Chapter 12 - Tributaries
Ninemile Creek Part 6 - Fox Road to Glass Factory Road
Discovery: Goes Around Comes
Around
June 13, 2003, 65 degrees, Showers
It was raining when we left Denny's car at the
bridge on Glass Factory Road. I had a history here. My family farmed here
before WWII. I was so young the only thing I recall is riding in the front
seat of a car and being terrified by a train that crossed the road in Holland
Patent. The rest came by way of stories told and retold around the dinner
table over the years.
Although clouds hung low over the area, the rain had stopped when we parked the Jeep near Fox Road Bridge. At 10:30 a.m. we were getting a later start than usual. Didn't matter, it was less than a mile between bridges, so we would be off the water in plenty of time for lunch.
It was quickly evident that the "designer" trout stream extended into this stretch of the creek. Cutbanks were lined with long sections of deteriorating log walls. Some sections looked like "graveyards" --- horizontal logs rotted away, exposing vertical "ribs" anchored in the creek bank.
Boulders
dominated the creek bottom but there were also stretches of cobble, gravel
and clay. Cutbanks also revealed deposits of cobble and gravel over silt
or clay. I was fascinated with some of the "Adirondack" boulders.
Their variegated color and form indicated they had been cooked and re-cooked
millions of years ago. A mere 10,000 years ago glaciers tore chunks from
the mountains, ground them to boulders and brought them here.
Wildflowers were abundant and, despite overcast sky, added brilliant colors to the landscape: yellow flag and buttercup, pink ragged robin, purple and white phlox, white daisies and blue forget-me-nots.
With no sun to flash the gold, I lost confidence
in my spoon and changed to a spinner. Switched back when Denny caught two
9-inch brown trout from a pool next to a log wall . . . on a Phoebe. When
I walked up to the next pool, a mallard flew straight up off the water
and disappeared into the trees. I skipped that pool and fished the deep
water behind a barrier of quarried limestone. Had to be a good fish in
that pool, but it didn't want metal.
My first trout of the day came from a log pool at
11:55. Just upstream, fresh heron tracks. Competition! When I rounded the
bend, a great blue heron was flying upstream away from Denny.
A three year old boy almost drowned here.
Around noon I noticed large chunks of shale among
the boulders. Glass Factory Road bridge is built over a shale outcrop,
so I knew the end of this discovery trip was just ahead. A few minutes
later we were catching trout from the pool under the bridge, and I was
telling Denny about the farmhouse up the road.
Sixty-three years ago a young couple lived in that
house. He was a hired hand on an Eve Evan's farm. She made the house a
home and cared for a baby and a 3-year old. One fateful day dad worked
in the barn, mom hung clothes on the line, baby slept in a carriage . .
. and the 3-year old boy loaded sand in a little red wagon tied to the
back of a tricycle. Their dog, Butch dozed nearby.
While mom was distracted, the 3-year old pedaled
his tricycle and wagon down the driveway into the road and headed
south towards the creek. Back then the road ran down hill to the bridge,
so the loaded wagon being pulled by the boy on a tricycle was soon pushing
the boy on a tricycle. Little wheels and little legs turned round
and round, faster and faster, towards the creek. Butch's bark brought mom
and dad to the road in time to see the dog pull the boy from the tricycle,
saving him from injury or death. That little boy was me.
Follow the path of this discovery trip by clicking on Mohawk Valley Maps: by Maptech.
Type Holland Patent, select New York, press GO! Click on margin arrows to follow Ninemile Creek.
Return to Mohawk Valley Book-In-Progress Index Page