Surrounded by Significance

When I find a good place to canoe, I most often return there repeatedly. In part, this is to experience the area under different conditions and in various times of the year.  But, it is also to give me a chance to explore the surroundings and research features that I can see from the water.  

I set out for Rocky Hill where there is a nice stretch of the Connecticut River that I paddle a few times each year. But, I change my mind while on the drive and divert to the Salmon River, just because I find it a comfortable place to be.  I found this spot after crossing the Connecticut River from Haddam and being confronted with an absurd number of U.S. Government No Trespassing signs - about one on every third tree along the river bank.  It turned out to be the former site of a nuclear power plant, which had been removed prior to my moving to the area. Coming back and entering from the better located launch at the bottom of Salmon Cove, I found a large area of undeveloped forest land in an area that is prime property for the various concoctions of the infamous Mr. and Mrs. Moneybags.  More research turned up the fact that the spent nuclear fuel rods are stored onsite, but well out of view.  The entirety of the power plant property and some former private property remains as a rare no trespassing National Wildlife Refuge. Reading one day about Connecticut archaeology, I discovered that Dibble Creek, which tumbles, or dribbles, into the cove, if you know where to look, was the site of a hunting camp dating to 3000-6000 years ago. This same reading uncovered Venture Smith.  Smith's farm is on top of the hill overlooking the Salmon River as it enters the cove.  It is about a 100 acres. The interesting part of the story is that Venture Smith was captured in Africa in the 1730's and brought to America as a slave, eventually ending up in Stonington, CT.  His master allowed him to work odd jobs in his spare time to earn money, which he used to buy his own freedom.  He then set about farming and fishing until he could buy the freedom of his wife and children, after which he bought the land I paddle under and began farming and fishing.  His grave is in a nearby churchyard cemetery.  

The Moodus Beaver Dam

I end up talking too long to the State safety person - the state has a team of summer job employees that drive around to different state launches to check and educate people about such things as PFD's.  They're always interesting and pleasant to talk to and we both have some stories to trade. A second safety person shows up - she is a budding bird watcher, so I tip her off on some good places that I know of.  Then, I am in the water,

The Dibble Creek Dam

I head up the cove and into the Moodus River.  The lowest beaver dam is out of the water about 3 inches - I can slip over it without getting out of the canoe.  The next dam, which is not maintained anymore, is submerged.  I turn back at the tight bend below Johnsonville, the wade to get by the gravel bar not being worth the effort for the last 200 yards below the old Johnsoville Dam.  Johnsonville is the lowest of 13 yarn mills that were on the Moodus.  I'm glad to be coming back out as the greenhead flies are excited.  They are a biting fly, although not as voracious or numerous as the black flies that NE canoeists are familiar with (I've never seen black flies in Connecticut).

The wind has come up, so it is a bit of work getting back down the cove.  I stop briefly at the bay below Dibble Creek.  There is an old beaver dam here that can be crossed at high water - actually, you can cross it anytime, but the other side of it is much to shallow except at high water.  Anyway, it looks nothing like a dam today as it is fully vegetated and camouflaged with shrubs and saplings - that's how i know it to be an old dam. 

From there, I head out.  It was not just a cone trip, but a day out surrounded by landscape of significance.

A Day Like Ice Cream

It's been a busy and hot week - art opening, panel discussion, a closing reception, and then three 90F+ days in row.  Today, I hang some art and still have time for a short afternoon paddle.  The temperature has dropped overnight to the low 70's, and stayed there - a drop of 20F overnight.  It feels positively humane. On top of that, it is overcast with a 10mph east wind.

I put in about an hour after a very high tide peak.  Having been in the marsh quite often on recent trips, I cut across the river and head to the quad islands.  The current is already zippy.   

I head up between Carting and Peacock Islands.  The channel is 50 feet wide with the tide up.  At low tide, it is not passable.  I spot some Great Egrets, Yellow Crowned Night Herons, Red Wing Blackbirds and I hear a good number of Marsh Wrens back a few feet in the weeds.  

