A pond situation

Over the past few days we’ve been, once again, wrestling with a pond situation, namely how to fashion a workable stand pipe to keep the level of our pond steady and not have it overflow its side and constantly over soak the soil in a grove of titanic pines as well as surrounding ash, birch, and maple. Our pond is about an acre. It’s beautiful, we love to look at it every morning. It’s home to many creatures during the span of the year, right now, as you’ve probably read, a pair of Canada geese and their soon-to-be-hatched goslings are the main inhabitants. Throughout the year herons, cormorants, owls, as well as beavers, weasels, mink, and moose pay frequent visits. The area used to be swampland until Royce’s dad dug the pond over 40 years ago. It’s 12’ at its deepest and there are 2 drain pipes that were put in at its inception. One of them is at the bottom of the deepest part of the pond, made of an odd compound, half rubber, half hardened tar paper. The pipe elbows up from the bottom, its location marked with a stick, and Royce himself had covered it with a board and a rock before the pond was first filled. The second pipe, closer to the surface, is an 8” culvert pipe that diagonals from a patch of cattails at one edge down through the dam to a site at its base. This had been designed as a run-off pipe, but its exact location had been lost for years and it too had been plugged, but with muck and gunk.

3 years ago our pond started draining. “What’s going on?” “Is there a drought?” The weather had been pretty dry, but “it couldn’t affect the pond like that, could it?” After fretting for about a week at the slowly sinking surface, Royce loped over one day to say “I wondered when that board was going to rot through.” All attempts to find his pipe before the pond drained ended turned futile - Richard was not at all happy about this - and I suggested we view the “draining” as an opportunity to clean the pond and deal with the pipe situation ourselves, up close and personal. First we plugged it, cinching some new pvc pipe onto the old, weird compound pipe. Then we tried 2 different stand pipe attachments. Neither worked, leading to one more draining of the pond. Richard = not too happy again. Finally, last autumn, we really thought we had it licked, a stand pipe in place, very proud of our ingenuity and stick-to-it-iveness, but when the pond was almost completely refilled, something dislodged below and the top of the pipe listed up crazily breaking the surface. I kept waiting for the pond to drain a third time. That, amazingly, didn’t happen, but the listing pipe was frozen in place this past winter amid a crunch of ice, the sight of which drove Richard to distraction. I had no idea how bothered he was by that. Richard can keep things to himself. Even now, still waters run very deep. But I didn’t realize the dramatic depth of his detestation of the sight of said stand pipe until a few days ago when Richard let rip a monologue of his great pain on the shore of our pond which would have put King Lear to shame. Amazing. What really threw me about his “crack winds and blow” oration was that it had been triggered by a solution to the entire imbroglio, namely we had just discovered, uncovered, and unplugged Royce’s hidden surface pipe! Not only did it offer a more convenient and hidden among the bullrushes option for a stand pipe BUT its outflow would form a beautiful stream bed at its outlet near the base of the dam.

Well, some deep inner aquifer of my soul must have been moved by Richard’s outburst, because the next day I donned a neoprene top, bike pants, and flippers and waded out into the frigid drink to take care of the pipe ugliness once and for all. May I just say that the water temperature in a spring fed pond in Vermont in April IS COOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!
AM I CRAZY?!! YES!!
I took my time, pausing every few steps to acclimate myself to the temperature. Luckily Richard sat on shore shouting out supportive things like “Just go for it! Come on! Hop to Hopsing, daylight’s burning!” He’s a prince, and a prince should be king. I finaIly took the “plunge” and quickly assessed the job that lay ahead. My main concern was that last autumn we had put a series of ropes tied to stakes around the bottom of the pipe when we were trying to fix it in place and there was always the possibility of getting tangled up in them. One dive to the bottom, though, alleviated that concern. The ropes had been pulled out and were lying out of harm’s way in the silt. I unhooked the standpipe and it sunk to the bottom, out of sight, out of mind. Of course, now pur pond’s water was coursing out of the pipe. I surfaced and shouted for Richard to toss me a slghtly deflated blue ball we’d gotten to plug it up. It was a little tricky bringing it to the bottom and then, it didn’t hold. Next solution? An old board I found at the bottom. It sort of work, bu still, not a perfect fit. I surfaced once more and yelled for Richard to fashion a plug much like Royce had made for the original pipe - a 4” by 4” board, one side staple gunned with intertubing to cinch it close, with a 2” by 2” by 3” board nailed perpendicular to the tubing side of the board that would fit down the pipe. He raced to the house to cobble it together while I bobbed on the surface, teeth chattering, giving one of the best Leonardo DiCaprio imitations from “Titanic” you’ll ever see. I swear I was beginning to hear Celine Dion singing by the time Richard returned and tossed me the plug. I swam down, plugged the hole, and when I stepped to shore, Richard was singing and dancing “Ding, dong the witch is dead” up and down the shores of the pond in celebration, mind you, with the original “little person” choreography (it’s not too difficult, but very entertaining). We were feeling very victorious. Hoorah and halleluja! It took about 20 minutes for my teeth to stop their clattering.

Today I’d like to say that the pond situation is finito, a thing of the past BUT it’s a work in progress. We thought we had it. We’re very, very close, just a few more kinks to work out. Emotions have run high. It’s been very Captains Courageous on the high seas at times, but with all the unsolvable things swirling around these days, it’s good to deal with something that has a definite beginning, middle, end. Sort of. Back to the drawing board and welcome to a new streambed. I’m out to yank a few more cattails and willows.