An early morning drive to the park, and I've left my car, grabbed my camera and set off down the paved path that skirts the outer edge of Lake Conestee Nature Park in SC. It's a bright and sunny day. On my right are lake remnants, more like a large pond now, partially overgrown with water weeds as the collecting silt rises near the water's surface. A variety of small birds populate the trees along the bank, with herons and ducks and geese foraging out on the water.
My feet clop along on the long wooden footbridge in the low area; then hard pavement quietens my steps. I stop at a newly-built overlook platform that provides a good view of the lake. Lots of history here, history I've only read about. Having found this place just a few years ago, I wasn’t around for most of the years since the dam was built in 1892.
It was easy to imagine the perpetual struggles between man and nature, between man and his quest for human progress, as I stood on that man-made platform and looked out on the remnants of a once fine and productive man-made lake: all the planning that went into the project, the building of the dam; the years of an operational mill alongside the dam; the factory waste products dumped upriver, the silt that harmed the mills productivity and began to fill in the lake; and then, along with litigation costs and the Great Depression causing it to close in 1939, and though it reopened years later, the mill closed for good in 1971.
I pondered the many years of toxic sediment collecting behind that dam; the dozens of years that passed while nature did her best to clean the soil that had risen above the water, producing cleansing bushes and weeds and a forest of trees; I smiled at the thought of the area finally being found safe for foot traffic, giving the community a wonderful nature preserve for its citizens to enjoy.
Back on the paved path, I approached the part where the lake disappears in the trees and the forest is thick on either side. I really needed this time away from my troubles, needed something else to think about for a while. And, once again, I found it here in this park, floating through history, walking in the morning sun, surrounded by greenery, hearing nature's sounds, feeling nature's comforts, as my cares drifted away into the endless ether of times gone by.