Oak Follows Maple

 

While some maples still shed their leaves, the river bears oak leaves alone today.  

Yesterday we sang, "Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all our years away."  Rivers flow in one direction, just as time only goes forward. In imagination and study, we can trace the river backwards though.

I will try to find out the roots of the Ottauquechee.  I assume its present general form flowed from the retreating glaciers of ten millennia ago.  The advancing ice would have carved a way through the softer stuff, creating future stream beds.  As the glacier melted, the water would have poured massively through the paths the ice carved out.

Near the bridge, the hard rock of Mounts Tom and Peg channeled the Ottauquechee.  Over the centuries, the river banks meandered north and south, carving and laying down the Shire valley soil.