That’s the famous Rumford Falls. It ain’t much to look at, really, although they have a rest stop nearby to gull tourists into lingering a while. The falls are in the background there. Most people mistake the weir, a concrete revetment that water passes over that you see in the foreground, for the falls. There’s a tall concrete bridge about a thousand yards downstream from the weir that actually has some interesting rocky rapids to gape at, but nobody ever looks at it. It’s got a hulking, reeking paper mill alongside it. It’s not picturesque, I guess.

It’s been raining every day for as long as I can remember. We can’t complain. Our back yard looks like Cambodia, but we skipped all the Canadian wildfire smoke altogether. Interestingly, Canadian Wildfire Smoke is the name of my Bachman-Turner Overdrive tribute band. But I digress.

Normally, the river isn’t running at all this time of year. The Androscoggin never stops, exactly, but the concrete weir would be showing, and the falls themselves would be bare granite. The nearby Swift River is usually just sort of shallow and disconnected, like a teenage girl with an iPhone riding in your car. But it’s raging, too.

We never really get weather here in western Maine. We get WEATHER. C’est la vie!