The weather the last few weeks has been perfect for hiking. Sunny, but cool. Last Friday I enjoyed a hike along the Brule River in Hovland with my cousins from Washington state, Joel and Lori, daughter-in-law Sara, granddaughter Genevieve and her little friend, Allie.
I hadn’t made the hike to Devil’s Kettle for a very long time. So long, in fact, that I can’t remember the last time. I did, however, remember the many, many steps up and down to the cauldron and the disappointment at the overlook.
Although the hike itself has always been nice, with its lovely views of the Brule River gorge and the glistening river rocks, I have never made the hike under perfect Devil’s Kettle conditions. One hike in early spring—a typical spring, not like our current drought—brought us to a river roaring past the Devil’s Kettle overlook. The water level was so high, the riverbed rushed over the falls and we couldn’t make out the mysterious hole in the bedrock.
Another trip up and down the steps in late summer led us to a river that barely ran over the falls. Again, the Devil’s Kettle wasn’t recognizable, as the water flow was so low and slow that it barely trickled down the center or the riverbed, let alone into the unexplainable cavity.
However, last Friday’s trek was made at exactly the right time of year. The hike was great. Walking with preschoolers makes for a nice easy pace and it was easy to chat with my visiting cousins. We played a little bit of hide & seek and stopped to look at interesting rocks, and we collected sticks. So even if the Devil’s Kettle had been a disappointment, it would have been a great day.
But the water conditions were perfect and I could finally understand what the fuss is all about. The massive cauldron was immediately obvious. The Brule rolled over the bedrock, diverging into two branches— one flowing over the falls and the other disappearing into an amazingly smooth, perfectly round, massive hole in the ground.
And—most extraordinary— was that the water vanished. Unlike other rivers that have small cups of water created by erosion or crevices into which water spills and splashes out again, the water in the Devil’s Kettle disappears.
My Washington cousins were impressed as we explained that no one knows where the water that enters Devil’s Kettle ends up. recalled that studies have been conducted using bright dyes and painted ping-pong balls to try to track where the water goes. And my modernminded relatives asked why high-tech equipment hasn’t been tried. Surely a waterproof encapsulated GPS unit could be dropped in the hole and tracked to its final destination?
What a great idea. Perhaps it has been done and I just haven’t heard about it.
But as we walked up and down the steps back to the car, we talked about how the water could be tracked and tested. We thought about having a digital readout with accurate information on the Devil’s Kettle water flow. We decided we didn’t really want to know. We decided we liked the mystery.
Maybe the test hasn’t been done because we all know it’s more fun just to walk and wonder.
With rivers as with good
friends, you always feel
better for a few hours in their
presence; you always want to
review your dialogue, years
later, with a particular pool
or riffleor bend, and to live
back through the layers of
experience.
Nick Lyons
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