The focus of this journal is to seek answers to the question, "What is it like for you?" The "you," the subject in the exercise, being the Ottauquechee River, with a particular focus on the stretch to be seen downstream from the Middle Bridge in Woodstock, Vermont.
One thing I've learned, at least. The river possesses a deep sensitivity. It responds to the world around it, and quickly, too.
The last few cold days brought ice from shore to shore, then overnight with the air coming from the south, it changed. This morning when I took the picture above, it became clear that a reversal of the freezing pattern was unfolding in front of me. I watched as chunks of ice poured down the clear central channel to either self-destruct on the surviving shelf, or be sucked down below it, out of sight for good.
By three in the afternoon, the thawing had cleared the central channel, leaving the older ice to last some few hours more.
In the first picture, you can just make out two orange dots near the center. A basketball and a soccer ball sat there on the ice, as if someone had thrown them there. I suppose if they had been carried downstream, they might have bounced up on the ice shelf when they hit it.
When I drove down River Street to take the second picture at 3 p.m., I saw the basketball stuck in the shallows a few hundred yards further downstream.
I will be away for a week on vacation. I look forward to resuming these posts on November 30.
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