Under the River

The geese have moved on with their goslings, although their mingled tracks can still be seen on the left bank from the bridge.  Yesterday I drove up the Ottauquechee again, entering Killington's north-south U-shaped valley.  I have been trying to make sense of the geology of this river's watershed, looking, among others, at a book aimed at little children.  It reads, "... you could say the [tectonic] plate is like the conveyor belt at a grocery store checkout lane... ."  I'm not complaining.  The metaphor from Under New England works.

It is clearer than "The enormous Taconic klippe is a remnant of the same thrust slices on the other side of the mountains 15 miles to the west.  Here [my location yesterday], the Ottauquechee River has positioned itself in the fault zone.  The broad valley has the characteristic gouged form indicative of ice erosion."  Roadside Geology of Vermont and New Hampshire, quoted above, tells us that among the complex of stone underneath and flanking the "broad valley" are the remnants of a 400 million year-old mountain range, in the form of the "Taconic klippe." A klippe being "an isolated erosional remnant of a slice carried on a thrust fault." In other words, a worn-down chunk of a bigger chunk that came from somewhere else, in this case eastern New York.

The strong sun and shallow water combined today with a northern breeze to create the picture below.