Just Look Up

© GyakornokPotyautas

Utility pole at sunset.

You might think of them as eye-sores, but professional and amateur urban ecologists see beauty in the humble utility poles that reach up toward the sky, their wires stretching out from them like tangled vines, their "skin" pocked with scars made from staple guns and utility workers' boots.

Utility poles are almost impossible to miss and yet virtually invisible to passers-by. Why bother to pay them any mind? The utility pole canopy hosts an electronic ecology as complex as any you'd find in the Amazon. To the untrained eye, the web of cables, anonymous gray boxes and ceramic spindles seems random and meaningless. Urban ecologists look up and see, if not beauty, purpose.

What's the big deal?

Utility poles are made from mature second-growth Douglas firs, southern pines and red cedars. The poles are pressure-treated with creosote and other compounds that are toxic to fungi and insects (and, some argue, humans). Beads of creosote will weep, like black sap, from utility poles for years. And, because the average service of a wood utility pole ranges from 30-40 years, you can look up to try to determine its age.

Typical poles stretch 40 feet high. At the top, there are three separate and distinct zones. The power© strollers company owns the highest zone. Industry insiders call this realm the supply space. Telephone and cable lines, sometimes dismissively collapsed into the category "communications," inhabit the space below the crackling electricity cables. A safety zone separates communication lines from power lines so that untrained cable company staff can troubleshoot without serious risk of any mishap worse than a bad fall.

A simple rule of thumb: the higher up you go, the more dangerous the cables are. Up to 12,000 volts sizzle through the highest cables. Bucket-shaped transformers step down the electricity to the familiar residential trickle of 120 volts. A single wire runs across the tops of many poles. This static wire attracts lightning and protects the rest of the array during storms. Three thinner wires, called A, B and C phase wires, feed power into the transformers. The more important a particular pole is, the more densely it's networked. Just like people.

Charged as they are, songbirds can alight on uninsulated 12,000-volt wires unharmed because they aren't grounded. That is, no part of their fragile bodies forms a bridge between the charged wire and the ground. Bald eagles, great gray owls and other large birds are big enough that sometimes their wings sometimes fatally brush two wires at the same time. This allows electricity to arc between the wires, electrocuting the birds. So, make no mistake, small birds (and other small earthly creatures) may be just fine running along, or resting on, the wires, but there's a lot of power coursing beneath them.

Signs of Life

The lowest zone, the one typically right in front of your face, is reserved for announcements of yard sales and lost pets. A close look at the pole reveals decades of rusting staples and fragments of weathered paper. On busy streets these flyers and remnants completely cover this urban bulletin board.

Casual anthropologists use these as contemporary totem poles to gauge a community's health. Lost pets and live music announcements, or paternity testing and cash advance loans? A quick survey can tell you the character of the neighborhood.

Like so many other wonders in our world, utility poles are slowly going extinct. Underground cabling lacks industrial aesthetics and resists storms and other natural disasters more readily. We may be among the last generations to appreciate the humble utility pole. So lift your eyes to the sky and greet the ubiquitous herald of the age of electricity while you still can.