River Wild

At some unknown hour during the last few days, the unrelenting winter ice started to withdraw its hold on the little Mississippi river in the Lanark Highlands, and one could hear the roar of the river for miles as it went thundering through the good devices of the High Falls power station. Once through the dam and the turbines, the river plunged headlong through the gorge for a mile or two with raucous pleasure, cannonaded over the rocks and exploded through the narrow aperture under the bridge before encountering its beloved lake, making an impassioned tumultuous entrance a hundred metres out and merging blissfully into the quietly flowing waters.

The river and its cascading falls call out for a closer experience of their wildness, but one cannot approach too closely in springtime, and the area is far too treacherous underfoot to be negotiated. There is a great haphazard tumble of wet granite boulders below and monumental jagged shards of ice which have been heaved forth by the river in its frantic efforts to shake itself loose from winter — there have been many occasions in springtimes past when I have found myself right in the river as I tried to wander closer to all that splendid wetness.

Yesterday, I was a little wiser for those earlier wet adventures, although I was certainly not much drier — I found a wide flat rock near a quiet melt pool and just sat there for a long time, merging myself (whoever that thoughtless eccentric creature happens to be) into the day and my own restlessly tumbling thoughts with the spray and the roar. There was no sense of time there, no noise and turbulence, no me at all.

In autumn, the view from the top is just out of this world.