Rock Bottom - the End of Summer

Late summer, the snow has melted and there isn't much rain so the rivers are running very low this time of year. All things just seem to wear down at the end of summer and we can all but walk on the bottom of the river. I don't know where the fish are this time of year. We saw lots of minnows, but it seemed better to look than to try and catch any since they are under some stress from low relatively warm water. I have no idea how they adjust to such changes in the water level - it changes on an exponential level from Spring floods to late summer lazy flow.
When looking at all the rocks we remember the river is a conveyer belt that pulls all the rocks down with the river itself, the rocks flow downstream and towards the ocean.
Here we are at the Tennaway River in Eastern Washington.

Upstream. Rocks here have been moved from up in the mountains, so you find the usual basalt, granite - and also a lot of serpentinite - the whole area of the Tennaway Forest consists of different 'exotic terrains' - which have a variety of rock types. When not fishing you can always admire the rocks.

Downstream.  The Eocene sandstone cliffs are visible on the right.  Some of the river bed is made of this 'bedrock'.
The silt makes most of the rocks seems just grey, but there are serpentinite greens, dark blue-black basalts, as well as some picture sandstones and a few reddish rocks.

Over on the westside we are in the south fork of the Snoqualmie up towards the pass. The rocks are naturally much larger here.  

Upstream - you can see where the tree-line is on the mountain to the east - this is rugged terrain. Also notice how large the rocks are. They are mostly granite and basalt from the local mountains - but there is also a lot of metamorphic and other rocks because the mountains are more than volcanic - granite plutons and basalt flows.

Downstream - how shallow the water is! We are really seeing the base of the river so close up. You can see from the edge of the where the rocks meet the trees how it swells at other times. There is little gravel and sand here - I suppose most of that gets carried down stream. A few miles to the west - with a drop in altitude - we find the gravel and not so many boulders. 

The end of summer and the bottom of the river - the show is over for this year - the planet tips away from the sun another time. I suppose I see the end of summer as the end of the year since i was a teacher for so long - but it is like the end of the show - or at least this performance of it.
As I get older however, the end of each summer feels more final. Time, remains, as always, elusive. But isn't that one of the main attractions of time on the river? We get such a clarity of focus that time expands just enough so that the instant of the take expands - and the long stretches of searching punctuated by the minutes of casting flow into a constant state of now.

it is with a sweet sense of melancholy that the base of the river shows itself - this is it - all I've got - rock bottom. I put my fly in the keeper and wade.