Parking Lot Meets Amazon

Flowing water makes

sinuous forms at the start

and end of journeys.

A Parking Lot in New Hampshire

 

The Amazon from Space

 

Closed Water

Driving up the Ottauquechee valley this morning, the near perfect surface freeze unrolled by the side of Rt. 4.  Here and there, bare ice appeared.  In the miles I drove to the edge of Bridgewater, I saw only one sliver of open water.  Around the bend from the bridge, still just visible beyond a tree on the left of the picture, an open lead still shows, a rarity this record-breaking February.

Gliding Light

In Peter Ackroyd's work, Thames; Sacred River, he quotes an early 20th century poem.

Ancient river, changing never,
Symbol of eternity,
Gliding water, lapsing ever,
Mirror of inconstancy.
              -Fred Thacker

While the waters of the Ottauquechee glide unseen for most of their journeys from Killington Mountain to the Connecticut River, the play of light above and on the frozen river do their own inconstant and eternal dance.  The light keeps flowing, never quite the same.

Deer On Ice

WINTER/SPRING FLOOD POTENTIAL OUTLOOK

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BURLINGTON VT

1203 PM EST THU FEB 19 2015

THE US GEOLOGICAL SURVEY REPORTED RIVER ICE THICKNESS OF A

FOOT TO A FOOT AND A HALF ON VERMONT AND NORTHERN NEW YORK RIVERS.

RIVER FLOWS HAVE FALLEN TO NEAR NORMAL FOR THE WINTER MONTHS, AND

THE LOW FLOWS AND THICK ICE WILL KEEP THE ICE COVER INTACT.

                                                                         Deer on ice.

Slashing Shadows

Even without the palette of a mirror-like surface or the drama of twisting current, the deep winter river reflects the world. 

Slashing tree shadows 

across the blue-lit snow quilt,

moving out of sight.

Colder and Colder

The topography of rivers drives human affairs.  In Allan Nevins's classic Civil War history, he cites the great river valleys which transcend all political boundaries as a reason why the Union would ultimately stay together.  The North named its armies for rivers, as in the Army of the Potomac.  The descriptions of Civil War battles deal again and again with rivers:  fording them, bridging them, burning bridges, avoiding rivers, seeing them flood, shooting from opposite banks.  Grant's great western victories came on or by rivers.  Northern Virginia's web of rivers shaped the course of the war. 

Upriver the sun 

sinks with the temperature,

peaceful here, colder.

Thalweg

In his book Thames: Sacred River, Peter Ackroyd's opening chapter, "The river as fact," states, "The main thrust of the river flow is known to hydrologists as the 'thalweg'; it does not move in a straight and forward line but, mingling with the inner flow and the variegated flow of the surface and bottom waters, takes the form of a spiral or helix."  I have an image of the water sliding over and around itself in a kind of perpetual corkscrew.  What does it mean for the flow when it has a cover of ice?

Jack at the Bridge

First the T-shirt, then the turtleneck, then the sweater, then the over-sized fleece-lined flannel shirt, then the L. L. Bean vest, then the down coat, then the scarf, then the ski mask, then the plaid Russian tank commander's hat, then leashing the dog, then the gloves, then off to the bridge at -2 on a Friday morning in February.

Here is the opinion of my sidekick on the leash, Jack at the bridge.

Flowing Light

At 8 a.m. it still seemed like sunrise in this corner of the Ottauquechee Valley.  Gentle light flowed across the river, where the open water lead around the bend shrinks with the grip of continuing cold. 

"Into the Embrace"

A friend shared a passage from the work of Francis Weller, who wrote, "[We must] step back into the embrace, into intimate relations with the world where we still feel ourselves turning into trees and animals and cloud banks. This is not an abstract idea. I'm referring to the watersheds and woodlands around our homes, about knowing whose migratory pathways we have entered. Our soul is in love with the singularities, the particular expression of a gnarled cypress, the one-eared feral gray cat on the hillside, the iris and its amazing beard of blue. Love finds itself in the specific."  And the Ottauquechee.

From Russia

It seemed a grim, very cold morning, so I was struck by a passage about a summer river, described by George Kennan, the Cold War diplomat.  Pondering Russia's future while on the banks of a Siberian river, the Ob, he wrote, "little boys poked along the shore in a leaky old row boat as boys will do everywhere.  ... And probably, regardless of what marvels had or had not been constructed on shore, for countless summers little boys would continue to find leaky old boats and to pole their way up and down the stream..., shouting and splashing, cutting their feet on the rocks, and making astounding discoveries about the nature of rivers and the contents of river bottoms."

Polar Days

The wind reminded me this morning that the view from this bridge is to the north.  At zero degrees, plus or minus one - never mind the wind chill - I did not linger.  The wind seems to have erased the edge of the left bank of the river.  The snow melds river and shore.  Elizabeth noted on looking at the picture that it looks like a road, complete with vehicular tracks, the snowmobile's fading trail. 

The deep freeze continues.  At about ten p.m., it is minus ten out there. The highest nighttime temperature predicted through Friday is two degrees, the rest are below zero.  Water still flows beneath the ice, though the open cracks in the ice grow smaller:  the Ottauquechee still at work.

