Little Fall at High Falls
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| "Little Fall at High Falls" (oil on Birch panel 8 x 8 inches) |
22 September 2019 finds me at High Falls on the South Nation River near Casselman, Ontario, with Fred and painting companion Charlotte King. Charlotte and I don't know what to expect at a place named "High Falls", here in the apparently flat landscape of far-eastern Ontario. Certainly as we arrive, there is no high waterfall to be seen! But as Fred explains, the South Nation River flows over a series of sills on its way to the Ottawa River, and this is a long, gradual one.
The water is low since our summer drought, pooling above the hydro dam by the Conservation Area parking lot, and trickling over a spillway into a quiet shallow catchment, thence into a network of cracks and channels in the flat bedrock of the dry riverbed. Each crack is lined with tall grass that screens naturally stone-paved "rooms" from each other. The rock then subsides into a wide water mirror, reflecting every detail of the forested far shore. We thread our way along the bank under overhanging trees, to the ruins of the old bridge.
There Charlotte and I disport ourselves in photography. The long curved branches of a tree caught by the eroded footings fascinate me. Even a mat of floating algae is gorgeous, pushed together like carded wool in a tapestry, each strand a different colour of yellow or green.
We eventually follow Fred, who is some way ahead, having become a tiny part of a broad vista of flat, sloping limestone - and then we discover the hidden wonders of High Falls - deep narrow fissures in the solid bedrock that channel the flow of the South Nation River - invisible from a distance, but surprising and enchanting to come upon. I take a video of a rotating pan of foam being spun by the current at the intersection of two of these channels. Charlotte and I delight in miniature waterfalls, some wide, and some narrow, spilling over the edges of tipped-up slabs of limestone. After we wander from wonder to wonder, we try to decide which to paint, taking photos of everything, including the sky's high mackerel clouds, as colours soften toward evening. Finally I settle down to paint one of these little falls.
September dusks fall early. We lost the light after barely a couple of hours. Charlotte had painted the riverbed with three trickles coming over a shelf, the ledge along the shore, and autumn-coloured riverine forest against the sky,
...but my complicated little waterfall scene was barely recognizable and would need a lot more work! Finished now, it lacks the simplicity of a painting done entirely "en plein air". As with so many of my close-up landscapes, I find myself surprised by the amount of detail required for the painting to explain itself - for all the brush strokes it takes to express the difference between rock and water, and between rock and dried algae. I must admit, my favourite bit is the tiny pink-flowered knotweed in the foreground!
As Fred appeared with bags full of drift and shells, and sat beside me in his wet pants & socks, Charlotte and I packed up. We'd spent a wonderful day in a splendid place, and promised each other to paint again at High Falls.
Fred's notes are as follows:
"Plants growing in the cracks of the limestone were Purple Loosestrife, with a used-up, nearly-leafless look & reddish coloration from the herbivory of Galerucella biocontrol Beetles, scattered Giant Ragweed, and Knotweed & Wild Mint tangled in the lower levels of 2 m tall Reed Canary Grass. Flowering-rush along shore was mostly in pod with a few blooms, and at the foot of the falls, Sandbar Willow dominated the places where soil had accumulated (species in bold italic are, despite their loveliness, loathsome invasive aliens). Duckweeds (mostly Lemna minor, with some Spirodela polyrhiza) were interesting in occurring in vividly green patches & piles on algal flats where one plant had apparently stranded when the water went down in the spring and produced a heap of offspring on top of the wet algal mats.
"The water flows in cracks or seeps across the surface, providing habitat for the pale green algal blankets. These were about 10 cm thick, and stinkingly anoxic just 2-4 cm below the surface. They are dotted with little Physa Tadpole Snails, safe here from predation by fish, although vulnerable to the migratory shorebirds.
"We found a few shells of Unionids, didn't see any Mystery Snails (I had found our first record of Banded Mysteries here in 2016, and Chinese Mysteries are in Hess Creek upstream, and expected to soon be in the river), and didn't see any living Zebras, though their shells, presumably from the river upstream of the falls, were strewn everywhere across the bedrock.
"The west bank of the falls is slabby grey limestone, with a big zone of spring-drifted twigs & branches, one corner of which provided a sample of land snails. Where Manitoba Maple trees reach over crowded Buckthorn and Honeysuckle on the edge of the open riverbed, the slabs are green with Sedum, including Sedum spurium (Two-row Stonecrop), which, as in 2016, was rich in land snail shells, including many of the Succineidae which recent study has rendered almost unidentifiable.
The water is low since our summer drought, pooling above the hydro dam by the Conservation Area parking lot, and trickling over a spillway into a quiet shallow catchment, thence into a network of cracks and channels in the flat bedrock of the dry riverbed. Each crack is lined with tall grass that screens naturally stone-paved "rooms" from each other. The rock then subsides into a wide water mirror, reflecting every detail of the forested far shore. We thread our way along the bank under overhanging trees, to the ruins of the old bridge.
