I love to take pictures. Maybe you’ve noticed.
Sometimes, I find that I see more in the picture than I noticed when I was on the ground, squinting against the sun. Sometimes, I find that what the still photo doesn’t capture is integral to what I saw or experienced.
This video is the result of thinking about that in the context of a short drive in the country a week ago.
Nicely done Isabel.
Certainly is lots of water flowing, thank goodness though not as much as a few years ago.
Jim R – Many thanks. Coming from Alberta, I’m always impressed with the size of even unremarkable rivers in this part of the world, and never more so than in the spring.
Isabel – if you want more noise and fast-running water, may I suggest that stretch of the Ottawa River that runs between Ottawa and what used to be called Hull, QC. The new Kitchi Zibi (spelling ??) residential development has nice paths that provide great views of the rushing water.
John – 🙂 Thanks for two tips. I’ve never heard of Kitchi Zibi, under any spelling, but will check it out.
Ah. Here it is: Kichi Sibi.
The gentle roar of spring, indeed. Fun vid!
Barbara – 🙂 Thanks!
I got swept away by a spring freshet one year, long ago. White water looks beautiful in still pictures; adding sound gives some sense of the sheer power of a river in flood; but I can say from experience that they’re a pale imitation of actually being IN that water.
Jm T
Jim T – <> Yikes. I can believe it. Good thing you survived to tell the tale.
Isabel
Water can appear so calm, and then just around the next bend it can sweep you away in an instant.
Or like last summer when I went on a kayak. Water calm and barely a ripple. Then, suddenly a wake, from a boat on the other side of an island, took me broadside, and I went under the water when the kayak tipped.
Tom
Tom – Yikes. Indeed, being hit broadside is the scariest part of kayaking. We kayak in pairs and often “raft up” when we can see boats coming (usually on the Rideau River, where they come in bunches due to the locks). Even with a small wake we try to cross it at right angles to the wave’s direction. But when you don’t see it coming, well, there’s not much to be done.
By the time it reaches us purified to drink, cook, bathe, and play with, we forget the raw power of its origins and those before us who lived with it untamed and who strove to channel it. The sound accompaniment is breathtaking and bone-rattling: an awakening that shrinks and corrects my prim and domestic thoughts of spring. A deeper message roils there to contemplate.
Laurna – Indeed. It’s akin to the difference between a light spring breeze and a hurricane, and it can be hard to see/appreciate the potential danger if you’ve only experienced the docile version.