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?