Salmon River in the Raw

It is a less than inspiring day for canoeing. Of course, it is December, but it always takes a few days to get used to the cold. It certainly sounded like a better idea while at home than it is as I am putting the canoe down in the water. It is overcast, and below 40F with a 10mph wind coming down the cove.

I head up Salmon Cove against a headwind - it seems like work. But, just 200 yards out, I spot a new beaver lodge on river-right. It is small and, at this point, rather poorly built, looking more like a bank burrow than a lodge. It is too low to the water to be a bank burrow. What made it stand out is the large cache of winter food stashed in the river bottom.  Then, I spot a pair of mature Bald Eagles sharing a tall snag up ahead at the point, and I flush a Great Blue Heron. Not a bad 1/4 mile of paddling.

Cache of winter food

 The Eagles move off as I near. One crosses the river, the other flies up the cove to who knows where. I spot two more Great Blue Herons and a flock of two dozen Mallards. None of this is out of the ordinary, until I turn the point. I spot three Mute Swans. And, that, is out of the ordinary. At this time of year, there should be 80 - 100 Swans in the cove. This is a favorite wintering site, a 1/2 square mile of water with a depth of one to two feet in most places, it is good winter feeding for the Swans. I can only guess that the July floods are the cause of this. There is normally a good crop of wild rice in the cove and farther up the river, but those plants were just sprouting when the floods happened. So, instead of two feet or less of water, the plants were twelve or fifteen feet deep. None of the rice sprouted. I don't know how much Swans depend on the rice (loose grains do sink to the bottom), but there were surely other plants that they do eat in winter that suffered the same results.

Moodus dam

I turn up the Moodus as soon as I can, just to get out of the wind. It is rather pleasant in the calm air. I paddle up as far as a well maintained beaver lodge just below the log jam, which is finally deteriorating so that a canoe can squeeze past. But, four tries at getting past the dam via an open chute fail, and what's above isn't worth getting out of the canoe, so I turn back.

 

The duplex lodge. You can see the pool behind the dam.

 

I explore a bit near the top of the cove, and then head back following the river-right bank. This will take me past the cedat swamp lodges, a couple of impressively large beaver lodges, all of which survived the July floods. Both are in good solid shape. The upper lodge is actually a duplex, a pair of connected lodges. The most interesting thing about these lodges are the associated dams. These dams do not cross the usual flowing water, such as a creek or brook. Rather, they hold tidal water in the swamp around the lodges, this part of the river having a tide variation of about three feet. Twice a day, the pools get topped up. Anytime in a tidal marsh will show you how marshes fill and drain like big sponges - all the water goes in or out, by the shortest least path of resistance - the current isn't upriver/downriver, but instead it is in/out. Here, the beaver just built dams where they saw the water draining out, and they ended up building big pools. Today, those dams are holding back more than two feet of water.

This lodge is more than 6 feet tall. The weedy berm is the dam.