By the end of every summer at Allegheny Reservoir, the insatiable demands of a power plant downstream have outpaced the Pennsylvania rain. Happily, the barren bottom of Willow Bay becomes startlingly apparent only as the weather chills and summer’s crush of campers dwindles to a trickle of determined campers, fishermen, hunters.
This year the appearance of the homely mudflat coincides, as well, with the tail end of my rookie season as a camp host. In fewer than two weeks I’ll hitch my Forest River Flagstaff wagon to my truck; Millie and I will leave the Appalachian outfall and this reservoir, headed for some weeks in Kilgore followed by winter months among the cypress trees at Caddo Lake State Park.
Barring something calamitous, though, it now appears likely I’ll be back here in 5 or 6 months to appreciate an Appalachian spring and pleasantly temperate summer evenings.
For today, heartfelt — trite, I know, but accurate — gratitude to the Willow Bay regulars who drew me into their circle: Milnes, Piganellis, Rolands, Bradleys, Maffes, Hickses, Good-Sobols, Haydens and others who came less often and whose visits were brief.
This won’t be my last post from here this season. But the days are shorter, nights are cooler, the floating dock no longer floats. And reunion with my Texas pals is just around the turn.
And we’re excited to see you!
(I kinda want a shot of the beached dock, just sayin…)
We will miss you, Bill!
Great opportunity to don your work boots with thick fishhook-proof soles and your metal detector and go treasure hunting while the water is down.
Reminds me when I was a kid they built East Lynn Lake, a 1,005-acre reservoir on the East Fork Twelvepole Creek in Wayne County, West Virginia as part of a series of flood control projects for the Ohio River basin. Similar to when they filled the valley for a reservoir in the movie “Oh Brother Where Art Thou”. There were still structures left, old chimneys, blacktop roads, and of course trees slowly left with only their tops protruding out of the water.