Adjusting to a new (and not lovely) look

I can’t believe it’s been nearly three months since I posted here. Back at the end of January, I was bemoaning the lack of a real winter. Winter never really did arrive with its usual bluster, and we’re experiencing an early spring with daffodils already in bloom. And I’m trying to adjust to a new look along my riverbank.

This post is going to be a bit of a romp through the years with the Echo River, which is separated from our house by the Echo Lake Road. Like everyone along this stretch, we claim the riverbank as our own, though technically it belongs to the township.

This is pretty much how it’s always looked in the spring.

The river was an integral part of our lives when we were farming and our children were young. The kids swam in it, learned to paddle a canoe in it, fished in it, sometimes bathed in it. They even tried—with little success—to waterski behind our under-powered motor boat. Here are a few of my favourite pics (a bit fuzzy) of them enjoying the river over the years.

A rogue piece of riverbank from upstream created a floating island, just inviting the kids to capture it! (Erica and Robin)

What do you do with a no-longer-in-use water bed? (Erica with a friend.)

Nothing biting, but is that really the point? (Galen)

We watered livestock from the river, and when our well had trouble keeping up with demand, Jack re-connected the house’s original water line from the river so we could flip a switch and use river water in outdoor taps and for flushing. We listened to the ice cracking on cold winter days and cringed when foolish souls ventured on the frozen (but never safe) surface with snowmobiles. We celebrated when the migrating water fowl arrived in the spring—as they have in the last couple of weeks.

And we built docks. Oh, did we build docks!

Our house is located just downstream from a bend in the river, on the outside of the curve. Pretty much a right-angle turn—here viewed from the top of our hill in this photo from our early farming days, probably late 1970s.

Every spring, when the ice breaks up on Echo Lake, a mile or so upstream, the river swells and large chunks of ice float around the bend and push against the riverbank. More than once when our dock was dislodged by the spring break-up, a neighbour phoned to tell us it was floating downstream and Jack hauled the boat with its 10 horsepower motor into the still-freezing river to fetch it and tow it home. I guess that was a guy-job, because I don’t remember ever doing it myself, though I do remember passing on the message!

At which point, Jack began working on yet another design. I don’t know how many docks we had. Sometimes they were simple extensions into the river with a ladder for swimmers at the end and enough space on the sides to tie up a couple of boats. Sometimes they were elaborate platforms along the shore with space for lounging. Each design had yet another strategy for keeping the dock intact. Sometimes it worked for a year or two, but eventually they all succumbed to the pressure of spring.

Once, Jack and the crew of teenagers working for us on the farm spent days hauling rocks from a rocky hillside pasture to create a retaining wall, which lasted quite a while, and a stone extension on which to secure a new dock. I think he lost a lot of credibility with his young crew when most of those rocks collapsed into the muddy river bottom, where they must still be.

Here are a couple of dock designs, from the simplest to the most elaborate,

Finally, we settled on a simple structure that was pulled in for the winter. Ten years ago—maybe more—we gave up on the whole idea and let the riverbank grow up in grass and weeds. We lost track of what was happening underneath. It wasn’t good.

Turn the clock back 25 years when one fall morning, a large crack appeared in the road about a kilometer downstream, where the river takes another turn. Within an hour, the road had collapsed into the river. Three or four houses lost half of their front yards when the township moved the road away from the river.

Four years ago we became alarmed by a similar pattern of erosion along “our” bank. The retaining wall was long gone, and the bank was so badly undercut, we knew the road would eventually collapse. If that was allowed to happen, we’d lose most of our front yard.

Here you can see the edge of the road, the river, and the angle of a tree showing how erosion has undercut the bank. (The yellow thing is part of the stabilization project from last summer, used to keep wandering fish from danger as the work proceeded.)

Three years later, last summer, I endured weeks of heavy equipment and trucks dumping rock. Now the riverbank is stabilized, and the road (and my front yard) are safe. I knew it would be ugly. It is. Very. I have to remind myself every day that it’s better than having the road run just outside my front door.

I have pleaded with the township to dump soil over it so vegetation can grow up. But apparently the Ministry of the Environment won’t approve bringing in soil—and anyway, it’s pretty clear taxpayer dollars will not be spent to improve my personal experience of the river. There’s no other home even close to the stabilization project, so it really is just me.  I will have to get used to it, and I’m having trouble with that.

Eventually, organic material will fill in between the stones and things will begin to grow. (I may help it along a little.) That’s what happened to the spot that was stabilized in a similar way 25 years ago. But need I say it? I won’t be around to see it return to anything like its a natural state.

This promises to be a year of change around the place as I wait anxiously to see which of my ash trees will have to come down this year, victims of the Emerald Ash Borer. After losing several large elms over the past few years, I’m dreading the inevitable and hoping I can spread that adjustment out over several years. The next few weeks will tell the tale.

On the bright side, adjusting to change helps keep us young! And it’s been a lot of fun looking through old photos as I put this post together!