August 16

Thinking more of yesterday’s walk. The sluice was fashioned of cement, roughly 3 feet wide with walls 2 feet high. It meandered the 1 mile valley that began at the Pine Hill dam and made its way down to Kendall reservoir. There was perhaps a half foot of flowing water, and we reached in to feel its current, watching bits of detritus flow past, having found its way in from the woods upstream.

A neglected asphalt road followed beside the sluice, both winding lazily uphill, and we walked the pavement toward the dam. It occurred to us how remote our surroundings felt, here not two miles from lower Grove and only a mile or so to Holden, yet we remarked that the valley and flowing water could have easily been within some idyllic expanse in the mountain country up north. It was so strange not to hear any human-made noise, and the old limestone walls of the sluice, weathered and ancient looking, added to our feeling of stumbling upon a lost civilization.