One of my favourite things about the place I live is having the river run through my backyard. We have lived in this little apartment house for around six years and this is one of the things that makes waiting to buy land on which to build our own home much more bearable.
The river is such a changing creature. It rises in heavy rains, is grey and moody on cloudy days and gay and sparkling on sunny ones, freezes solidly in winter, shrivels down in size when it takes a consistent beating from the sun, and becomes a mighty force when the ice on it breaks up in spring. It has so many moods and variations its almost as if it is alive.
In winter it is still and white. Snow covers it up making it almost look like a road through the trees rather than a river. Animal tracks trace from one bank to the other. At night the moon lights it with an ethereal aura, like a glittering snail trail through a dim garden. The river is sleeping, and so is the rest of the world...
In spring, the sunlight turns from a hazy yellow; to strong gold bars of light that pulse with life. The snow begins to melt and turn sugary, crumbling with a quiet rapidity that can be heard all around. The white snow on the face of the river turns to mush and the ice begins to take on the yellowish brown colour that indicates it is rotting. Water starts to seep across the surface, and then...
One day there is a drawn out scraping, a continual rasp as the ice in a body begins to break and move. Have you ever watched a river break up? If there is one thing in this world that makes a person feel small and weak and fragile, it is this. Chunks of ice over two meters this move as if driven by an unseen force, grinding, scratching, sometimes turning to point up towards the sky, sometimes scrubbing up onto the bank. They easily crush small trees, over turn bushes, and leave furrows in the ground. The whole river, as a body moves with these giants, some of them two hundred feet wide, like some animal on the prowl. Thick slabs of ice twist and roll under while others pile on top. Nothing can stop the floes when they move, and as one watches these mammoth slabs of ice crush each other so easily it send tingles down your spine.
Just as quickly as they began to move, the ice floes come to a halt. Sometimes for hours, sometimes for minutes, sometimes for the rest of the day. I often spot minks humping along with their distinctive rolling gait in and out of the ice blocks. Their dark, form appearing first here, then there, as they make their was to and fro.
The silence of winter has come to an end and the river is now free of its burden of ice and snow! A deep, dark, swelling current moving swiftly off in the direction of the none too distant falls.
As maple harvest draws to a close, and the sap in the buckets that I have tapped on the river bank begin to cloud and sour, the peepers start their spring song. A high, trilling cry of triumph over the cold that imprisoned them so long. First it is one voice, the next night five and the next, fifty. A happy but melancholy sound as it marks spring, but also the end of sugaring off.
As spring fades towards summer, The peeper song is slowly replaced with the richer baritone of the bullfrogs. Their throats swelling with the sound: wawaron! wawaron! ç'est moi qui rame!* At night raccoons settle their tiffs, barred owls chuckle cheerfully, and tree frogs call to their mates in the silky dark. The moon makes a drop of silver white on the rippling surface of the water and the stars dot each ripple.
Summer comes with a rush of heat and a glorious call of birdsong! King fishers drop like small cannonballs into the water, hunting for fish, herons stock their prey in a more dignified and calculating way, like a gentleman quietly exnihilates his foes at the card table. Red wing blackbirds and cowbirds splash and bathe in the gurgling ripples while killdeers call warningly as the dash along the exposed spits of sand and rocks.
The sun presses its face hard against the river as if trying to see what is below its surface and the river falls into its summertime low, tripping merrily over rocks and logs. The water is a clear amber colour and is full of the houses of the caddisfly larvae which shows that it is rich in minerals and clean and pure. Fish dart, crawfish stump along and snapping turtles glide lazily through the depths.
The foliage on the banks is green and full and it leans over to look at itself in the watery mirror below. Water beetles scuttle past blurring the reflection of the blue sky and the white hot sun into a bevy of ripples. The sound of gurgling water is ever-present.
Fall comes with a rush of colour and a last flush of life to the cheeks of the trees. Leaves float down the river currents like gayly coloured boats and the crickets take their place in the orchestra of autumn, leaving the summer singers no choice but to move on until next year.
Days grow shorter, sharper, and greyer. The sun hangs like a spark between the two walls of darkness that make up morning and evening. Rain falls from the leaden sky and the river swells, burying the dead, yellowed grasses on its banks in an ice cold watery grave. Colder, colder, colder. Ice forms first at the edges of the water, then in floes traveling down the center of the current, then trapping the river completely.
The world seems so silent, so still. It is so quiet you can almost hear the deep distant growl of approaching winter. One day, in later November or early December, the first snow falls to earth. It covers the mud, ices the bare limbs of the trees and covers the many dead flowers and rotting leaves. It is so quiet you can hear the flakes softly crushing as they settle to the ground.
Once again the river is chill and white, silently wrapped in its winter covers until next spring when it starts the cycle all over again.
*It's me who is rowing
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