Still Water

Frog-strangling rains have moved into East Tennessee - I'm not kidding, many county school districts are closed today because of severe flooding, but the rain should be leaving us later today. So I'm continuing my Ijams series, showing you a sunnier day a few weeks ago, when I admired the deep, deep blue-green water of Mead's Quarry at Ijams Nature Center. Yesterday, you saw it from the bluff behind red berries. Today, we're at ground level.

The stillness of the water is eerie. Occasionally I'll hear a rock plonk into the water from the limestone bluff, or I'll hear a roiling bubbling of gases charge up to the surface, perhaps from a junked auto still resting deep and drowned and unreachable at the bottom of the quarry. Boating and swimming aren't allowed, so nothing but waterfowl will glide across the surface.