No, I didn’t have any trouble finding the spot where
this tributary of Overpeck Creek in Bergen County, NJ, is—after all, I’ve been
making my way up to what was once known as Allison Woods Park (now, formally part of
Flat Rock Brook) in my hometown of
Englewood, NJ, since I was a tween nearly 50 years ago.
Let me be more exact: I had more trouble just
finding the water.
As you can see in this photo I took in
mid-afternoon, leaves form a blanket everywhere here—and there’s an awful lot
left to be shed from the trees. (We had an usually warm September, so the
height of the fall foliage season occurred a few weeks later than usual.)
But I think there is likely another reason why the
water is not as easy it used to be to spot here: the Northeast is in the midst of a drought. Last
week at dinner, I heard of someone in New England who’d been able to use water
from a well on her property for more than 30 years, but now, because of the drought, she might have to
spend thousands of dollars so that her town could make available to her its
water supply. Closer to home, I noticed a couple of weeks ago that the Wild
Duck Pond in Saddle River County Park in Ridgewood, NJ, had sharply receded.
So now, instead of the abundantly flowing brook of
my youth, we have what is, at best, merely soggy leaves. That picture of the
multi-colored leaves is, I hope, nice. But if water is associated with life,
what does its absence mean?
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