Slough: (Slooo), a low, muddy place cut off from a main current, often an old oxbow or an old beaver dam, that unites the energies of a sponge and a slough (Sluff), or cut-off wall, to make an enclosed place. As such, a slough is as much a space of its own as a space of difference, a locked-off place in which water is imprisoned (as it is in a sponge, as well), and a place that is a gap in normalcy. As such, one can reasonably expect it to contain both fullness and emptiness, as a mirror of its own place in the larger environment, and so it does — again, as a sponge. In a powerful sense, all sloughs (Slooos) are sloughs (Sluffs). This is a powerful energy that holds two worlds at once.

A Slough on the Cariboo Plateau