There Charlotte and I disport ourselves in photography. The long curved branches of a tree caught by the eroded footings fascinate me. Even a mat of floating algae is gorgeous, pushed together like carded wool in a tapestry, each strand a different colour of yellow or green.
We eventually follow Fred, who is some way ahead, having become a tiny part of a broad vista of flat, sloping limestone - and then we discover the hidden wonders of High Falls - deep narrow fissures in the solid bedrock that channel the flow of the South Nation River - invisible from a distance, but surprising and enchanting to come upon. I take a video of a rotating pan of foam being spun by the current at the intersection of two of these channels. Charlotte and I delight in miniature waterfalls, some wide, and some narrow, spilling over the edges of tipped-up slabs of limestone. After we wander from wonder to wonder, we try to decide which to paint, taking photos of everything, including the sky's high mackerel clouds, as colours soften toward evening. Finally I settle down to paint one of these little falls.
...but my complicated little waterfall scene was barely recognizable and would need a lot more work! Finished now, it lacks the simplicity of a painting done entirely "en plein air". As with so many of my close-up landscapes, I find myself surprised by the amount of detail required for the painting to explain itself - for all the brush strokes it takes to express the difference between rock and water, and between rock and dried algae. I must admit, my favourite bit is the tiny pink-flowered knotweed in the foreground!
As Fred appeared with bags full of drift and shells, and sat beside me in his wet pants & socks, Charlotte and I packed up. We'd spent a wonderful day in a splendid place, and promised each other to paint again at High Falls.
Fred's notes are as follows:
"In its course through the clay deposits of the prehistoric Champlain Sea, the South Nation River flows down across a number of limestone bedrock steps or sills - Spencerville, Ventnor, Chesterville, Crysler, Plantagenet, and Jessups Falls - but the highest of these is High Falls in Casselman. The arrival of Zebra Mussels in 2000 drastically changed the biota of the river, and collections made there since 1997 document that change.
"... a Turkey Vulture & a Great Blue Heron, the rattling of Kingfishers, an Osprey with prey, and flocks of Killdeer and of Lesser & Greater Yellowlegs fattening themselves for migration by picking the abundant Physa snails off the surface of the pale green algal blankets.
"Plants growing in the cracks of the limestone were Purple Loosestrife, with a used-up, nearly-leafless look & reddish coloration from the herbivory of Galerucella biocontrol Beetles, scattered Giant Ragweed, and Knotweed & Wild Mint tangled in the lower levels of 2 m tall Reed Canary Grass. Flowering-rush along shore was mostly in pod with a few blooms, and at the foot of the falls, Sandbar Willow dominated the places where soil had accumulated (species in bold italic are, despite their loveliness, loathsome invasive aliens). Duckweeds (mostly Lemna minor, with some Spirodela polyrhiza) were interesting in occurring in vividly green patches & piles on algal flats where one plant had apparently stranded when the water went down in the spring and produced a heap of offspring on top of the wet algal mats.
"The water flows in cracks or seeps across the surface, providing habitat for the pale green algal blankets. These were about 10 cm thick, and stinkingly anoxic just 2-4 cm below the surface. They are dotted with little Physa Tadpole Snails, safe here from predation by fish, although vulnerable to the migratory shorebirds.
"We found a few shells of Unionids, didn't see any Mystery Snails (I had found our first record of Banded Mysteries here in 2016, and Chinese Mysteries are in Hess Creek upstream, and expected to soon be in the river), and didn't see any living Zebras, though their shells, presumably from the river upstream of the falls, were strewn everywhere across the bedrock.
"The west bank of the falls is slabby grey limestone, with a big zone of spring-drifted twigs & branches, one corner of which provided a sample of land snails. Where Manitoba Maple trees reach over crowded Buckthorn and Honeysuckle on the edge of the open riverbed, the slabs are green with Sedum, including Sedum spurium (Two-row Stonecrop), which, as in 2016, was rich in land snail shells, including many of the Succineidae which recent study has rendered almost unidentifiable.
"The general homogeneity of the scene was broken by a pool near the foot of the falls, surrounded by Zizania palustris (Northern Wild-rice) more than 2 metres tall, with a few residual seeds in their heads, and big Helisoma campanulatum (Bell-mouth Ramshorn) snails all over the muddy bottom of the open water - both species not seen elsewhere around the falls. The only Amphibian seen was one Leopard Frog on bedrock near an algal flow, though a few jump-in squeaks of Green Frogs were heard. We finished up at dusk, as overcast moved in, locking in the heat of the day at 27°C, and at 24-25°C for the drive home."
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