There are several places where we could have got into the water on this hot day — the floating bog (pictured at the top of this page), a deep cool basin in a beaver pond up on the plateau, or at the narrows on Indian Creek. But Morgan asked to go to a fondly remembered place from when she was new to the Macoun Club, the waterfall.
For miles upstream, Indian Creek meanders through a marshy floodplain, but here it meets ridge of hard, resistant igneous-metamorphic rock (gneiss) and sluices down a narrow chute. Just waterfallersat the head of the falls is a natural whirlpool bathtub, which can hold more than a half-dozen people at time. The outlet can be plugged by any suitably plump person, causing the water level to creep higher and higher behind them and the whole waterfall below to go eerily silent. When the back pressure feels right, that person jumps up and the pent-up flood bursts to roar down the smooth rock slide below — and over anyone clinging to the rocks below. As far as the creek and the kids are concerned, this cycle can be repeated endlessly.
But it’s a biologically interesting place, too. Big brown-and-white Caddisflies were clumsily fluttering around their breeding site, and upon landing, turning their heads to lo
ok at us. Gleaming Ebony-winged Damselflies flew by jerkily, and various kinds of caterpillars were sliding down silk threads from the surrounding trees. Every now and then a Kingfisher barreled down the narrow little canyon, rattling emphatically.