Confluence

Originally uploaded by woodsrun.

This is the conflulence of the east and west branches of the Saranac River. I drive on the bridge over this spot every morning. The river is starting to freeze--it only freezes in certain spots. All of the rivers around here freeze in certain spots. Sometimes the ice gets more than a foot thick, and when the ice goes out it's an amazing sight. In Ausable Forks there's a big betting pool for the day the ice goes out, worth lots of money involved. Date and time. It's usually some time around St. Patrick's Day.

Lots of times there's really bad flooding because of ice jams, when the ice causes the river to back up. Jamie and I always thought people were sort of foolish to keep building houses in the same spots that got hit by ice jam flooding, year after year.

Sometimes they blast the ice jams with dynamite, which I think is pretty stupid too. It's never very effective, and the ice jams generally form again. One year there was a big jam in AuSable Forks and they decided to blast it with lots of dynamite. We were part of the big crowd that gathered in the parking lot to watch. First a bunch of government officials stood in the bucket of a front end loader and were driven out to the edge of the ice. Boy do I wish I had a picture of that. It was a hysterical sight. Then they blasted the ice and huge chunks of foot-thick ice went flying up into the air, maybe 40 feet high, and came crashing down to the ground. No one was hurt, but why were we all standing there, waiting to be hit by 100-lb pieces of ice? Because we livein the North Country, that's why!