Mid-week; all about changes!

Yes, I know.  But what is it about these enormous things that is so fascinating?Right off, I can see the painting-within-a-painting.  I see the grid.  I see the colors.  I see the letters.  Ooooh, look at the blade:  I see fish!  Migrating up the river to spawn.

This Cat is responsible for tearing out the summer bridge.  It most likely was responsible for pushing the road through the river bar gravel, building the ramps out of the gravel.  Not being a big equipment person, I have no idea how they get the pieces of bridge up onto the cement structures for the summer traffic.  I do know that in a couple of weeks it will all be taken down, and the gravel smoothed out, and the river left to itself until early summer of next year.

And then, through the wet months, the river banks are habituated by fisherpeople, herons, deer, bobcats, coyotes, ducks, hawks, grebes and geese.  People and their dogs migrate to the river in these coming months as well, and well, we are the ones who disturb all the other visitors.  I have fantasized that the Bald Eagle waits for me and my dogs.  Ha ha ha.  I am sure!

Yes, while the Eagle watches from above, the mountain lion, coyote and bobcats all move up or down stream, giving the human and her sissy dogs a wide berth through which to meander.  To the human it looks as though this land is not populated at all, or, if it is, all that lives here are insects, lizards, squirrels and occasionally a foot-long rattlesnake(this year's hatching...deadly). She knows better, of course, but it is nice to let the imagination loose with the flocks of Cedar Waxwings dipping and flashing little slices of red and yellow.

Growing up in Larabee, I learned early of the summer bridge.  There it was put in seasonally, though it seems that the "high water" is what moved the bridge off the abutments.  The men tied one end to a large tree, so the other end swung downstream.  I will have to ask my brother about that detail!  When the water was "up" we were bundled into the motorboat, and ferried across with my dad at the motor.  I can still feel that excitement; the rocking boat, the whine of the motor, the smell of the exhaust, the rushing roar of the churning brown water.  Lordy!  No wonder we didn't go anywhere very often during the winter months!  I cannot imagine putting my brood into a boat, though they'd most likely enjoyed it as much as I did.  Yes, it was panic-city every time, but such a rush.   And I firmly believed that my dad could do anything.  Period.

The river will be gifted back to herself for the winter.  I will take the dogs down for occasional romps in the sand and water.  I love how rivers renew, refresh and re-enliven... me.

xoxoLC