Old is new again

I was out in the light rain this morning looking for a bird I did not find. I found myself on a path I last walked on over fifty years ago.

Back then, I was walking the length of a river that had been put underground twenty years previous to then. Its headwaters were in the then-City-Dump. Even in the early 'seventies, the Dump had been closed and covered for decades. But the brook still stank so it was still covered.

In the late 'seventies, the City put through a major sewer line parallel to the underground river, making a kind of path over the sewer. And then twenty years later, the City decided to release the river itself.

Since then the path, walking above the big sewer line, follows the brook which still adds a red tinge to the rocks it flows over (from the iron leaching out of the Old Dump). But it doesn't stink anymore.

It's a pleasant spot for trees and bushes and birds and perhaps other animals to live productive lives. And I'd been alerted to a Lincoln's sparrow down there.

I didn't find the sparrow, but I like the path. Even here -- where the brook disappears underground again to get past a couple of gigantic mansions finally to reappear a couple of hundred metres on.