The River is Messy

The river is awesome. The river is beautiful. The river is messy. 

It smells sometimes; sort of a chemical smell which for the most part I don’t really notice. Not that it is there all of the time, but… The smell can be accompanied by bubbling where the water moves quickly over an elevation loss, and there is one of these up from the house and one a quarter of a mile downstream. Not sure what causes this - most likely something unnatural in the water. Google says it can be the sign of a naturally-occurring organic matter decaying. That or the presence of something synthetic. 

But the smell and bubbles are not exactly what I am thinking about when I say that the river is messy. It’s messy in a falling apart and decaying sense. There are fallen trees leaning into the water. There are scraggle branches here and there. There’s mud. And moss-scum floating along - especially in summer. There are dead things. Dead fish. Dead deer. Dead leaves. Once a dead pig. But mostly dead leaves and bits of trees. To be honest, I’ve only seen a dead deer in the water once. And only one pig. No cows. 

There are scraggly branches precariously leaning against trees, some trees are bent over and twisted and in various states of decay; it’s raw. It’s real.

Some scraggle and a river cat.