At one end of the Campbell Lake, there's a side channel that gets lost in a clump of islands and dead ends. There's probably an old creek flowing in here; the river itself leaves the lake from another channel. The highway winds through the hills and valleys along the lake shores, and here cuts off a narrow neck of the lake, leaving only a small drainage culvert under the road. Years ago, a pile of logs were dumped into the upper end, floated down to the culvert, and were stuck. They're still there.
I stop sometimes, to look at the logs. Last week I stopped again. The lake end was frozen, with a light coating of snow on top, and on the logs at the surface.
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| Cross-hatching |
I looked up the lake end on Google maps. The logs can be seen from the overhead view.
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| The lake ends at the right, at a gravel pit. The lower left channel leads out to the main body of water. |
And from the street view, taken in September of 2011, nine years ago, some of the same logs are recognizable.
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| Even to the weeds growing on the one center front. |
They were old, even then.
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A veces se ven cosas sorprendentes en las mapas de Google.
En un extremo del Lago Campbell, el lago hace una diversión que se pierde entre varias islitas. Parece que aquí entra un riachuelo; el río sale por otro canal. La carretera sigue las costas de los lagos, y aquí hace puente sobre una brecha angosta, dejando solo una apertura pequeña para la salida del agua. Hace años, se tumbaron troncos al agua, flotaron hasta la carretera, y allí se atoraron. Todavía están allí.
De vez en cuando, al pasar, me paro para mirar los troncos. La semana pasada, el agua estaba cubierta de hielo, con unos cuantos centímetros de nieve encima del hielo y de los troncos flotantes.
Busqué el sitio en las mapas Google; se ven los troncos en la vista aérea. Y desde la calle, en su foto tomada en septiembre de 2011, hace nueve años, algunos de esos troncos se pueden reconocer. Son los mismos de hoy; aún algunos de los arbustos que crecen encima de uno que otro tronco se pueden ver.
Quien sabe cuantos años han esperado aquí estos troncos; en 2011 ya eran viejos.
How odd to think those logs will likely still be there a decade or more from now.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if these logs were the ones that had to be disposed from when the upper Campbell was dammed. Many of them seem to have their stumps attached, which suggests they may have drifted out of substrate once they were underwater, roots and all. Or, more likely, there's probably a procedure for actively pulling up these underwater trees as they'd pose a hazard to boating, other water activities, and of course the dam. Once pulled up out of the water, they'd have to truck it somewhere, and as waterlogged wood, it's not marketable, so they just trucked it to the nearest body of water where it wouldn't clog up anything, which is where they rest today.
ReplyDelete