At the bottom of the gravel pit was a small lake, more like a pond. With the so may rainy days in Oregon the build up of rain water was inevitable. Even though the ground was very porous, the water manged to build up and stay almost all year round, at least until summer. Then it would dry up leaving exposed all sorts of things. The life created in these pools was amazing. There were three levels of creatures. Those that lived above the water, those on and the others under. The dragon flies swooped around the various plants that grew from the ponds edge. Why they had to hover in one place for as long as they did, we never could figure out. Maybe it was just to let us see them. That they were scary, so we should leave them alone. We could never hit one with a rock or catch one for that matter.

There were also the water skimmers. They walked on the water. We couldn’t so we would get our shoes all mucked up and would try to dry them before going home. Our shoes never did last very long. We would either loose them or they would fall apart. Dad learned not to invest in new shoes. Mom could never insure that we only used them for school. So the Goodwill was a preferred shopping spot for our outdoor shoes. The mothers of the good kids that didn’t ruin their shoes would give them to the Goodwill, so we could ruin them.

The tadpoles were those little back peas with small tails that swam everywhere. We would catch them and then let them go. They weren’t very fast but they were numerous. There would only be a short period during the summer where they would be abundant, then they would disappear into frogs. Sometimes we would catch that tadpoles with little budding legs. Later during the summer we would be catching little frogs. They were much more fun to keep. Tadpoles needed water and would last less than a day, while frogs would stay with us for weeks.

The gavel pit was a place where you could find all kinds of neat rocks. We were convinced there was gold, silver and maybe even diamonds. We used plastic lids to do some panning. All that we got though were small aggats of different color. The mustard colored ones we called gold, the silvery ones silver and so forth. We would find those broken rocks that had a mesh of colored or white veins in them where we would see different images, faces, animals.

At the highest point of the gravel pit there was running along the cliff a ledge path cut into the side. How it got there we didn’t know, nor did we care. It was important that we could use this path to make our way down o the bottom of the gravel pit. It wasn’t safe at all because there were some areas where the was just enough space for a small kid to hug the gravel pit wall and work his way slowly to five or six feet to the other side. This part of the trail was about 40 feet above the bottom of the pit. One day my brother Laird went first and the ledge behind him and in front of me gave way and crashed to the bottom of the pit in a cascade of bouncing rocks and a flume of dust. There he was frozen. Although he could have gone forward, also that part of the ledge had given away slightly even under his own feet. He refused to move any further. I made my way back and ran to get mom.

She called the fire department and there we had it a crowd of onlookers at the top of the gravel pit we me in the forefront calling down to my brother to “don’t worry mom was here with the firetrucks, oh and mom’s not mad”. That was important because to get in trouble with mom was sometimes more fearful than a gravel pit cliff. I was so proud of my brother for not crying. We was rescued and became an immediate hero.

We still visited the gravel pit from time to time but later as we got older we ventured farther and farther away from our home looking for new adventures.