Connie's Corner

A Writer's Workshop Plus

Last Saturday I attended a writer's workshop sponsored by my local writing group. They called it "Writers in the Woods". An author in the group (I'll call her Sophy for sophisticated because her pure white hair makes her look that way) allowed us, 40 of us, to pile into her historical country home to learn a little more about writing. We got a bonus.

She, a widow, owns 110 acres about 20 miles southwest of where I live. After all the presentations, she guided us on a tour of some of her land. We walked about an hour, part way on an old railroad berm. For those who don't know what that is, it's the built-up area for the tracks. The tracks were no longer, but it made a perfect walking path. The day was clear and sunny, about seventy degrees.

As we made our way along, around fifteen of us who decided on the adventure, we smelled the pines, heard a few birds, and were careful where we stepped. Small rocks (limerock) and fallen twigs littered the path. Sometimes I noticed tire tracks and then I walked in the ruts.

We dallied at the edge of one of several limerock pits on the property, a use of years ago. The ground around it declined steeply, dotted with some scraggly new growth trees, and at the bottom lay a twinkling pond. Our hostess had named it Lucy after that Beatle tune. It glimmered in the afternoon sunlight. An overhanging rocky face greeted us on the far sides of the man-made lake, perhaps a hundred feet in height.

We noticed a large object sticking up out of the water far away near the middle. She said someone had gifted her a mattress when the water level was low, then went on to tell us how some of these pits went right down into the aquifer, that place where we get our water. The water never leaves but rises and falls with the rain. Our facial expressions began to change and the chatter became more serious. We started to see problems. Water contamination, dangers to children, unsightly trash. What at first seemed aesthetically appealing now had other meanings.

Borrow pits as they are sometimes called seems an appropriate name. The material is borrowed for use somewhere else. But the digging opens a clear chute into our drinking water system, all connected. The property around our hostess' is cattle and farm country equaling runoff directly into these pits and our aquifer.

Yes, this day we learned more than we had bargained for.

until next time...c