On Saturday morning, Molly, Jules and I drove down to Pony Pasture to see the James after the recent rainy weather. The water was as high as I had ever seen it and the rapids were violent and chaotic. The same river that just a few months ago our Earth Lodge class had serenely floated down in tubes was now thunderous. The normally clear water was brown because of all the sediment that the extra water stirred up and from the dirt brought in by runoff. It made a loud roaring sound as it crashed over rocks and a rhythmic lapping sound as it pushed against the banks by my feet, as though it were trying to escape its banks. Further down it had managed to escape its banks, turning the paths that wind by the river’s edge into gigantic impassable puddles, one of which had frozen over during the night. There were also icicles clinging to the roots of trees and small plants by the water’s edge, still hanging on even though the temperature was now far above freezing. Many of the trees that under normal conditions were safely on the banks of the river now had their roots and trunks largely under water. For a moment I wondered if this was bad for the trees, but I suppose that the trees are probably adapted to this, they wouldn’t have been able to live so prosperously by the side of the river if they could not handle the flooding caused by storms multiple times a year.
It is interesting to see the river in a state in which I don’t normally think about it. Before taking this class, I had tended to ignore the river in the winter; only really thinking about it during the summer when it had something to offers me, namely a place for adventuring and swimming. The same could not be said of all visitors to the river. Although they were nothing to match the crowds that you see on a nice summer day, we saw many people out for a jog, walking their dogs or just come to see the spectacle of the James transformed into a large violent river.