The thought of Walden in the woods yonder makes me supple-jointed and limber for the duties of the day. I am conscious that my body derives its genesis from their waters, as much as the muskrat or the herbage on their brink. "I should wither and dry up if it were not for lakes and rivers. In 1840, Henry David Thoreau wrote in his journal: Find a fall, or cascade, or rushing rapid, anywhere upon a clear stream, and there you will surely find its complementary Ouzel, flitting about in the spray, diving in foaming eddies, whirling like a leaf among beaten foam-bells ever vigorous and enthusiastic, yet self-contained, and neither seeking nor shunning your company."įrom: The Mountains of California by John Muir, 1894. No cañon is too cold for this little bird, none too lonely, provided it be rich in falling water. "Among all the countless waterfalls I have met in the course of ten years' exploration in the Sierra, whether among the icy peaks, or warm foot-hills, or in the profound yosemitic cañons of the middle region, not one was found without its Ouzel. Tucked behind the larger of these waterfalls and completely invisible to any outside view is the nest of a pair of Water Ouzels.Įxcellent swimmers, these small birds are seen throughout the sequence both hunting for aquatic insects and flying behind the falls to deliver this food to their young.Ĭharacteristically, they often bounce on a rock before making their move. Steady snowfall contrasts with occasional swirls driven by windy gusts and eddies that suggest a more violent storm.īecause of uniform light, the falling snow is primarily visible against the dark background of water, where it dissolves and disappears, but not against the snow-covered land and rocks where it continues to accumulate.īeneath the clear dark water are patches of snow-ice that change due to almost imperceptible melting during the course of the sequence.Ī thin, almost invisible skin of ice left from lower nighttime temperatures resists the wind-blown ripples in the foreground pool at the beginning but continues to dissolve with the passage of time. The composition itself opposes different scales – large and small masses of white snow against dark backgrounds with varying shades of white produced by shadowed and submerged snow-ice and dark water modulated by reflection and wind and the sometimes visible bottom. This sequence is a study in contrasts and dissolving boundaries.
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