RECLAIMING A SPRING
There is often a neighbourhood tradition concerning a wonderful spring somewhere near, a spring that never ceases to flow, no matter how complete the drought. The water is pure, cold, and clear; maybe the oldest inhabitant had it from his grandfather how the Indians used always to camp near it on their cross-country marches from the Catskills to the Blue Ridge. They call it "The Old Indian Spring." Sometimes they tell hair-raising tales of midnight adventures and hair-breadth escapes, till you wonder that the spring itself never turned red with the spilt blood. From stories of early pioneer days one gets a good idea of the very great importance of the ever faithful spring. With the certainty of a pure water supply for family and beasts, a man might safely carve a home in a primeval forest. Without it, he must push on yet another lap toward the wilderness.
I remember such a spring. Generations of red men, trekking from one hunting-ground to another or maybe waging their own peculiar war in the enemy's country, have depended on this spring for their success. Later generations of pioneers have passed that way and refreshed themselves with its sweet water. As years went by, the spring fell into disuse and gushed on forgotten. But forty years ago it was re-discovered by a searching party, identified as an historic spot, reclaimed, and made permanently useful and beautiful by public spirit.
Nobody knows just how to appreciate a spring except the person who discovers it, reclaims it, and makes it do his bidding. No bit of his own ingenuity pleases the householder quite as much as his spring, his piping, his reservoir, and his little hydraulic ram, yet one of the last springs I visited was in a New England pasture. Its only protection was a sort of fence of poles to keep the cattle out. To approach it you had to leap from hillock to hillock, in constant danger of losing your balance and sinking in a deep mud hole. The spring bubbled up clear as crystal in a most unromantic hole in the ground; its overflow simply spread out on the ground between the hummocks. It didn't look thrifty to me. Two days' work would have laid a basin rim of small stones about that spring with a piece of tile for an overflow pipe, and a shallow channel might have been dug to carry the surplus to the edge of the slope where another basin for the cattle might have been made, or to a trough.
The water of a spring ought to be analyzed by a chemist before it is used for drinking. Nobody knows what contamination is possible to a spring whose sources are mystery. Campers ought to be particularly careful in this, especially if their camp is near settlements.
The first step in reclaiming a spring is to dig out a basin. The chances are that the one made by the water is too shallow for practical purposes. Compute the number of gallons you want in reserve and take out enough cubic feet of soil to make a basin of that capacity. Decide next what to do with the surplus. Your basin is not designed to hold the spring's daily output. If the spring is in a ravine, nothing is simpler than to lay a tile drain from the basin down to the stream bed. By damming the stream you can make a pond for waterfowl, for trout raising, or for a swimming hole: but that is another story.
The basin should have a protecting rim. For a number of reasons this should be solid and permanent. You are sure to want to sit on it and watch the water, for one thing. Then, too, you want a protection against surface water. All sorts of decaying animal and vegetable matter must be kept out of the spring, so cover it tightly.