Sacrifice Zone: Little Bloody Run

To arrive at Little Bloody Run, you have to come at it sideways, from the scenic road that skirts the Niagara River. My husband, Matt, and I drive from Buffalo, where we live twenty miles upstream, though it feels closer with the current at our backs. We wash up in an overflow parking lot for a fishing platform, run by the New York Power Authority. As we park, I’m talking about seasonal depression, how deep my dread has grown in the last few weeks, as the afternoons have almost disappeared—though if I’m honest, I’m not sure the season’s the problem. Matt listens as clouds rise over the water, and I want to hurry up and reach this place before snow and darkness fall on the landscape and flatten its gradations. Because the stream itself has almost entirely been buried—what’s left runs just below the surface, underground.