The Edges

I put in at Ely's Ferry and headed upstream along what might be, inch for inch, the best bit of paddling on the lower Connecticut River.  The deep forested hillside seems to always provide shade and cool drifts down from the damp forest floor while the shoreline alternates between bedrock slabs and gravel beaches.  I have seven Bald Eagle sightings in the short stretch.  It is probably five individual birds - 2 mature, 2 yearlings and one small recent fledgling. At the point where I turn to enter Hamburg Cove I add three Kingfishers and a Great Blue Heron.

 I decide to follow the shoreline, keeping it close on my right and weaving in and out of the shallow coves.  I always tell people that all the good stuff happens at the edges, no matter what the subject.

I spot two Osprey in the cove and several more Kingfishers.

I turn up Falls Brook.  Two low bridges seal the upstream marsh off from anything large enough to carry a motor, not that they would last long in the shallows anyway.  I've been in here before but turned back where the pond becomes brook.  I imagine that trip must have been near low tide because today the brook is deep enough to paddle.  I continue on for a a few hundred yards before turning back knowing that I am on the wrong side of a falling tide.  I will return here as it seems to go quite a bit further.

Falls Brook

A whole herd of plein air artists are painting from the dock of the Hamburg boatyard.  Good day for it.

I take a brief rest in the bottom of Eight Mile River before turning and following the other shore out.  Just before the last meander short of the mouth of the cove I spot a red fox ambling along the shore.  Well deserving of its folklore traits, it is cocky and self assured, but not because it is the biggest bad ass in town.  No, the look of a fox is one that says, "I am smarter than you."  Maybe.

Red Fox in center

I spot a white tail deer grazing near the deepest point of that meander.

The final half mile back gives me three more Bald Eagle sightings.