Out of the many times I've been here, my trips probably never coincided with this timing of the tide.  I just don't remember having such a stiff current.  I ferry over to Long Island, then Ferry from there to Pope's Flat. The current might be about 3mph, which is my distance cruising speed with this canoe. From the tip of Pope's, I head the rest of the way across the river.  I didn't expect it, but the current is slower over this stretch, which is also the main boat channel. 

I head up, side track to explore a channel, which turns out to be a backwater.  Then, I continue up and across to the Peck's Mill site, and return through the islands by the west channel around Peacock Island. 

Heron Yoga

I put in about 7am, the heat of the coming day making an early start advantageous.  One of Dante's circles of Hell is a calm, sunny, humid 95F canoe trip with mosquitoes.  It's not an inner circle, but it is there, for sure.

The tide is halfway in and I paddle against a current down to marsh.  It is calm and humid but still not much more than 80F.  Even so, a bubble of warmth envelopes me if I stop moving.

I head down Nell's Channel.  Quite a few Great Egrets on either side of the channel at the top of the marsh.  As I continue, I find Yellow Crowned Night Herons.  The Willets are laying low, but I hear their calls from time to time.

The tide is bringing in a trash stream of mostly aluminum cans.  It's only ten or twelve items, which I collect.  All of the cans have plant material inside - they weren't tossed in over the weekend.

I try the Nell's Island maze from the lower end.  On my last trip I passed through in the downriver direction, taking a circuitous side channel that exited at the side of the main lower entrance.  I did not notice on that last trip that there were at least three other channels.  I try a couple of them, but they dead end.  It's too warm to be messing about with this.  It's probably best to repeat the route and pay more attention... on a later day.

I head back up Nell's.  As I exit the marsh, I find a Yellow Crowned Night Heron doing yoga, or maybe just drying the underside of its wings.    

 

Questions

The fog has lifted, but it is still overcast and humid.  I put in at Pond Brook and head downriver, crossing to the far side until I get to the dam where I cross back over and return.  It is very quiet and very still. 

Tomorrow, I will be on a panel talk about forests.  I think about things to say.  I might not say them, but I will be prepared.

I keep going out (canoeing and hiking) because I have questions. But what really keeps me going is that I don't know what many of the questions are. 

Fog

It is foggy and fairly calm with an occasional light drizzle. I start out late in the day with the tide still rising for two more hours.

 It's hard to pass up a chance to paddle in the fog.  The visibility is something between a 1/4 mile and a 1/2 mile.  Finding my way in the marsh is not a problem. The beauty of the fog is that all of the various man-made structures and buildings disappear from view. 

I stay in the east half of the marsh, weaving through narrower channels that I haven't been in recently.  i can't paddle more than a hundred yards without seeing a Yellow-Crowned Night Heron.  Also in the area are a good number of Great Egrets and I flush a couple dozen Mallards, 

Housatonic Two

I put in at Indian Well and head up river.  This section of the Housatonic is a reservoir, held back by a 150 year old dam that lies about a mile and half downstream.  The old reservoir is narrow and just over 5 miles long. There is a steady flow of water that is good enough to keep the water fairly clean and free of the algae blooms that haunt the next stretch up from here.

A mile out, I am surprised by a Black Crowned Night Heron that watches me from the water's edge.  It flushes when I fumble with my camera, but it circles around seemingly waiting for me to leave the area.  I think it will return to the same spot when I am one or two hundred yards away.

I find the current at the Shelf to be easy.  The Shelf can be impossible to get past when the water is higher or when there is more water coming through the upstream dam. The Shelf is a bedrock ledge that runs all the way across the river.  At this water level, I am pretty sure one could wade the river.

I make it up to the minor rapids below the dam, and pass through it with reasonable ease.  Getting upstream is a matter of hopping several eddies while not grounding out on submerged rocks.  This rapids was reconfigured by last year's flash floods.  There was a ravine on river left that I did not know about - well, I knew there was a valley there, but not that it ever ran with water. The rush of water coming down the ravine blew out the road and dumped a large amount rocks and gravels in the river.

