[Journal entry for August 1, 2014; Spring Pond, Harriman State Park, New York] In the early afternoon, I walked around Spring Pond in Harriman State Park. It’s located along Route 106 just east of Kanawauke Circle. It’s a small impoundment created by an earth-filled dam on its west shore. I parked by Lake Kanawauke and walked uphill along the road to the dam. Wildflowers, including Queen Anne’s Lace, are growing along the side of the road and Pickerlweed and water lily is blooming in the Lake Kanawauke and in Spring Pond. I reach the dam and walk out onto it. The spillway is made of boulders and concrete, but the water is flowing only from a plastic pipe set atop it. Beavers have added a tangle of sticks atop the spillway. Mint is growing along the exit stream below the spillway. I examine a ruined stone hut, labeled 914, set beside the dam. It contains a motor with large gears and a couple of cylindrical tanks each about five feet high. I suppose it to be an old water purification system, now rusting away. Out in the lake, in addition to water lilies, Milfoil is blooming. Each aqueous feathery stem is sending a shoot into the air, topped with a solitary white blossom. I walk around the lake. I come across a large chestnut tree, with its easily recognizable spiny fruit, behind Building 914. I suppose that it is one of the European varieties, and not the long-vanished American variety. Sadly, beavers have badly damaged it trunk. I continue my circuit of the lake. The first third is easy – through low Blueberry and Sweet Fern bushes by a low rocky bluff. But then, one across a power line right-of-way, I encounter impassible Mountain Laurel and have to take a wide detour around it. I cross two inlet streams and several old rock walls before returning to the lake shore. I cross a final inlet stream, on the east side of the lake, spotting a small crayfish at its bottom. In a few minutes, I am back at the dam. In addition to the sticks on the spillway, and many beaver-felled and beaver-gnawed trees, I can see a lodge in the water off the pond’s south shore. However, all this beaver activity looks old. I see no freshly cut wood. I suppose the beavers have exhausted the food supply around Spring Pond and have moved on. About an hour.