Different every time

My original motivation for writing these river posts was wanting to share the variety of what we notice on our more or less daily walks beside the Rideau. The river itself never looks the same as it did the previous evening and will look different again on the following evening. With the days getting shorter now, we're seeing the river at nightfall more frequently. In cloudy weather with no wind the other day, seen from the St. Patrick Street bridge it turned a dramatic shade of dark grey. Monday evening this week was finer, with a gentle breeze, and then the river looked like corrugated gold.

On evenings like this I'm reminded of the last chapter of a novel (published in 1910) by H.G. Wells, The History of Mr. Polly, which describes an evening by a nameless river in southern England:

... It was one of those evenings, serenely luminous, amply and atmospherically still, when the river bend was at its best. A swan floated against the dark green masses of the further bank, the stream flowed broad and shining to its destiny, with scarce a ripple––except where the reeds came out from the headland––the three poplars rose clear and harmonious against a sky of green and yellow.

"...what have we done," said Mr. Polly, "to get an evening like this? ... Sometimes I think I live for sunsets."

They ... sat on in the warm twilight until at last they could scarcely distinguish each other's faces. They were not so much thinking as lost in a smooth, still quiet of the mind. A bat flitted by ...