This was the title of a posting I received this morning from the author Parker J. Palmer before going out for a hike. It is the last line of a poem written by Wendell Berry and I had no idea it would be so relevant or prescient. The day before we had had a record rain fall in the Ottawa and Gatineau Park area – almost 100 mm of rain within one day. I was in no way prepared for what I was to encounter – firstly higher flows than I’ve ever seen in the streams and secondly, the extent of destruction on the hiking trails. There were streams of water flowing down the trails and eroded gullies that felt as deep as canyons.
If Wendell Berry is right about ‘the impeded stream being the one that sings, there was a lot of singing in the Park today. These photos were taken along MacDonald Rd (Trail 40).
Here is part of Wendell Berry’s poem:
“It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings”.
