La Source de la Loue is an impressive natural illusion. It appears that the river called “La Loue” shoots out from under a 300-ft cliff, just like one might imagine the water pouring out of the rock that Moses struck with his staff. However, like many origin myths, this story does not match reality. In reality, the site is not a source at all, but rather the exit of an underground branch of the Doubs river, a leak, if you will. The misunderstanding about the origin of the Loue literally reached the light of day when an infamous distillery at the shores of the Doubs river burned down, spilling tons of green Absinthe into the Doubs. When the water of the Loue ran green and smelled like Absinthe, the myth of a pristine spring was busted.

The image shows “the source” on July 11, 2021, at 8 pm. The superimposed data element shows the waterflow of the river every hour for a year, running from 14 July 2020 to 14 July 2021. The jump from the first to the last date is on top of the disk, at “noon”, so winter is on the bottom, Fall is on the right, and Spring is on the left. The radial lines making up the disk each represent an hourly reading of the flow rate of the river, longer meaning more water, shorter meaning less water is flowing. The range is from 0.1 cubic meters per second to about 100 cubic meters per second.

The river can carry 1000 times more water during the peaks than during the drought. That dynamic range explains the landscape formed by the constant force of water over the years: The water made the valley, not the other way around.