The Illusion of Wilderness

Wilderness and wildness, I've written about the difference before but it is a topic that I revisit at regular frequency. Basically, wilderness is a place and wildness is a characteristic. Wilderness is always wild, but wildness occurs outside of wilderness. It has been a long time since I have been in wilderness, which is a term that we each must define on an individual basis... my idea of wilderness need not be your idea. There is no wilderness where I currently live, based on my definition. After all, with a compass I can walk a straight line and be out of the biggest local forest within 2 hours. Wilderness, in my mind, means being away from the man-made world such that not only am I self sufficient, but also insignificant with respect to my surroundings. This means no cell phone or other leashes to society...how can a place be wilderness if you can call in a helicopter rescue at the touch of a button? Many people will disagree with that somewhat harsh definition. Anyway, what I do is seek out wildness, something that a canoe makes surprisingly easy simply because water, swamps and effort cuts off a large number of the population. Add to that paddling on cloudy and rainy days or cold weather or when there is some ice on the water and the illusion of wilderness soon arrives. That is my wildness in this part of the country - the illusion of wilderness. 

I put in at Ely's Ferry. It is also, in case you were wondering, the high point of the 1814 British raid on Essex. Essex was a builder of medium and smaller ships and many of these were being used as privateers to raid and capture English flagged cargo ships during the War of 1812. A privateer is basically a government licensed pirate. The British had blockaded the main power of the US Navy in the Thames River, which is about 25 miles east of here. They sent a daring boat raid of 130+ men up the river and burned about 2 dozen ships at Essex. They shouldn't have escaped, but due to several military blunders, they returned to their ships in Long Island Sound with only the loss of two men.  By the way, the Ely house is at the mouth of Hamburg Cove and an Ely was one of the American officers that came to the defense of Essex.  Unfortunately, I don't know what the relationships are.

It took me two minutes to notice that Heron

From the old ferry landing, I headed up to the end of Hamburg Cove. The day was dark with a thick overcast, the Mai Tai Navy was restricted to shore and I had a quiet and pleasant paddle. In fact, the only noise was from a work boat preparing mooring buoys for the Mai Tai Navy. In a month, Hamburg Cove will be a large parking lot for the Mai Tai Navy (the Mai Tai sailors "park" their boats, they don't moor them). I mused about how if anyone ever wanted to go to war against the Mai Tai Navy, a cloudy day would be optimal as the entire fleet would be unmanned without any steam in their boilers, such as they are today. Early Monday would also be effective, hitting the Mai Tai sailors while they were still recovering from overdoing it with grog on the weekend. Returning to the river, I cut across the river and follow he shore down to Essex, then cut back across at Knott Island and return along the shore.