Morning, Noon, Evening

The March of Thaw

With perfect sugaring weather this week - cold nights, above freezing days - the Middle Bridge piece of the river continues its slow thaw.  The clear channel now extends just past the bridge and the holes in the standing ice at the lip of the floe grow larger.

Below, a detail of that thinning lip. The darker spots near the top of the picture show where the water dives below the ice, to emerge round the bend downstream.

Locked Up

This morning someone who lives in the hollow created by Barnard Brook, a tributary of the Ottauquechee, reported a temperature of four degrees. It was sixteen in the village.  As snow melts all around us and more and more of the river opens up, the quiet reach by the bridge remains locked up.

Spring Movement

Just as the freely flowing stream passes beneath the bridge, it meets an ice barrier.  Some water flows over the ice, most beneath.  In the lower left of the photo above, the diagonal dark patch is the top-of-the-ice water, and the point where the dark yields to a lighter surface marks a hole where it pours back down beneath. 

Spring icicles 

garland the bridge on the way

to river and sea.

Shades of Grey

Both upstream and down from the Middle Bridge, the river has open channels of free flowing water.  The dam-like effect of the turn of the river here creates quieter water, more quickly frozen and slower to melt.  Some water is now flowing over the ice, now discolored a tattletale grey.  The shades of grey are multitudinous, as the detail below of the sight just downstream of the bridge shows.

To give an idea of the free-flowing Ottauquechee coming back to life, the picture below is a telescopic photo of the river just round the bend.

Water, water, everywhere

 

Calm Before the Rain

The End of the Ice Age

Sunset on a frigid early spring day.  This demanding winter raised fantasies of another Ice Age. What would it have been like for our ancestors living on the edge of ice when the first "summer" came and went without snow leaving the ground?  The Ottauquechee's ancestor streams were covered and scoured by those centuries of cold, carving today's valley.

After the last Ice Age, there may have been a day like this, with slashes of  water coming into the light.

Ours has been a hard 

winter, still full of ice, and 

it has seemed to last an age.

Flowing Shadows

Afternoon shadows,

streaming across the spring ice,

Await the real flow.

Spring Shedding Ice

On this first morning of spring, I heard the sound of the river for the first time this year.  Just up the Ottauquechee from the Middle Bridge, an open stretch, tapered at each end and wide in the middle, poured over the shallow, rocky riverbed to create that crackly, soothing murmur.

Directly below the spot from where I choose to take my pictures, a pencil thin crack coming out from under the bridge traced its crooked way from the bridge's shadow forward and then toward the right bank.  Other cracks laced the surface.  The tracks of deer follow the shore now, not the middle of the stream.  River neighbors have heard the sound of ice breaking.

The spring morning sun

mirrored by the thinning ice,

a soon-shedded skin.

Sun-Cracked River

Ice makes art.

Late, late winter sun

setting on the cracked river,

flowing in the light.

Dark Flow

They call the spring flow

a pulse to clean the river,

now dark underneath.

Morning and Night

Channel Appearing

Frozen Movement

The days of the frozen river are numbered.  From the Rt. 4 bridge to just upstream of this bridge, a narrow open lead hugs most of the left bank.

 The Ottauquechee's

main channel, open before,

moves beneath the ice.

Oak in Ice

When water flowed over the ice the other day, I saw a single oak leaf drifting along the surface.

Another oak leaf in the Ottauquechee watershed sank into ice on the green, 

creating an oak leaf shaped bed for itself.

Ice Meets Sky

The brief thaw stripped most of this stretch of river of its snow cover. 

Bare grey ice mirrors

a low stratus streaked sky,

heavy, rain-bearing.

Not Spring Yet

Yesterday's spring words

were proven to be too soon.

Ice took hold again.

Reflecting Arc

The main channel, going from left to right, asserted itself today, while still flowing over a bed of ice.

An arc of water

reflecting for the first time

this spring's trees and sky.

Water Over Ice

With temperatures 

nearing fifty, water flowed 

on top of the ice.

Rock and Color

I spent time yesterday in the map library of the Clark University Geography Department.  Looking at an enormous and colorful map of the details regarding what kind of rock lies where in Vermont, I honed in on the site of the Middle Bridge. 

I graduated from Clark in 1970, and in my freshman year took a geology course to satisfy the Science distribution requirement.  I came away with a rudimentary knowledge of rocks, and a great admiration for geological maps, color coded for the specific type of igneous, sedimentary or metamorphic stone serving as bedrock for a particular location.  Just as the swirl of a river inspires comparisons to abstract art, so do these beautiful maps.

River Captured

I was in a coffee shop today in Amherst, Massachusetts, and was struck by this painting, which captures the dynamism of a river. 