I paddle up as far as a landslide on river-right, also from last year's storm.  I turn and head back.  The wind has come up and while it doesn't slow me down too much, if I pause my paddling, I quickly come to a halt. I find the Black Crowned Heron exactly where I first saw it.  Again, my camera is not ready.

Mapping Marshes and the Maze

I head out on a rising mid-tide with about 3 hours til peak.  It is under 70F, calm, and overcast - all in all, a pleasant day for canoeing.

I head into the Nell's Island maze, after looking around to make sure that no one is watching - there are rewards for exploring, and I think that the maze counts as one.  My first trips in here were at high tide.  I had been convinced, because the island is a named feature on the maps, that Nell's Island was something like an "island".  It is in fact, no more of an island than any other part of the marsh and the reason for potting it at all was probably because the navigable channel of the Housatonic is on the islands west side. 

At high tide, I found a path of open water channels that would lead me from one end of the so-called island to the other.  More recently, I started entering the maze during a rising mid tide.  I got lost.  The wider and straighter channels that I had used at high tide turned out to be shallow and not passable at mid tide.  Instead of backing out, I tried the remaining narrow and very twisty channels, which turned out to be deeper and to link together into another route through the "island".  It was a lot of fun.

The oldest maps of the area (in a usable scale for canoeing) date to ca 1850.  That map is one of a series of town maps for New England. That map does show Nell's Island, but not the rest of the marsh.  While trying to figure out what the marsh might have looked like, I had to consider what the purpose of that map was.  It is quite accurate as far as roads and basic shorelines, and it has the houses and names of homeowners.  It does not show property boundaries and topographic information is limited to hachures - a cartographic shading method to show hills.  It seems that the main purpose of the map is to be an 1850 "telephone" book if you want - in 1850, if you wanted to talk to John Smith, you had to go find him.

The first government topographic maps are from about 1890.  These detailed maps were produced by old fashioned on-the-ground surveying, a laborious process performed without the benefit of  aerial views of any sort. Nell's Island appears on this first topo just as it appears in the 1850 town map...suspiciously so.  If you study most any of the 1890's topos enough, you will find errors where surveyors just didn't go.

The next topo map of the marsh is 1951.  Overlaying this map on the most modern maps shows very minor differences. The detail of the marsh is impressive. The 1951 map benefits from aerial surveys that were performed starting in the 1930's.  

Having seen this jump in map accuracy and detail, I reviewed other river/marsh areas that I am familiar with (Chipuxet, Lieutenant, Mattebasset, Salmon, and East Rivers). In all cases, I found that the rivers on the 1890's topo maps were plotted incorrectly when passing through marshes, but lined up closely on the post-WWII maps, which all had aerial photo data to draw on.  While rivers do shift channels, these changes didn't line up with standard river dynamics. The big change was the quality of the available data.  Another thing to consider - all of the rivers couldn't all shift their channels between 1890 and 1950, and then not change significantly over the next 75 years.

There is a good reason for the errors.  On the ground surveys require a landmark or an assistant who holds a survey pole at the point of interest.  The surveyor can then sight and/or triangulate on that point and collect map data.  With a river running through a marsh, it was, most likely, just too much work to send an assistant out into a marsh to accurately plot an area that could not be farmed, logged, or built on.  

The reason the plotted river/marsh courses changed wasn't because of natural processes, it was because aerial photography allowed for an efficient method of plotting channels in a difficult to survey area.

I spotted two  immature Yellow Crowned Night Herons - last year's fledglings, most likely.  Also, I saw a pair of Mute Swans with 4 cygnets, 3 of which were white.  A white cygnet is somewhat rare. Three in a brood must be very rare indeed.  The Willets were more perturbed with my presence than they have been this year.  That is their m.o. when nesting is going on. They flew around when I was near and made lots of noise so that everything in the marsh knew I was there.