Update: Are you interest in seeing how Sennett’s Hole shifts changes intra- and inter-annually from 2008 to the present? If so, visit the Sense of Place photography page on Sennett’s Hole Across the Seasons.
Overview: Sennett’s Hole, located at the western end of West Point on the Eno (a Durham city park), is a delightful place to spend a quiet afternoon during the week—or, historically, a boisterous day in the water on the weekend. Bordered by large granodiorite rocks and floodplain forest, this water hole provides excellent opportunities to view water turtles and birds. The hole is also of historic significance: it was the site of a mill in the mid-1700s. Local lore suggests that the owner, Michael Synott, drowned in Sennett’s (i.e., Synott’s) Hole at a ripe old age, when high water swept away his mill (Heron, 1975). WARNING: Sennett’s Hole is reported to be quite deep (Bradley, 2007), so make sure that any children you bring are strong swimmers.
Directions: Please see trail map.
My observations & ponderings: The day is beautiful and feels fully like fall. The air is cool, the breeze is moderate and rustles the treetops, and the sun seems lower in the sky—less orange than in summer—glowing a very pale yellow.
I sit at Sennett’s Hole, a quiet refuge in autumn where the Eno River widens at the confluence of Warren’s Creek and large igneous obstacles. A five-foot-tall pale pink-and-gray monolith—its crevices highlighted by black bryophytes and pale green lichen—stretches some sixty feet across, blocking nearly half of the river.
Here, water rushes across smaller rocks and little puddles are filled with minnows. Yellow-bellied sliders (Trachemys scripta scripta) sit on decaying sycamore logs, and straggly river birches make their stand on rocky island mounds. Sandy outcrops are littered with bleached freshwater clam shells and imprinted with the marks of raccoons, dogs, and man. The river babbles over boulders and crickets hum all around. The titmice no longer screech warnings, and the crows and red-shouldered hawk have just ended their mid-day rounds. Carolina chickadees still call in the distance.
Man has left his mark here—not only with footprints, but with dirty once-white socks left after a day’s excursion. Non-native grasses and trees invade the floodplain. The rocks are said to be scarred by the remnants of an 18th-century mill, and an old rope hangs from a bending birch. In the distance, despite my best attempts to ignore it, I can hear civilization—traffic and airplanes. Still, with the warm sun on my back and the chickadees chuckling nearby, I am transported into contemplative peace by nature at Sennett’s Hole.
A note on the stone itself: the granodiorite porphyry rocks here stretch across the Eno like a low, stubborn dam—beautiful from afar and even more fascinating up close, where you can see the mixed mineral character: plagioclase feldspar, biotite mica, hornblende, and quartz.
And tucked into the edges of all this—half-hidden, perfectly still—I also noticed a secretive Fowler’s toad (Bufo fowleri), the kind of small presence that makes a place feel inhabited even when the riverbank is quiet.
Resources: If you’re interested in the geology of Sennett’s Hole and West Point on the Eno, please check out the following NCGS publication:
Bradley, P. J. 2007. A Geologic Adventure Along the Eno River, Information Circular 35. North Carolina Geologic Survey: Raleigh, North Carolina. 65 p.
For more information on the history of West Point on the Eno, please see:
Heron, D. 1975. The Story of West Point on the Eno. Eno Journal 3(1): 4–8. Online Publication. Accessed September 24, 2008.
Sense of Place 