Ottauquechee Snow

Tonight, on a day filled with events, I did not get to the bridge.  This snow sculpture on the nearby Woodstock green, lit at 10 p.m., spoke to some of my recent reflections on what one can actually see and know about a river.  These Valentine's Day swans, so serene and loving, are revealed to have those active webbed feet in this cross-section of a water scene, with fish caught in mid-swim as well. 

Ottauquechee snow

Carved the shape of lovers, 

Visible below.

Colder Still

At 7:30 this morning with the temperature struggling to rise above zero, I saw from the bridge that someone had laid down another snowmobile track.  Somehow I assume they have been going upriver.  Later, I drove up the Ottauquehee and the tracks continued at least a mile further, weaving past open water and exposed rocks.   More snow tonight, then temps back below zero and wind chills lower still.  What a winter.

Between Snows

Tim Palmer in America by Rivers: "Rivers, indeed, constitute corridors of life, their differences defining what grows there, what swims out of sight, what browses and dabbles along the shore."  A deer making its way along the Ottauquechee shore crossed on to the ice and chose to walk in the track left by the snowmobile days ago.  That track led right to a new break in the ice upriver.

The deer changed course.

Water Wheel

I have been watching clouds flow across the continent on TV, tracing the curving river-like paths of our snow events.  This experience speaks the connection of the rivers of air and moisture flowing through our sky to drop snow or water to feed the rills, brooks and rivers streaming to the sea where the currents create underwater rivers within the mothering mass we call the oceans, which yield up their waters back to the sky, again and again.  Gray mornings like today brings us face to face with this water wheel, clouds pregnant with snow.

Clear

Winter tree

Alice Waterhouse's book Water explores the role of trees in the life of a river.  An earlier post remembered that the shape of a river system mimics the branching of a tree.  Beyond the common design, trees feed the streams they live by. Ultimately, if given the chance every tree on a riverbank will find its way into the water, where a new career as food and home for uncounted creatures begins.

Barren winter trees form maps of river systems, like the one below, near the Ottauquechee a mile or so downstream.

Return

Skiers rejoice in powder.  Single digit air combined with moisture makes for happy folks on Killington mountain, boasting they have the best conditions in North America today.  Outside our door, snow removers scratch their heads wondering where to put the stuff.  One pile by the church door looks down on me already.

I dubbed the three-day storm a slow motion blizzard.  The way cold captures the moisture as snow and ice slows the hydrologic cycle.  This precipitation will not go downstream for awhile.  But water will morph, given any opportunity.  On one of the colder mornings last week, mist rose from the small open lead round the bend.  The sight brought all three states of H20 into the same frame, and demonstrated the power its has to transform in a heartbeat from one to another.

Upriver the sun

ached, bore through thinning clouds

 promising return.

Unseen River

Our three-day slow motion blizzard will drop over a foot of snow by the time it passes through.  The white stuff covers the river even more, and has already begun to obscure yesterday's snowmobile tracks.

Contemplating a river where flowing water hardly surfaces may seem odd, even pointless.  Why take pictures of something invisible?  In pondering this, it occurred to me that almost everything important about a river is unseen.  So when a friend alerted me to a piece in the Valley News, our region's daily, about another tributary of the Connecticut, I paid attention.

http://www.vnews.com/news/15436507-95/pompy-becomes-a-priority-ompompanoosucs-e-coli-problem-gets-renewed-attention

Another stream with an indigenous name, just a few miles shorter than the Ottauquechee and not far to the north, the Ompompanoosuc suffers from high levels of E. Coli bacteria, coming into the river from points unknown.  These levels force the closure of a river beach in the summer from time to time, they are that bad.

Looking at that river, even when ice- and snow-free, you would not see that bacteria.  Much other activity goes unseen: the myriad of tiny beings who make the river their home, and the gradual erosion of the surrounding hills, to name two.  I have often been struck by the fact that it is the reflection of light on the river's surface which grabs my attention.

The blue sky mirrored on the river on a bright summer day may hide as much of the river as today's shell of ice and snow.  The river's beauty in any season can hide the dynamism of the thing itself.

River as Road

River as road became reality with a snowmobile journey inscribed over the ice this morning.

Lingering Dawn

Passing by

To the eye, snow falling connects sky and earth.  Through the saturation of the visual field with millions of crystals, all seems to merge.  Gray clouds and shrouded earth enfold one another with showers of white.

Today clouds waved 

from a distance, on their way 

to fill other streams.

Ice Processes

Creatures left tracks across the river down near the bend, more deer, I'm guessing.  As a sign that spring will eventually arrive, the National Weather Service will offer a webinar on "River Ice Processes."  They will talk about both freeze-up and break-up.  We have seen two break-ups already. I signed up for the program, and look forward to learning something new about what it is like for the Ottauquechee.

Blues

Our cold spell goes on.  My iPhone read seventeen below when I left the house and twenty below when I got home.  The colder it gets the bluer the sky.

 A deep blue shadow 

blanketing the new snowfall,

wedded to the sky.

 

Snowing

Deer

Cold continues with a minus eight morning. Upstream only two small openings in the ice can be seen.  Deer tracks appeared today downstream, with two sets crossing the river completely.  Deer came down the hill behind our house a couple of nights ago, investigated one side, went around to the other, perhaps snacking on some bushes by the side porch. Tracks told the story, first noticed by Jack the dog, who became passionately interested. Last Sunday morning, while it was still dark, I saw a lone deer walk through the driveway next door, cross Rt. 4 and head down the drive next to the Unitarian Church, toward the river.