Someone Had To Die

Virginia
36 38.81 N 076 22.25 W

We should take more side trips on our journeys. Each one seems to be a memorable treasure. Today we took one such side trip to Lake Drummond.

Lake Drummond is the water source for the Great Dismal Swamp Canal. It is connected to the canal by a ditch 50 feet wide and three miles long. We wouldn't try taking Tarwathie up that ditch, but in the dinghy using the outboard motor it makes for a fine trip.

Of course the down side of using the motor is that we make noise. We didn't see the bears, the deer, the racoon or the otters or the cotton mouths or any other animals; just turtles, lots of turtles sunning themselves.

There were some other critters that we couldn't see directly. They were hidden underwater in clumps of lilly pads. We could tell they were there though by watching the disturbances in the lily pads as they swam down below.

At the far end of the ditch is a dam. They use that dam to regulate how fast water drains from the lake to the canal. The canal needs at least 16 million gallons of water per day to service the 8 cycles of the locks.

Beside the dam, there is a little trolley that one operates oneself to lift the boat from canal level to lake level; a difference of about four feet right now. The trolley moves at about 1/4 the speed of a baby crawling. It is very quaint. We met the caretaker who maintains the grounds and equipment. He works for the US Army Corps of Engineers. I told him that he found a wonderful job for himself. I asked if he had to wrestle with other Corps men to get this assignment. He said, "No, but someone had to die for me to get it." I believe him.

Lake Drummond itself is a depression in the peat about three miles across. At one time, before men dug drainage ditches, there must have been lots of water on the ground all around. After all, it is named Swamp. Last year as we passed by, there was a major underground fire near Lake Drummond. It was the peat burning. Indeed, an ancient peat fire ignited by lightning is a plausible explanation of the existance of Lake Drummond.

We didn't spend much time in the lake itself. The only thing visible was water and shorelines with cyprus trees and lily pads; exactly the same as the canal and the river. We backtracked to the boat trolley area where we ate a picnic lunch.

That was a great side trip. We're really glad we did it.