Little Gorge on the Prarie
This gorge should look familiar to anyone from the fingerlakes area, except for the orange water. The orange water is traceable to the iron oxide which you can see in the shale of the falls ampitheathre shown here, which was being leached out of the brand new gorge on the day of creation..
We made the little gorge to flush and recirculate water from a very old boulder-walled well six feet across which had been used as a water source for a hundred years, and for convenient disposal during most of the last fifty. We acted on the faith that it would be best to get things out in the air.
The first thing you need for a project like this is an agreeable excavator who has the imagination to be a good listener and the mechanical skills to set a dinner table with his back hoe. We called Rob and Jeff Hall at Spuds Excavating, and were not dissapointed.
The well wasn't so much the problem as it was the inspiration. The old farm house had burnt down years ago and its remains had been bulldozed into two little hills - hills being rare out on that Aurora Prarie slope. There is very little soil over the clay on that slope, and not that much clay over the shale, which is to be found two to four feet down and is saturated with water two feet into its bed.

The well as we found it, was still partly covered by the slate lid, which was fracturing and slightly ajar. The first thing we had Spuds do was pull the top off:
And Then.....