Surrounded by rugged mica-flecked ledges, dark
clusters of pine and dense stands of oak, maple and
hickory, the lake shimmers with light as if fresh from
the creator’s hand. Bobcats, deer, hawks and bear
are the landlords.
But when the rocky shoreline recedes with the
nagging thirst of drought, ghostly outlines of roads,
stone walls and cellar holes are exposed like skinny
dippers caught in a searchlight’s glare. This inland
Atlantis was once a village where families sat down
to dinner, children laughed in the schoolyard, and
hard livings were earned at a sawmill, machine shop,
or by working thin stony soil.
Armed with writs and warrants, the Waterworks
dammed the valley with a ten story concrete wall.
Bulldozers and loggers worked as smoke poured
from blazing houses. Even the long-resting dead
were evicted with picks and shovels. Stories of
people in their place ended like a novel’s last page,
were truncated like the roads once crossing the
valley floor.
Now this dry-year Brigadoon drowned by billions of
gallons is a distant memory in sepia photos and
faded recollections. For decades the flooding has
let us drink freely, water lawns, wash cars, fill pools
and slake the thirst of commerce. Still, instead of
mushrooming subdivisions, convenience stores, gas
stations and parking lots, an accidental wilderness has
sprouted in deepest suburbia, harboring a last
remnant of silence and wonder.
