Roll ye old River...

Frothing, mudded rivers grasp at their banks, intent on taking tree and rock along in their fearsome ride to the sea.

It is awesome, and raucous!  The power, the speed, the potential, is for me, a water sign, intensely attracting!

The East Branch of the Westfield River has a large watershed.

In the book, 'Only One Cummington', William M. Streeter writes of these waters, "flowing on ledges of mica slate, soapstone, chlorite, actinolite and talc".

I have been to an old, tiny mica mine near to the Knightsville Dam.  It is strange to imagine this flaky material, or the soft talc forming resistant ledges!?

Water falls, water floods, water flows!  The remaining snow in the woods is melting, the incessant rains are pouring, this increased flow of water causes me to take the high road, the long way around to come and go from work and home.  Waters are over the road on my usual route.

Water is very familiar to this area.  In the Pre Paleozoic Era (50 to 75 million years ago), this was a great expanse of water, more than likely part of the sea!
(The Geological History of the Connecticut Valley, by William J. Miller.)

Years past, I lived in Butler County, Pennsylvania.  In early spring, we would drive north to the upper Monongahela River.  The ice floes were almost the size of trucks, and were all jammed up with each other.  Floods would occur behind this jam.  Should the jam manage to move downstream, it would, and had taken out bridges!.  Each spring The Engineers would dynamite the ice jam, to facilitate the flow of smaller pieces, and release the backup or waters.
This is what we drove to see.

Then, we would race down to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, park the car, walk out onto a bridge.  From this vantage, we watched.

Whole mature trees, docks, cabin boats would swirl by, or accumulate in snags as this water pummelled itself continuously against the reinforced river banks, and the bridge supports! Exciting!

Just downstream of these Pittsburgh bridges is the confluence of the Monongahela and Yogiogheny Rivers, forming the Ohio.  At the confluence is Point State Park.  Here was Fort Pitt, and the rich history of settlers, soldiers, and Native Americans.

It was said that the Huron, and the Iroquois knew how to canoe and portage all the way to the Ohio from the Great Lakes, by way of the Monongahela Watershed.

I welcome the waters, the sculpting force of ages.  I celebrate it!