Posts Tagged ‘brook’
crossing the brook
Of all kinds of waterways, I certainly love a brook the best.
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When I was a child, I spent many summer hours playing in the brook at my mother’s ‘old home place’. The brook was in a small wooded valley between farms. The woods around the brook were always cool and shady, especially on a hot summer day.
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Building stone causeways in the brook was one of my favorite pastimes. I would find flat stones and place them like stepping stones. Then, once the stones were in place, I would plant them with mosses.
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I haven’t returned to the brook for many years, but I like to think you could still find the grey and green remnants of my causeways at intervals along the brook!
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a brook in south-west New Brunswick with its own stepping stones
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construction of moss and stone
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in the valley between farms
a brook needs crossing
a freshet-proof ford
lattice-work built
of slate, grey stepping
stones, packed and decked with
moss, hydrophilic flourish
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© Jane Tims 2014
along a stream 7-26
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map showing distance travelled (map from Google Earth)
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One of the difficulties of a virtual trip using Street View is not getting a full view of some of the streams I cross. Until you reach the ‘bridge’, the angle is not right to see the water. When you are on the ‘bridge’, the view is obscured by the blurred curved area in the lower part of the view, a characteristic of the Street View camera.
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Today, however, I caught several glimpses of a stream that followed the road from Manassick Wood to Portholland …
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stream along the road near Manassick Wood (image from Street View)
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I even had a glimpse of a small waterfall created by a tributary to the stream …
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course of a waterfall … almost dry in this image, but during and after a rain, it must be lovely (image from Street View)
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The best look I had at the stream was after it emerged from the woods to a field of white flowers. The flowers look a little like Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota), with white, umbrella-shaped flower clusters. However, these plants look more robust than the rather delicate-looking Queen Anne’s Lace, so I will just call them a species of wild parsnip.
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stream banked by white flowers (image from Street View)
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Best View: ‘biking’ from the woods into the bright sunshine and seeing the stream meandering toward the sea, banks overflowing with white flowers …
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August 25, 2013 ‘valley to the sea (Portholland)’ Jane Tims
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This is the view that inspired the painting …
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valley with stream and white flowers, looking towards Portholland (image from Street View)
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Copyright 2013 Jane Tims
ponds and pond lilies
Water is a favorite feature of the landscape for many people. On our drives we encounter streams and rivers, lakes and ponds. Thoreau, writing about his Walden Pond, said that water features are the eyes of the landscape. Reflected in those eyes are sky and clouds and the dazzle of the sunlight.
‘A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows.’ Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
This time of year, pond vegetation is lush and in bloom. Some ponds and wetland waters are alwost covered by Duckweed (Lemna minor L.), Pickerel-weed (Pontederia cordata L.) and Pond-lilies.
Pond lilies are in bloom and their flat pad-like leaves cover the water like pieces of a puzzle. White Water-lilies, Nymphaea odorata Ait., speckle the edge of almost every pond…
and the yellow cup-like blooms of Cow-lily (Nuphar variegatum Engelm.) brighten the sluggish waters of meandering brooks and wetland ponds…
Last week we drove to South Oromocto Lake in Charlotte County and stopped beside the lake outlet where there is a dam, including a water control structure and a fish ladder. The long, red stems of up-rooted Water-shield (Brasenia Schreberi Gmel.) were gathered in tangles at the control structure.
the red stems and green leaves of up-rooted Water-shield, gathered in the dam at the outlet of South Oromocto Lake
Do you have Pond-lilies and Water-shield where you are?
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Copyright Jane Tims 2012
snippets of landscape – ice falls on rock walls
When highways are built, they often cut through the bedrock, leaving rock walls along the margins of the road. If these intersect a brook or seep of water, the result is a waterfall on the face of the rock. In spring or summer, rains can create wild cataracts. In winter the water freezes, building frozen walls of blue-shadowed ice. In sunlight, especially when they begin to melt, these ice falls are dazzling.
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one warm hand
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icicles seep between
layers of rock frozen
curtains separate
inner room from winter storm
glass barrier between blue
light and sheltered eyes
memory of water flows
along the face of the rock
one warm hand melts ice
consolation, condensation
on the inward glass
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© Jane Tims 2012
refections on the water
I have realised there is a sequence to the vanishing of the autumn colour.
First the maples lose their leaves in the early autumn winds. The next will be the poplars, now glowing with banana colours. The oak leaves, ruddy and slick with reds and oranges, will succumb by late October. Tamarack, a deciduous conifer, will lose its amber needles in early November. The beech trees will keep their ochre, papery leaves all through the winter, finally losing them in spring when the new leaves emerge.
This past weekend, we found some maples still in autumn garb. At Watty Brook, flowing into McDougall Lake in south-west New Brunswick, at least one maple has taken longer than most to lose its leaves. At its sheltered location in the low valley of the brook, the tree has eluded the winds. It was reflected clearly in the brook, and its orange and gold were captured in the rocks showing through the tea-coloured water.
