beaver pond on kettle creek

3/10/2017

Its edge,
I swear,
will fall into the river.
Somehow the beavers keep it solid.
The water behind
is murky with mud and bugs,
grasses and dead wood.
It captures the moonlight
as mayflies hatch.
In the spring it flows.
In the summer it shrinks.
In the fall it fills with leaves.
In the winter it freezes.

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I stumbled upon the name "Raftman's Path" walking the river trail that traverses through the little town I live in. It was named during the days when lumber was a huge commodity in this area. The Susquehanna River was an industrial thoroughfare - bearing down loads of lumber from the northern reaches of Pennsylvania towards the Chesapeake. Marietta was a stopping point, a place for the lumber either to go to the mills lining its banks or shoot further downstream through pig iron smoke. Raftmen would guide the lumber down to the mouth of the Susquehanna into the Chesapeake - an estuary of salt, water, lumber, ore, eel and shad. When their job was done, they would walk the raftman's path back through the Susquehanna Riverlands of Lancaster County towards their homes. The path is now wooded and meanders through some of the only "wild" places left in the county.

Sketches & scatterings. Rooted in Pennsylvania along the Susquehanna River. All words & photos by Michael Garrigan unless otherwise noted.

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beaver pond on kettle creek

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