​It is hard for Tom Benfer to travel the rural roads of Montour and surrounding counties and not come across a spot where he and the Chillisquaque-Limestone Watershed Association has completed a project and made a vital impact over the past quarter-century.

“I drive around and I’ll say, look, we did that project and cleaned up trash at that site or helped do all those streambank plantings and this is where we got people to commit to keeping things 35 feet away from the creek,” he said. “I can go over to Beaver Run up on the Montour Ridge where you can’t even see the projects from the road – you have to walk back to them.”

Benfer can rattle off countless stories about trash pickups over steep banks of Route 45 and efforts to plant trees and establish wetlands along stretches of the Chillisquaque Creek near Route 254 like they happened yesterday.

Unfortunately, he and his group are no longer able to do this work – the watershed association that started in 1999 with a $5,000 grant and a commitment from Benfer to clean up the extended watershed was forced to shut down in 2024 due to lack of active membership.

​Riverkeeper note: The following column was written by Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper John Zaktansky. You can contact him directly via email. 

Bobwhite quail, after impact from a traumatic event, will call each other together into a tight grouping called a covey to regroup and fend off additional danger as a group. 

It was a phenomenon that always fascinated me growing up on a small game farm in central Pennsylvania. After the hunt when the quail that weren’t harvested that day were scattered, as evening approached, I’d hear an orchestrated symphony of “bob … bob-white” calls across my parent’s farm fields.

The birds used that call to gather before nightfall. They’d huddle together to share warmth and watch for predators.
I appreciate that instinct, and find myself bob-white quailing when tragedy strikes … when life throws a gut punch that leaves me or someone else in the immediate family reeling and we need to circle the wagons, pull away from the Matrix-like distractions of the external world around us and focus within.

My family had – and continue to navigate – one of those moments this holiday season. We unexpectedly lost my wife’s sister shortly after Thanksgiving and since then have been picking up the pieces, trying to figure out next steps for her two sons and how we all are going to manage the changes both immediate and long-term.