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Halfway Brook
Sunday, May 18 2025
location: 940 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
After laying down a nice layer of avocado toast in my stomach, I not only drank a french press of coffee, but I also ate a 150 mg recreational dose of pseudoephedrine to help me power through the day's tasks.
The weather had taken a turn from humid and dry to cool and rainy, and it was still raining a little when I took Charlotte (Neville didn't come) on a short walk down to the lake and back. The cool weather meant that biting flies were no longer a problem.
I already knew that to run my new outdoor electrical wire I would need some supplies from a hardware store, particularly 14/2 outdoor cable and PVC conduit in various shapes. So I decided to drive to the TrueValue hardware store in downtown Gloversville (since it is the closest hardware store to the cabin). But when I got there, I found that they were missing a lot of the things I needed. Some of their shelves were bare in the way people have been predicting would eventually be the result of Trump's ill-considered tariff tantrum back in April, though it's possible the shelves were bare for some other reason. They didn't have any outdoor electrical cable of any size or length, and they didn't have half inch PVC conduit. I ended up buying a couple electrical boxes, some string, and a big bag of birdseed. And then I drove to the Nobel Ace in Johnstown, where I was able to get most of what I needed, though they were notably short on the bends of half-inch PVC conduit that I wanted. As I left the store, I had to pass through a group of cub scouts begging for money like unshaven guys with cardboard signs at an intersection. (Feeling civic-minded from the pseudoephedrine not financially stressed, I gave one of them a dollar.)
Back at the cabin, I decided to take the dogs for a nice long walk so I wouldn't have their needs hanging over me while working on the ditch-digging project I had planned. So I took them on a walk down the Lake Edward Trail to a brook just west of a huge split boulder that serves as a notable landmark about half-way to Lake Edward. I decided to name that book "Halfway Brook" and to follow it, this afternoon, all the way to Virginia Creek. It starts as a fairly small brook, but I've never seen it run dry. Further downstream, it encounters a wall of rock that serves as a minor obstruction. Then it continues along the base of a rocky cliff, nearly forming a gorge, before ending in a swampy lowland on the banks of Virginia Creek. By that point it has swelled to the size of one of the bifurcation creeks, which are Virginia Creek's biggest tributaries upstream. (Virginia Creek is Lake Edward's largest tributary.). I then followed Virginia Creek upstream with the plan of following West Bifurcation Creek up to Woodworth Lake. Interestingly, I found that the mouth of West Bifurcation Creek is only slightly downstream of (west) of our parcel (despite the fact that it wanders fairly far west of that upstream). I ended up not following West Bifurcation Creek but a sloping ridge to its west uphill. At this point, I've explored this area pretty thoroughly, and I rarely encounter things I'd been unaware of.
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Neville approaching the large stone barrier in Halfway brook from upstream (the south). Click to enlarge.
Charlotte in Virginia Creek. Click to enlarge.
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