Borderland State Park

A few years ago, my son and I visited Borderland in the spring, when a usually sluggish creek was running high. We were charmed to see that someone had created two waterwheels out of natural materials. For each, they’d stuck two forked sticks into the stream and put an “axle” (?) stick across (resting in the forks). There were paddles built off the axle made of smaller sticks bound there with strong grasses, with flat rectangles of bark wedged into slits in the end of the sticks. Every part was something from nature. We watched the waterwheels for a really long time, and they worked beautifully! I wish I’d had a camera with me! Now we go each spring (as we did today) to see if there are any, but we’ve never seen them again.