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It is delightful to see the Sun after periods of gloom!
Thus enlivened, Grant suggested another quick outing yesterday. When agreeing to these, one should always go prepared!
This will not fit in one posting.
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Turning left out of the post office and then right onto route 22, I inquired as to our destination which seemed undecided.
“Eagle Bridge?” So we turned there, soon crossing a very swollen river.
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Without any particular route planned, the driver turned right again, following the river’s path and when we came to a crossroad, made another turn into uncharted territory.
Well, by us, that is.
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Definitely not.
We’d never seen this hill before!
Not five miles from home.
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The fact of the matter is, of course, it all depends how you look at something, or whether you actually look at it at all.
We’ve driven past this hill dozens of times, but we’d never contemplated it from a distance.
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As the road curved around, we realised that we were parallel to route 22, now going back the other way.
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Which led us to a familiar avenue of shag bark trees.
We’d been following the Owl Kill River.
It was flooded, so we’d better investigate!
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If I’d known it was going to be this sort of expedition, I’d have worn my galoshes. I did say, didn’t I, that I ought to be prepared!
I was urged to get out for a closer look, as the man babysat the car. This is usually a trickle of a river, invisible from where I took this picture.
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In the past, I’ve posted pictures of the clear Owl Kill flowing gently along its channel, gurgling prettily and, in winter creating delicate ice formations.
Now a torrent of muddy water was angrily rushing past.
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Living dangerously, I fetched out my phone to take moving images, risking having the thing project itself into the flood.
Luckily, this did not occur.
Overhead, you’ll hear a helicopter which is fairly unusual. Perhaps they were searching for those mysterious drones.
We’d now seen evidence of the floods and this gave us a focus. If the Owl Kill was so swollen, what of…
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The Walloomsac.
Back down 22 again, it flows over Hoosick Falls.
Not falls, really, more like rapids and a little hard to view unless you can clamber about.
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We parked at Brown’s Brewing Company, although you have to walk down the hill.
They run a restaurant beside the river.
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Normally, the Walloomsac is much less than half this width.
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I had the impression that the water was a live thing, struggling and thrashing to escape.
It flows in the opposite direction to the Owl Kill, both of them drawn toward the Hoosic River.
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Hoping for more views, we turned toward the rail bridge.
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The roar was deafening. Wonderful!
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Still not satisfied, I climbed up on the overpass that had no railing. As I am inclined to lose my balance, I was afraid to get too close!
While not keen on heights, I would once have climbed down, properly shod. Still would, if the consequences were not likely to be dire.
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Railroad tracks have always made me slightly nervous, ever since seeing my father walk along the white line at the edge of underground platforms.
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As I went to get back in the car, a trailer came past carrying three trees from the nearby tree nursery.
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By now, we were excited by the flood waters and as long as we were out, we’d better check on that other river…
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…if we could figure out how to get there from where we were.
Did we?
Thank you, Carolyn, for the update on your addiction to dangerous living! All rivers when in an angry mood are capable of dragging the unwise to their death. I do hope you are not tempted to get involved with any river even in a car. I like your excellent photos and your poetic vision of danger when you describe what you hear and see.
Joanna
I’m sure you did!
Looks like some of those trees close to the banks had their roots flooded. When that happens here at our small local river, the trees usually end up falling across the water.
Best wishes, Pete.