Canoelinary

No small part of the motivation for heading out into the marsh on this first cold day of the coming winter was to have a cup of coffee. Food and drink of the right sort and in the right place can record the moment as a permanent record in the mind, where so many other experiences fade with time. Hot blueberry soup will always take me to a ski trail on a pass in the Cascades. Potato cakes take me to a Safeway grocery in Jackson Hole, the only hot food left in the deli, which we got to just before closing after a 20 hour descent and hike out from Mt. Owen. Coffee though, is too much a daily taste to transport me all by itself. But coffee in the winter marsh, that is a different story.  Sitting quiet in my canoe in the winter marsh, with its damp chill and standing dormant reeds and grasses, with a cup of hot coffee in my hands, takes me back to my first hunting trips with my Dad. I can't remember exactly where we were, but it was one of a thousand cold pothole marshes in Minnesota. I might have been carrying a BB gun or a borrowed four-ten shotgun. But, I'm sure I was standing, surrounded by cattails, in hip boots in thigh deep water and freezing my ass off, when Dad poured a cup of flaming hot coffee from his thermos. It was the worst coffee in the world, probably Hills Bros. or Olson's or some such midwestern burnt sawdust brew that had been poured into the thermos while boiling. At that moment and at that place, it was nothing short of a magic potion. I burned my tongue... I didn't care, and I didn't forget.

I put in a short hour after high tide. The current was pushing downstream past the launch at a good 4 mph clip. When I got to the marsh, I headed the half mile up Beaver Creek. I spotted a couple Black Ducks, a couple Hooded Mergansers and a few Mallards. It wasn't much for this time of year, but as I headed back I sound that I had been followed. Coming in right behind me had been about 3 dozen birds, mostly Black Ducks. 

I headed down and circled the marsh. The tide was falling quite fast and I needed to stay out of the interior and in deeper water. I spotted one hunter before getting to Nell's channel, and two small oyster boats in the channel. At the Post Road bridge I spotted a Common Loon, which dove and stayed disappeared long enough for me to give up and continue paddling.