In spite of the movement of the water, the tree was reflected in all its splender.
in the millstream
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upstream
deer are drinking
and the raindrops
swell the running
this I know
from bubbles
rising
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I am a rock
in the millstream
seasons and freshets
have smoothed
my edges
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once I met the water
a cleaver
divisive
now I ask the water
to flow
around me
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© Jane Tims 2003
pool at the base of the waterfall
Have you ever had trout nibble at your toes?
When I was a teenager, my family was fortunate to own a woods property with a brook and a substantial waterfall. We had a cabin there, built by my Dad.
The brook was wide and shallow, running through mixed woods. It was a torrent in the spring, but in summer it ran gently through the trees, bordered by mossy hummocks, accented with small pools and riffles.
I remember the first time I saw the waterfall. We were looking for a woods property and a farmer offered to show us some of his land. I was exploring a particular area, following the bank of the stream, when I first heard the roar of the falls and saw the bright froth of water through the trees. I couldn’t believe it when the owner said, without hesitation, we could have that lot for our cabin.
The falls were substantial, spilling about 15 feet over a dip in the shale substrate. They spread outward from the lip of the falls, creating a broad triangle of white, laid across the rock like a veil. The roar of the water falling was constant and intense.
'waterfall and pool'
At the base of the waterfall was a pool, waist deep. The water was headache cold, but once we became used to it, we could swim and cool off on a summer day. The pool was transparent as glass, and we could look down and watch the trout nibbling at our toes. In spite of the dramatic turn of my poem below, the trout were not voracious and their nibbles were butterfly kisses.
Meniscus
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mist and mosses
colour the air
where the waterfall leaps
green in the mumble of water
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I stand waist deep
in the fall-fed pool
bubbles cling to my legs
to the hairs on the back of my knee
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droplets of air above water are nothing
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2.
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the soles of my feet
slide on the slate
search for softer
pockets of sand
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trout kiss my ankles
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I try to see
but the surface is silver
a dome reflected
of maple and sky
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a green leaf settles
a pine needle spins
striders press dents on the water
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4.
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I need to see the trout
I bend my face to the water
press on the skin
push through the meniscus
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my nose is severed from my face
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I am the pond
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I cannot move
I cannot breathe
my hands are numb
my heart squeezes within me
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I cannot believe
the trout have taken
great gashes of leg
my toes are slashed by the slate
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I look up through the water
its surface a circle of silver
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6.
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fish gnaw at my toes
bubbles grate at the back of my knee
tears under water are nothing
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© Jane Tims 1992
autumn along the brook
Behind our house, in the grey woods, is a narrow little brook. It is not much to look at but I like its simplicity. This brook has steep sides (a cross-section like a ‘U’) and grassy banks, and it creates charming little riffles over fallen logs. Until this moment, I have never realised … we have not given this brook a name!
I walked to the brook last Monday evening, to see how high the water was and to look for signs of the changing season.
Autumn is showing its color everywhere. Some of the ferns have turned yellow with the first frost…
There are fallen red maple leaves on the trail and in the brook…
And the berries of Bunchberry (Cornus canadensis L.) are brilliant red…
- ‘red berries’
end of summer
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on the path along the brook
one leaf bleeds into water
in town the walks are stony
chaff of linden, seeds
dry ditches overflow with flowers
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I shrug
(no matter
summer is ended)
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yellow rattle
pods and grasses
rehearse an incantation
wind sulks in corners of the shed
warmth and sun
paint the orange of pumpkins
knit winter mittens
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I gather signs of autumn
asters, windfalls, flocks of red wings
frantic in the alders
acorns, hollow galls from oak
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Orion peeks above the trees
time forgotten, found
and summer with rain never ends
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I ask for rain
(arms loaded with everlasting)
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© Jane Tims 2010
'oak leaves and acorns'
a woodland stream in southern Alberta
When we were children, living in Alberta, Mom and Dad took us for drives on the weekends. Usually, we explored the prairie roads or the landscape of the South Saskatchewan River. Sometimes, though, we sought the wooded areas of southern Alberta.
A place we visited more than once was a small wooded stream in the Cypress Hills. We called it ‘Greyburn Gap’, probably after the nearby community of Greyburn’s Gap. The site had a picnic table and shelter, woods to explore, and the little stream.
The Cypress Hills area is an eroded plateau, rising above the Alberta and Saskatchewan prairies. It was left unglaciated during the last ice age and has a flora and fauna much different than the surrounding prairie. Part of the Cypress Hills is protected as the Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park.
Elkwater Lake and the wooded landscape of the Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park as they appeared in 1967
My parents were raised in Nova Scotia and were accustomed to the forests of the Atlantic Provinces. The Cypress Hills, and the woods of Elkwater Lake, where we had a cabin, must have helped them feel more at home in Alberta.
mixed woods of Elkwater Lake area (2002)
our cabin at Elkwater Lake (1967)
Greyburn Gap, Alberta
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I remember a brook threaded through the trees like string
black water in the gap between gossamer and fern
a fence to mark its moving a fallen fir
to tangle its water our hands
trailing in the eddy
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a jug of root beer sunk to the neck to move the brook’s cold shiver
into our summer bodies
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© Jane Tims, 2011
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