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.