Baby American Eel climbing ledges at Automatic Dam, Messalonskee
Stream, Cool Street, Waterville, Maine. June 12, 2005.
By the 1980s Messalonskee Stream was dead. Pollution had turned its
clear waters murky, smelly and brown. Five hydro-electric dams turned Messalonskee
into a chain of stagnant ponds of sewage.
No person alive has seen Messalonskee Stream when it was still clear,
rushing and full of life.
No memories or memoirs exist of what Messalonskee
was like for 10,000 years.
If Messalonskee Stream were a book, by 1980 every page had been burned
beyond recognition. Whatever wisdom, poetry and beauty Messalonskee once
held between its covers has been destroyed and lost forever.
But Messalonskee
Stream was not willing to die forgotten ...