Cloud Visions

 

The river mirrors the clouds.  The clouds feed the river.  The wind corrugates the blue and white surface shapes.  That east wind moves the clouds above the Ottauquechee toward Killington Mountain.  Snow has fallen out there already, into our watershed.  

Two phases of the hydrologic cycle, the great wheeling of water from air to ground to air again, meet on the surface today.  Here is an almost sacramental vision:  shimmering cloud shapes celebrating the surrounding grace of sustaining water.

Let There Be Light

 

As I have taken these pictures over the last weeks, I have come to realize that they are as much about the sky as the river.  Yesterday's two shots, one from Tuesday and one from Wednesday, are vivid examples.  I often find myself tempted to go back and take another picture if the sun has come out. I like the look of sunny scenes.

The experience of viewing the Ottauquechee is markedly different when the river reflects blue sky. I have also discovered that when the scene is brighter the photograph takes up more digital space.  The camera takes it all in more fully, just as I do.

It takes more effort to spend time at the river when things seem grey.  Today, looking straight down from the bridge, the water remained clear, if not washed by rays of light.  The occasional oak leaf swam by, and for the first time in awhile, the variously shaped flat river suds flowed alongside the leaves.  With the river lower, the rocky shallow reach just upstream churns the water to create bubbles. These gather into a whitish mass by the right bank.   The gentler water flow by the shore gradually picks off chunks of this effluvium and sends the shapes downstream.  From above, their high beige hue casts them in sharp relief with the darker stream.

Tonight, we expect our first dusting of snow.

Different Waters

 

 The view yesterday.

About two weeks ago, excavators tore into the hill behind the Episcopal church about  100 yards south of the river.  In the process of making space for a retaining wall, a cross section of the subsoil briefly was revealed.  We saw a horizontal swath of grey earth sandwiched by brown soil above and below.  One observer said this was clay laid down by the glacier 10,000 years ago.  I wonder if it was a remnant of post-glacial Lake Hitchcock, which for centuries filled the Connecticut Valley and had an arm extending up what is now the Ottauquechee Valley.  Mounts Tom and Peg once looked down upon the still waters of a lake.

The view today.

Rivers in Leaves

 

I took this picture yesterday in the early afternoon.  Both then and today, the river remains clear as crystal.  Looking down from the bridge, I see leaves moving, although for these two days, no maple among them.  As if someone was dropping oak leaves upstream, one lonely specimen after another flowed along.  Most rode the current a foot or so below the surface, some parallel to the bottom, other at right angles, and still others describing a slow spiral which, from time to time, brought them to the surface and then pulled them down again before disappearing.  Although a few maples in the village retain their leaves, it is mostly the oaks which persist in keeping them.  

Michael Snyder, a Vermont forester, tells us that oaks may keep their leaves longer because they discourage moose and deer from eating shoots in the spring.  Last year's leaves, not very tasty, I suppose, get in the way of succulent new growth.  Another theory is that oaks and their cousins, the beeches, are simply a little lower on the evolutionary ladder, a link between the more ancient evergreens and the radically deciduous.  In a few million years, they may get to be as grown up as a maple, cheerfully dropping their foliage just in time for whatever generation of leaf peepers may still be on this Earth.

Today in the late morning, before the sun broke through to create a mild and welcoming November afternoon, I took the picture above.  I noticed a different leaf shape on the Ottauquechee, something like a spearhead, very yellow.  They mostly rode the surface.  I don't know leaves as well as I would like.  They could have been from elms, which I would like to believe are making a comeback in Vermont.

In the flow of the river, each leaf carries, as its veins, that riverine, dendritic pattern, echoing, as it flows, the watershed which gave it life.

Arborescent Rivers, Within and Without

 

Today's blue sky belies the gloomy opening to yesterday's post.  

My trip up Barnard Brook, and the description of the Ottauquechee-Black Watershed in the book cited earlier, got me thinking about river patterns.  They are sometimes described as dendritic, meaning "of a branching form; arborescent." The latter word means "treelike in size and form." The tributaries of a river flow into the "main stem" of the watershed like branches attached to a tree.  The main stem of the Ottauquechee grows for about 31 miles, the Connecticut for 407.

This dendritic form seems woven into creation, as it can be found in crystals and in leaves.  It also describes much of what makes the human body live and breathe.  Blood vessels and nerves follow these arborescent paths. We are each a kind of self-contained watershed, with living rivers of fluid and branching electrical impulses.  

Ralph Brown, a British sculptor, created a bust suggesting this identity of human with river.  It is called The River.

Up the Brook

 

We have arrived at the typical November dreariness.  Grey skies, chilly temps, early sunsets, with only a promise of more to come.  Driving up to Barnard today, I followed a tributary to the Ottauquechee for its entire length, Barnard Brook, I saw my first falling snow.  The rain switched over to the white stuff as I climbed into the hills.

Experts divide up the NH-VT track of the Connecticut into bite-sized chunks, north to south. The Barnard Brook is part of the local swath of watershed called by the United States Geological Survey the Black-Ottauquechee watershed. The USGS preferences Vermont's streams over New Hampshire's in this shorthand for a section of both states which together contribute five major tributaries. In Vermont, starting south of White River Junction, are the Ottauquechee, Mill Brook, the Black, and the Williams, while from New Hampshire flows the Mascoma.  On that eastern side, the Sugar River and Lakes Sunapee and Mascoma are also part of the mix.

They all are a little higher today, if the view from the bridge here holds true for all the watery Black-Ottauquechee territory.

Water and Geese Above and Below

I took this picture yesterday around 2 p.m.  With Daylight Savings over, the mid-afternoon shadow of the bridge lengthens downstream. 

Less than a mile eastward, the ground floor windows of the Ottauquechee Health Center look out at a stretch of the river so straight it could be a canal.  Scores of Canada Geese dominated the scene yesterday morning. One or two would start to fly, leaving wakes as their feet trailed in the water just before taking off, and scoring the water again as they quickly landed.  Others dove under like cormorants, coming up in unexpected places. Still others, facing upstream, seemed to simply float, but as they appeared stationary, so they must have been paddling just to stay where they were.  Geese in every mode of action and inaction.  Were they just having fun?

We think of these geese as migratory, and they mostly are, but some stay around all year in our north country.  These birds may be right at home, or just taking a break on a southern trip from the Arctic.

Back on the bridge later on, I peered over and saw the river bottom lit up by the sun, as the bridge's shadow began some yards downstream.  The shadow obscured the depths, while the slanting afternoon light cut right through, revealing the bed of stones and sand, as I described in my post two days ago.  Gripping my iPhone over the edge, I took the picture below: the depths revealed, distorted by the lens of the surface ripples.

The under bridge scaffolding for repairing cables threw the H-shaped shadow.