When Harlan Ellison was asked where he got his ideas from, his answer was Schenectady. He was commenting on the elusiveness of ideas, and the absurdity of trying to pin them down. However, while I agree with him entirely, I have gotten a few ideas from Schenectady in my time. And I can be even more specific than that. Last Sunday I was in Schenectady County, here in the Plotter Kill Preserve, on this ledge, touching the water as it began its sixty feet drop to the creek below. What’s difficult to tell from the photos is that the water has carved a bowl-like auditorium from the surrounding rock. Standing at the base of the falls is like standing in an amphitheater, and it struck me that if the creek’s course was diverted upstream then people could use this naturally-occurring auditorium for meetings and war parleys and religious rites. It would make a fine outdoor temple. If I were to use the drained waterfall in a story I would name it Waterfell. It would be long since abandoned. And the water, diverted centuries earlier, would be slowly trickling back.....