Damming The Stream Just For Fun

Trying to deal with the untimely death of my good friend, Sarah Pack, I took my parents' digital camera out on the exercise walk. I thought of this particular stream that I once told Sarah a long time ago. She asked me if I had a picture of this particular activity that I did. I told her that I did not take the pictures of that before. Tough luck, I guess.

What activity is this? Well, many years ago, my brother and I biked around the neighborhood, we stumbled upon a park called "Riverside Park". It is one lousy, cheap park for anyone to hit on -- it only has baseball field, basketball courts and tennis courts. That's it. Nothing else.

But if you go to the edge of the park, there is a small forest with an abandoned road down the hill -- many kids zoomed their bicycles down the hill. There are some trails that you can BMX yourselves throughout -- but the chances of you flipping over your bikes are pretty high. It happened to me. At the bottom of the hill lies a small stream that flows into Appomattox River.

This particular unnamed stream is not fast moving stream. In fact, it is pretty small and slow. My brother, Gary and I had this amusing idea -- to dam the brook and see if it will back up the stream as much as can be. Just like the Hoover Dam turning the Colorado River into Lake Mead.

We went back home and brought the equipments necessary to build the dam. But we also organized the sticks and rocks that sits next to us because we were aware that the hearing kids that zoomed by the stream can be vicious. They'd try to attack us -- we'd hurl these weapons back at them in force. And yes, it happened twice or thrice. Anyway, Gary and I discussed about this particular brook, we brought two small wood boards to insert on the ground level to give the sand/dirt some support to push the water back.

We also brought small shovel and two 1-inch width pipe to have water flow into the pipes as we did not want the water to overflow the dam. So we pushed two boards down and quickly pushed dirt on the main stream and hurrily dig some more sand/dirt to build up a little -- it was about 2 feet tall and about 6 feet width.

Voila! It worked. Gary and I looked at the stream that steadily build up against the dam, the vacancy of water flowing into the river. We inserted the pipes -- it worked like charm. Sure enough, we hung out and played around a little but always came back to keep an eye on the build-up of stream against the dam. The dam held very well as the stream went as far as can be.

It was getting darker. Gary and I left for home. Later in the evening, a storm occured. Gary quickly mentioned me about the brook. I said "FINISH GONE!"

Next day, we went back only to see the different stream going in its path -- yes, the dam was gone, I guess the downpour overwhelmed the dam and rushed its way to Appomattox River.

Either way, this project still ranked as one of the fun moments in my childhood life. Call it lame if you want to but it is for me.

Today, I went to the brook to look around -- The brook is still there. Of course, Sarah and I joked about this particular brook. I think it is fitting that I posted these pictures that I took today.

Cheers,

R-