So innocent

Innumerable people drive over the Milford, Ohio bridge (photo of same is in a post below) that crosses the Little Miami River. By innumerable, I mean that I know there's lots and lots and lots of vehicles crossing the bridge and I aint gonna stand there all day and night to count them just to give you what would probably be a baised value anyway! Back to the bridge, the problem is, unless you have a monster truck or something similar that sits you up high enough to see over the retaining wall, you never can see, from most vehicles, the scene you're passing. The same is true for so many bridges built these days, erected to replace those scenic, airy steel truss bridges of days gone by. So, to see what things look like, I parked the car on Mill Street, very close to where I once saw a steel garbage can passing a car that was driving down the street! There, this galvanized, rumbling, rolling, clanking Nascar-grade garbage can was turbo-powered by one of the tornadoes dropping from the 1969 mega-outbreak. That summer, for a few days, the U.S. had swarms of tornadoes - up the wazoo!!! So, that scary day, one was skimming across the Milford valley only a long baseball throwaway from where I stood to take this photograph. Anyway (a term people around here use when they need to get back to the point), I crossed Mill street and sauntered the remaining 12 or so yards to set foot high above the center of the river. There, I captured, with an exposure time roughly equivalent to one beat of a hummingbird's wing stroke, this serene, incredibly drama-free scene for all to see.

Here, you are looking upstream in a tiny segment of the Little Miami River - once part of the stomping grounds of famous warrior Tecumseh. Here, the river peacefully flows, meandering some 25 miles or so (that's a SWAG on my behalf) before it joins in with the Ohio River, a bit East of Cincinnati. As I was enjoying the view, I thought of more turbulent, rain-swollen flows. This river can really show a temper. I thought of my dental technician who, while canoeing in waters more angry than seen here, got caught up in submerged tree limbs trapped beneath this bridge. She said she very nearly drowned, being held firmly in the limbs and nearly pushed under by the force of the flow. Luckily (or is it lucky?) for her, she didn't drown and lived on many years later. I changed dentists, a few yeas back, so I don't know if she's still kicking (or paddling or, for that matter, cleaning teeth!)

Funny thing (two words that people, in this part of the world, use to preface something that they are going to say - when - they think the listener has already tuned them out and has moved on to to other thoughtful things), a friend, who once had a cabin along this river, once told me (paraphrased): "Often, nearly day to day, the river never looks the same. If nothing else, it brings things but it also takes things away." The downstream view is pretty much the same as this upstream view and they both look considerably different that what I remember from 40 some years ago. Then again, so do I and, in my case, it's really, really not for the best.