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abandoned hunting camp on Virginia Creek
Saturday, September 21 2024
location: 940 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
After I drank my coffee, took a recreational 150 mg dose of pseudoephedrine, and achieved enough personal micro-milestones, I took the dogs for a walk. I carried the little chainsaw so I could clear a preliminary trail connecting the old dock trail to a trail that comes from the vicinity of the lake's outflow beaver dam and climbs up through a line of cliffs near their southeast end. After doing that, I put the chainsaw down to retrieve later and went on a fairly long walk. I headed generally down East Bifurcation Creek to Virginia Creek and then followed that upstream, eventually using a path that Neville discovered that must've once been a logging road, back before it became "forever wild" state land. At Virginia Pond, I found water levels very low and the pond wasn't much more than a muddy puddle, though it was plenty big enough for Neville to wallow in. Interestingly, some creature had been digging through the debris-rich mud that had accumulated just above the beaver dam at the pond's outflow. There was enough excavation to suggest the creature responsible was probably a big one, more like a bear than a raccoon. But I couldn't think of any potential resource an animal would find in such mud.
I continued upstream for some distance, eventually leaving state-owned land and arriving at another beaver dam and pond, one that is so new that it doesn't appear on the Google satellite view. This pond was significantly larger, and featured a fairly long stick-and-mud dam. Something about a brook I found flowing into this pond from the north intrigued me, since it had cleared away the soil down to the bedrock in a swath as wide as a one-lane road. In some places it had delaminated some of the surface rocks, bunching them up into piles. These were the kinds of rocks one could use to make things like foundation walls, fences, or even patios. I continued following the stream uphill until I arrived at an old hunting camp. I featured a nice fire pit made of those rocks, an arched metal frame to support a tarp, and a horizontal log high in the trees for hanging deer. Some distance away, I found an ancient crumbling building that had arrived on a wheeled cart. If someone was able to drive that thing back into the woods so far, there must've been an access road. I found it not far away, and it seemed to lead to the northeast. I followed it some distance before turning around and heading back homeward.
When I got back to the cabin, Neville wasn't there, and I began to worry about what would happen if he didn't return. Charlotte also seemed concern (she'd checked in with me repeatedly on the walk, but I'd last seen Neville wallowing in the mud of Virginia Pond. But then I saw Charlotte perk up and heard Neville awkwardly climbing the steps and knew that he'd safely returned.
Later in the day, I went down to the dock and eventually took the kayak for a paddle into the outflow bay. The lake is down nearly as low as it gets, and there's a fair amount of "headboard" on the outflow beaver dam.
Some old bleach containers at the bottom cliffs just north of our parcel. Perhaps they were used as part of a covert drug lab. For this reason, I call these cliffs the "Crank Cliffs."
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Mysterious digging into the beaver dam of Virgina Pond.
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What remains of Virgina Pond.
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Neville wallowing in the Virginia Pond mud.
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The big beaver dam at the pond I discovered today.
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The look of the pond I discovered today. Notice all the dead hemlock needles, indicating this dam is fairly new.
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The stream that resembles a paved roadway.
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The front of the hillbilly hunting trailer.
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The back of the hillbilly hunting trailer.
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The hillbilly stone barbecue area.
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The three-foot-tall monolith I installed some weeks ago just below the East Bifurcation Falls.
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