For more on Australian Aboriginal Dot Painting, see

 http://www.aboriginalartstore.com.au/aboriginal-art-culture/aboriginal-art/aboriginal-dot-paintings/

Snowmobile Turnaround

You can still just make out the snowmobile tracks on the river from some days back.  Talking with some long-time residents, I heard that making a snowmobile trek from Bridgewater down through Woodstock was often the subject of a bet.  One informant said, with a certain nonchalance, that maybe he had done it once or twice.  He went on to say the scenery was great, and the water beneath the ice never very deep.  He noted that just before the Taftsville dam, miles downriver from the village, the tracks of a snowmobile doing a U-turn could be seen.  On my way out of town this afternoon, he caught a glimpse of that myself.

With warmer temperatures today, a new lead opened up just upstream of the bridge.  Snowmobile season may be over.

The Source

It seems as if we are alternating days of blue skies with days of slate.  The river of air and moisture flowing from the west brought the dull hue today.

In contrast, the package delivery stream deposited a cardboard tube yesterday with a half dozen U. S. Geological Service maps of much of the Ottauquechee watershed.  I have always loved maps, and have coveted these since my questions of the river began last fall.

These maps are a wonder of precision.  In our blanched out winter landscape, they also bring a sprinkle of color as they show a perpetually snow-free topography. 

The source of the Ottauquechee between Doubleday Mountain and Shaw Hill near North Sherburne.

From the Thames

While the Ottauquechee continues frozen, in London the Thames rolls on.  A report from my daughter Emily and a shot of Peter Ackroyd's "sacred river."

Dirty old river, must you keep rolling, flowing into the night...Those lyrics from The Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset" float into my head every time I walk along the river in the early evening. I had just crossed Millennium Bridge, a footbridge flooded with tourists between the Tate Modern and St. Paul's Cathedral, and stopped in front of Shakespeare's Globe to take this picture. Because I'm studying playhouses and playgoing in Shakespeare's time, I can't help but imagine the water full of boatmen, taking people across from the City to the suburbs, where the theatres (and the brothels and bear-baiting rings...) were, outside the law, separated by this ever-moving, ever-changing band of water. Today, apart from the occasional tour boat, there isn't much to see in the Thames, which has gotten narrower than it was in the 1600s. The wind off the water can bite shrewdly but there's never a route that I'd rather take. As it gets warmer, I'm looking forward to many walks up and down the river and Waterloo sunsets.

Human River

Downstream

Considering the River Thames of England, Peter Ackroyd wrote:

"When the river is described it always assumes a human dimension.  It is patient, making its way through any obstacle.  It is ruthless, wearing down the hardest rocks.  It is unpredictable, especially when its current is interrupted or diverted. ... Its character changes within each terrain.  It becomes terrible and vindictive.  It becomes sportive.  It becomes treacherous.  It becomes impartial.  It becomes industrious.  It gives human characteristics to topography."

Thames: Sacred River, end of Chapter 4.

So too our Ottauquchee, now asleep.

Upstream

One Day Tells Its Tale to Another

The heavens declare the glory of God,
    and the firmament shows his handiwork.

One day tells its tale to another,
    and one night imparts knowledge to another.

Although they have no words or language,
    and their voices are not heard,

Their sound has gone out into all lands,
    and their message to the ends of the world.

These opening verses of Psalm 19 resonate for me with the river.  I love the idea of each day telling its tale to the next and each night filling in the next on what it has learned.  They do this without language and yet the message goes "to the ends of the world."

The Ottauquechee flows day and night carrying yesterday's upriver burden, filled with the tale of rainfall, runoff, freeze and thaw, vegetable, animal and human detritus, elements life-bringing and death-dealing.

The water from our river meets the sea, bringing its tale of Vermont hills "to the ends of the world."

Cirrus and Shadows

Last night's serious dusting gave over to this cirrus-streaked sky, morphing during the day to total overcast and now, in the evening, more snow.  Tomorrow promises above freezing temperatures and maybe some rain.  The river will respond, I expect.  This is not the big melt, however, as a freeze will follow hard upon. 

Cirrus wisps above

west-leaning morning shadows

brush the hard river.

Heaven and Earth

Heaven and earth about

to touch again through snowfall:

below, the river.

Window on Water

A rare early morning (6:30) visit to the bridge, temperature: 0. With March, the month of sure equinoctial change, we hope for actual spring here in our north country. With resignation, I predict a white Easter on April 5.

The next bridge upstream bears Route 4 across the Ottauquechee.  Taking Jack for an early afternoon stroll, we stopped mid-bridge to check out the open water that usually flows there.  This is what we saw.

A water window

 surrounded by encroaching

crystalline boxes.