Looking for the salt well

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[I was kicking myself and frustrated last Saturday trying to locate the old salt well in rural Equality, a site I'd not been for years.

The well is, appropriately, on Salt Well Road not far from the Old Slave House. My memory had the well about the size of a car surrounded by railroad timbers. That much I knew. Where exactly it was I did not know, but figured there was a pull off along the road that would lead me to the spot.

I did find a pull off and a forest trail that took me to the bank of the Saline River and to what must be rural Gallatin County's unofficial dumping grounds. The first item was a baby stroller. I continued on, but dark curiousity overcame me and I turned around. No, thankfully there was no baby in the stroller.

The path led me past tires and a pile of vinyl siding. Some kind of paper hung from a tree limb.

There was a strange pond off the trail, but no wells with railroad timbers on them. I returned to the car and Vicky and I drove up the road, but there were no other pull offs before we left the woods and were in pasture land.

I called my dad and his memory was the same as mine, it was just a pull off place on Salt Well Road near the river. I turned around and went to the only other possibility which was the former route of state Route 1. That path only led to the river and to a sizable pile of deer carcasses.

Meat still clung to a skull that stared at me, as though startled by my visit, but no longer able to prance away.

So we returned to the first place I stopped to investigate more thoroughly and figured out the problem. That pond had swallowed up the well.

I don't know the explanation for the pond. Either the small hollow had trapped a large amount of rainwater or the salty water of the well has bubbled up out of the earth and submerged the timbers.

The deer trails that led to the area from multiple directions satisfied me this was the salt well.

They would have ventured in to lick the salt the same as animals have done since the ice age.

I had come for a photograph of the well, but could only take a shot of the bog surrounded by cypress trees. I tripped over the cypress knees walking back to the car. They were only a few inches tall and hid under the leaves.

Cold

The arctic front blew down Vine Street Wednesday sweeping a wall of leaves and grit into my face.

Forecasters had predicted this morning's temperature was to be a zero degrees with a wind chill of -10 degrees.

When the National Weather Service recommends that we keep our mouths covered so that our lungs don't freeze I pay attention. I'm spoiled this year with a place that has gas heat. Last year cooped up in the cabin I didn't take off my down parka, hat and gloves until bedtime.

When the temperature gets down to zero, that's when us news reporters have to take notes with pencils because our ink pens freeze up.