Mother Natures Fury - Ragged Falls

Mother Natures Fury - Ragged Falls
Originally uploaded by Alan Norsworthy

I just returned from Algonquin my Spring reunion with this incredible place.

Once more Mother Nature showed her true power.
We are puny in comparison:

Roads washed away leaving people stranded on the wrong end of Opeongo Road, streams and rivers raging, and winter still clinging in the quiet sheltered corners of the woods.

Patrick and I spent a day above the washed out beaver dam near Opeongo Rd and Hwy 60. A couple of years ago this was a series of lakes but no more. Returning to the area over recent years I have been able to witness just how quickly Mother Nature, if left to her own devices, repairs and replenishes a devastated area.
The grasses are back offering a thick luxurious covering to replace the cloying mud of recent years and Bulrushes are sprouting.

At the end of the day we we witnessed a beginning, a young beaver was making its way up the shallow meandering creek that fed this area before the beavers arrived the first time. I look forward to seeing their efforts at rebuilding.

On Sunday morning we visited Ragged Falls before heading home.

You could hear the roar of the water from the parking lot and that’s half a Km away. A sign of things to come...

In my wildest expectations I didn’t think it would be like this, Thousands of gallons per minute swept not only over the falls as the approach was flooded by about four of five feet of water and a second falls were born down the rocky ledges that was once a way down by foot.
The table (viewing section of natural rock was an island as water, deep and fast raced by, the noise was overwhelming and overpowering. What had been gentle cascades were now raging rapids with haystacks climbing about the now submerged rocks, noise everywhere

What a sight ...


Say, care-worn man,
Whom Duty chains within the city walls,
Amid the toiling crowd, how grateful plays
The fresh wind o'er thy sickly brow, when free
To tread the springy turf,— to hear the trees
Communing with the gales,—to catch the voice
Of waters, gushing from their rocky womb,
And singing as they wander...
Spring-hours will come again, and feelings rise
With dewy freshness o'er thy wither'd heart.
~Robert Montgomery, "Beautiful Influences," A Universal Prayer; Death; A Vision of Heaven; and A Vision of Hell 1829