Figure 1 – Landham Brook, Sudbury, MA, the day after Thanksgiving 2015. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

The day after Thanksgiving this year was unseasonably warm in Massachusetts. There were cloudy skies, but not without blue patches, and temperature were in the low to mid sixties Fahrenheit (~ 21 deg C). I took advantage of the warmth to explore some of the local waterways and took the photograph of Figure 1 along Landham Brook behind Old Mill Village. I have been intrigued by the spot since a few years back when I saw a pair of river otters playing in the snow and ice, just like young school children. There was no snow nor ice today, only water rushing and light dancing in the current.

A short way downstream Landham Brook joins up with the Sudbury River in the Town of Wayland. This region of the state is scrubby wetland, at least today, and strangely the nature of the land has a raw and wild appeal. This is where the local native Americans (the Wampanoag, Nipmuck, Podunk, Narragansett, and Nashaway) staged their first major battle, known as King Phillip’s War, to stop the invasion of their lands. From 1675-1678 Metacomet, who had adopted the English name “King Philip” in honor of the previously-friendly relations between his father and Plymouth pilgrims, waged war against the colonists. On April 21, 1676 ironically 99 years almost to the day before the Battles of Lexington and Concord and a century before the Declaration of American Independence the Battle of Sudbury took place.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 87 mm, ISO 400, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/50th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.