This quiet and chilly morning found the still river reflecting the trees on the near right and those up a hill beyond the far left bank, past the northward bend downstream. The upside down evergreens at the far turn seem especially disconnected from their source, dropped on the river by a trick of the light.
Driving this morning up the Ottauquechee valley toward Killington and Mission Farm, I found the road and the river framed by the hills, tree-filled, if mostly bare. At one point, I saw oak leaves fly toward the river. While their branches hold on to a constellation of leaves, the oaks release as many as they keep, it looks to me.
Heading higher, I watched the road cross the river again and again, a kind of braiding as the flow of water and route of asphalt twist and turn. While this seems today an easy sharing, Tropical Storm Irene proved the river owns the valley. In a few hours of unholy spate, the Ottauquechee stormed and smashed her way through entire swathes of rights of way, whose presence evidenced finely tuned engineering acumen and hard-won construction skills, and gone just like that. Of course, we put it all back, mostly. The seams and marks of that August day three years ago form signposts though, reminding us, who are alert, that this is the river's valley.
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