July Perfection

Today glowed a crystal blue.  At four this afternoon, Creation laid on a palette of sky and tree mirroring, shadows long and short, and clear river water.

A squad of tourists with name tags from a nearby Pennsylvania bus hustled toward the span, just as I left it, cameras at the ready,

Early Afternoon

The View from Two Bridges

Joshua and the River

From Joshua 3:

When the people set out from their tents to cross over the Jordan, the priests bearing the ark of the covenant were in front of the people. Now the Jordan overflows all its banks throughout the time of harvest. So when those who bore the ark had come to the Jordan, and the feet of the priests bearing the ark were dipped in the edge of the water, the waters flowing from above stood still,...while those flowing toward ... the Dead Sea, were wholly cut off. Then the people crossed over opposite Jericho. While all Israel were crossing over on dry ground, the priests who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan, until the entire nation finished crossing over the Jordan.

The Jordan is about as wide as the Ottauquechee,

Water into Blood

Moses confronts Pharaoh at the Nile River, demanding, in the name of God, that the monarch let the people of Israel go.  Pharaoh refuses.

The book of Exodus, chapter 7:  "In the sight of Pharaoh and of his officials, [Moses] lifted up the staff and struck the water in the river, and all the water in the river was turned into blood, and the fish in the river died.  The river stank so that the Egyptians could not drink its water, and there was blood throughout the whole land of Egypt."

If for different reasons, the scene.paints a painfully familiar picture.

In the early evening tonight, on a hot day, a ten-foot two by six piece of lumber with one smaller piece sticking out a right angles floated down river and round the bend.

I walked downstream to the next bridge to see if I could spy its progress.  It had disappeared.  I took thhe picture below, looking back upstream as the light faded.  Kids were swimming just under the bridge.

Dream by a River

In Genesis 41, Pharaoh shares a dream with Joseph, son of Jacob and Rachel, a prisoner in his dungeons.  "In my dream I was standing on the banks of the Nile; and seven cows, fat and sleek, came up out of the Nile and fed in the reed grass.  Then seven other cows came up after them, poor, very ugly and thin.  Never had I seen such ugly ones in all the land of Egypt.  The thin and ugly cows ate up the first seven fat cows, but when they had eaten them no one would have known they had done so, for they were still as ugly as before.  Then I awoke."

One never knows what a river will deliver.

Yesterday in the morning, the Ottauquechee River flowed clear with barely a hint of movement.

Approaching Twilight