I took this photograph during the winter of 1991-92 on the Illinois River, a few miles upstream from Havana, Illinois. At the time, I lived in a small cottage on the river bluffs, and it was easy to slide my canoe into the river if the weather was anything at all resembling mild. I canoed in the winter quite a bit in those days.
When a towboat-barge, which is a towboat pushing one or several barges, passes in the middle of the river, the swells generated are usually surprisingly easy to handle, as long as you are in the deeper waters. In the shallows, the waves can build up and crash down with great force, which could easily upset a canoe.
This photograph was used to illustrate my first publication with Illinois Audubon magazine (Number 247 Winter 1994), in an article called Seasonal Flow. Patti Reilly Malmborg used it to create the illustration on page 6 of the book Side Channels: A Collection of Nature Writing and Memoir.
For more information on Side Channels, see the author's web site (http://www.side-channels.com/).
