony Hall Herb Garden to the Saltbox Environmental Research Center in Torne Valley by volunteers Nathan and Angela.
The slow, steady work by hand and machine to clean up Torne Valley is bearing fruit. The story of how 55 gallon drums of paint sludge trucked from the long-closed Mahwah automobile factory and dumped in the valley are now legendary.
The counterbalance to the years of disposal of toxic materials in the Ramapo woodlands along river banks and watershed has taken place with the concerted efforts of Town of Ramapo Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence, environmental educator Dr. Chuck Stead and any number of allies and groups united to clean up Torne Valley.
A Healing of the Earth Ceremony is scheduled for Sunday, June 8, at 2 p.m. near the Ramapo Saltbox Environmental Research Center in Torne Valley, Hillburn, NY. The ceremony will a newly installed medicine garden that covers approximately half an acre and slated to grow Sweet Grass for basketry and smudging, as well as sage and a series of healing herbs beneficial for cancer patients.
Blunt Mountain mint in mid-summer flowering (which begins in July) / Photo Geoff Welch
Ford Motor Company built the garden as part of the remediation agreement with Ramapo and the ceremony will mark the company gifting the garden to members of the Ramapough Lenaape Nation and to environmental studies students who have helped with the expansive remediation valley project.
The Medicine Garden has been planted at one of Ford’s former lead paint dump sites and will become part of the growing complex of historical features taking root in and around the Ramapo
Saltbox in Torne Valley.Jan Berry’s Ramapo Lookout, which publishes environmental writing from Ramapo College of New Jersey, recently had a detailed article that gives context to the Torne Valley paint sludge and clean up initiative and includes a litany of the many chemicals contained in the sludge.
Stead, perhaps the engine most responsible for the Torne Valley reclamation project that includes the construction of the Ramapo Saltbox Environmental Research Center, was recently awarded a PhD from Antioch University New England. Stead’s thesis involved an interdisciplinary Recovery Narrative that looks at local lore and life in these Ramapo Mountains, using industrial history, ecotoxicology, memoir, and indigenous traditional ecological knowledge to create what Stead calls a “narrative of recovery.”
The Medicine Garden is part of that recovery narrative. And you are invited to attend on Sunday. Join members of the Ramapough Nation, guests from the Mohawk Nation, descendants of the Ramapo Iron Works community, local politicians and representatives from Ford for the dedication, which is slated for 2 p.m. Dive up Torne Valley Road and follow the signs for the Medicine Garden parking.
A Healing of the Earth Ceremony is scheduled for Sunday, June 8, at 2 p.m. near the the Ramapo Saltbox Environmental Research Center in Torne Valley, Hillburn, NY. Parking information: drive up Torne Valley Road and follow posted signs for the Medicine Garden parking.
