Later that morning we walked there together. It took longer than it should have because the ground was wet from an overnight shower, and Daniel had worn shoes better suited to courthouse floors than mountain mud. I led him past a rock outcrop, crossed a narrow seasonal trickle, and pushed through the willows where the old map suggested the marker might stand. Just beyond the roots of a fallen tree, something pale showed beneath the mud.
I brushed away loose leaves with my glove. It was a weathered plastic survey post, half buried and tilted toward the water. A county emblem remained on one side, and below it were three faded words: RIVERSTONE AQUATIC RESERVE. The lettering was old enough to have softened at its edges, but it was unmistakable.
"I've walked past this spot a hundred times," I said.
Daniel crouched to photograph the marker from several angles. "And nobody gave you a reason to recognize it. Don't pull it out. It might have a survey number or a placement record we can match."
He took photographs with a measuring tape in the frame, then stepped back to look at the pond. From that side, the houses of Silver Ridge were almost completely hidden by timber. You could make out a handful of pale roofs on the ridge if you knew where to look. The water seemed a world apart from all of it, which made Karen's decision to treat the pond as spare community infrastructure even harder to accept.
My grandson arrived shortly after lunch. Ethan had driven over from his mother's house because I had called and told him the pond had become a mystery worth looking at, which was all the invitation he needed. He climbed out of his little pickup with fishing glasses hanging around his neck and a notebook already in his hand. At seventeen, he was thin and long-limbed, with the distracted, purposeful expression of a boy who could tell you what a fish ate by examining the contents of a stream but might forget where he had put his own keys.
"Grandpa, Mom said you got invaded by fish," he announced.
"That's one way of putting it."
He moved toward the pond, then stopped when he saw how many animals were milling along the bank. The excitement on his face shifted almost immediately into concern. "That's too many. Did somebody dump a whole hatchery here?"
"That's what we're trying to find out."
He crouched at the water's edge without reaching into it. "Some of those trout are crowding the spring inlet. They might be looking for cooler, better-oxygenated water. Have you tested it?"
I showed him the readings I had collected with a borrowed meter after the county's advice. They were not yet catastrophic, but the low morning oxygen number worried him as much as it worried me. We watched a few fish rise and turn in the shallows, then made notes on where the most crowded sections appeared to be. I liked that he asked what we knew before offering an opinion.
"Do you think they're worth money?" he asked when I showed him the tags.
"I think somebody considered them worth keeping track of. That's all I know for sure."