Welcome
This blog is a chronicle of life and the seasons at the New Concord Reservoir. The manmade reservoir lies about a mile and a half outside the village of New Concord toward the end of a country road lined with small farms and homes. A half mile long and about 150 yards wide at its widest point, it is bordered by forests on its eastern, western and northern shores.
New Concord is a village in Southeastern Ohio, which, like its New England namesake, originally served a hinterland of small farms. Today, life in the village is shaped primarily by the presence of Muskingum College, a private, residential liberal arts college founded by Scots-Irish Presbyterians in 1837.
The New Concord reservoir lies about the same distance from the village of New Concord as Walden pond lies from the village of Concord, Massachusetts. It is only about one quarter of the size of Walden, and no great works have celebrated it. While Walden is a natural pond, carved by receding glacial moraines, the New Concord reservoir required human intervention to emerge. It only came into existence a few decades ago, when the village created an earthen dam near the headwaters of Fox Creek, and its first function was to ensure a dependable source of water for the village.
Neither Walden, nor our reservoir are notable for their extraordinary majesty or wildness; both exist in the midst of civilization rather than remote from it. In chronicling the days of Walden Pond, Thoreau sought to encourage us all to appreciate the ordinary natural world we live in rather than only valuing that which is remote and seemingly untouched by human hands.
This blog is intended to encourage you to find your own Walden in your own neighborhood. Visit it frequently, learn from it, find peace and inspiration there, share it, cherish it, and protect it.
The First Lambs
My friend Stick called the other day asking if I wanted to get our kayaks out on the water this weekend. I'm ready, but the weather is not. The ice is gone from all of the moving water in the area, but heavy rains over the last few days has brought a little bit of flooding and some very swift-moving rivers. I go daily to the New Concord Reservoir to check on the progress of the ice. It is too thin to hold a person these days, but still covers the entire pond. The night time temps are just low enough to partially undo the work the sun has been doing during the day. Still, there is some hope that things will soon turn--the lambs have arrived at the White farm just below the reservoir.
My friend Stick called the other day asking if I wanted to get our kayaks out on the water this weekend. I'm ready, but the weather is not. The ice is gone from all of the moving water in the area, but heavy rains over the last few days has brought a little bit of flooding and some very swift-moving rivers. I go daily to the New Concord Reservoir to check on the progress of the ice. It is too thin to hold a person these days, but still covers the entire pond. The night time temps are just low enough to partially undo the work the sun has been doing during the day. Still, there is some hope that things will soon turn--the lambs have arrived at the White farm just below the reservoir. 
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