Last Trip of the Year

The river is higher than expected. After a full night of rain, I checked the river gauge height and it looked about normal. The trick is that the gauge I use as a reference is actually upstream a few miles on the Connecticut River, and that big river usually determines the behavior of the mush smaller Mattabesset. From the look of things, a fair amount of rain must be draining into the Mattabesset. As said, the water is high, but it is also murky with silt - it is normally clear in winter, and there is a moderately strong current.

I put in and head downstream. It is 55F, and partly sunny, with light wind. There is still some ice in the backwaters and attached to the river bank. Some of it is about a 1/2 inch thick, and although it is rotting fast, that thick stuff is too tough to push through, unless you have to.

I'm not particularly motivated to cover any distance. In fact, I waited for the weather to settle, and was to restless to stay home, and would have gone hiking, but figured that if I was going to drive somewhere to hike, I might as well take my canoe. I'll head down to the top of the big marsh and check on the the beaver lodges in that stretch.

 

The first lodge is rather ramshackle, but it always has been a bit of a mess. It is a bank burrow and I imagine that the high water must be lapping at the bottom of the living space. The reason that I think it is still in use appears just a few yards on.  I start spotting rather fresh scent mounds. Over the quarter mile between this lodge and the Point Lodge, there are at least a dozen scent mounds.  I test one, but last nights rain has washed any scent away. Scent mounds are a territorial mark, beaver being quite territorial. Besides the mounds, there are quite a few fresh tree gnaws and cut-downs. The Point Lodge is in fine shape. There is cut brush sticking out of the water in front of the lodge. This is not winter food, but part of a brush tunnel that the colony built during the summer drought to protect the river bank entry tunnels. The final lodge is near where the Tepee Lodge once was. It is a bank burrow somewhat on its way to becoming a conical lodge and it has recent cuttings added to the exterior. I flush a dozen Hooded Mergansers from near this last lodge.

With the high water, I decide to head back and continue upstream past my start point. In the last 15 minutes, a few of the long sheets of ice that were against the shore have floated free and pivoted. I find three sheets spanning the river from bank to bank. Fortunately each is not much wider than a canoe length and I bust through with a little extra effort. It is one of the winter paddling considerations - be sure that floating ice won't block your exit.

Above the start point, the current is even stronger. It seems to be about a 2:1 current (twice as long to go up as to go down). It is a perfectly do-able current, but it does make the upstream paddle a minor grind. I get up to just below the old trestle, and it has taken noticeably longer than usual to get here. I turn and begin speeding back.  While daydreaming, a big splash at the bank. I pull up and wait, and as I expect, a beaver surfaces near the far bank swimming upstream. As I continue, I notice just a few yards away, a fresh scent mound. There must be a bank burrow in the hillside somewhere near.

Maps

 I wait for the morning drizzle to subside before heading over to the Wheeler Marsh for a short trip. By the time I put in, the tide is near maximum ebb current. This makes for a pretty speedy trip downriver to the marsh, but it also means that I will have little time to poke around when I am there.  It is in the upper 40's, with no wind, and an overcast sky. While there is some low surface fog at the put-in, this disappears within a couple hundred yards.

As I reach the top of the marsh, a pair of Harriers lift off from the spartina. One briefly flies towards me, but then wheels around and heads out low over the marsh.

A lot of my recent thinking about the marsh pertains to maps. I have been collecting old bottles from the banks as they become exposed in order to come up with an estimate for the rate of soil accumulation in the marsh (currently, 1 foot takes about 50 years). My samples come mostly from the area near Nell's Island and in the channel at the very top of the marsh. A large part of the remainder of the marsh is more of a mud flat where there are almost no cut banks to extract a bottle from.  

Information about the marsh tends to be anecdotal prior to 1900. So far, I've read that there was a shoal running across the main channel from Nell's Island to Stratford with a depth of about 3 feet. This was (also anecdotally), blown/dredged out sometime around 1850. Supposedly, the marsh was more of a bay prior to the dredging with the river passing around either side of Nell's Island. I have located a couple maps from the 1830's and 1840's. One of them clearly shows Nell's Island and neither of them shows any marsh. However, one has to think about who made the map and what was the map's purpose. Prior to about 1940 or so, marshland was viewed as wasteland. If one couldn't build on it, farm on it, mine it, or flood it, it was useless. 

So, an 1840 map drawn for the purpose of land use is an unreliable scientific document, except that we can assume that Nell's Island had a bit more height to it than the rest of the marsh, which is still true. One possibility of this open bay idea is that the person who wrote about the 19th century marsh was looking at one of those old maps. The first detailed scientific based maps of the marsh are USGS topographic maps from about 1900, and they show the marsh, more or less, as it currently is.  Well, it seems there is an art project here for me to work on.

1926 map of the marsh

I head down Nell's Channel, and as I near Milford Point, about 75 Canada Geese fly by to the east of me. With the tide dropping, I have to keep moving so as not to get stuck in the mud flat.  Coming across the bottom of the marsh, I eventually total about 300 Canada Geese, most of which were floating up near Milford Point. There is a good current to work against all the way around to Cat Island. The marsh is really draining fast.

I find the two Harriers once again as I leave the top of the marsh on my way back upriver.

Harrier - the white butt patch is a good ID marking

Local Water

I put in under the high bridge.  There are quite a few cars in the lot - no doubt fishermen or hunters. It is sunny and just under 30F. The tide is falling and I cross the river, eddy hopping the bridge abutments in a 3mph current. 

I flush a Great Blue Heron, a Harrier, and several Mallards as I approach the far bank. Then I head upriver through the four islands, taking the narrow channel between Carting and Peacock islands. The islands are a no hunting zone and it shows. I flush more than 50 ducks - Blacks or Mallards, as I go.  It's far more than I would see in the larger Wheeler Marsh after one or two shotgun blasts.  The birds I flush circle upriver and head off to the side to more secluded ponds and marsh areas. 

Leaving the islands, I follow the west shore noting the sedimentary bedrock that has been tipped a full 90 degrees. In mid-river even with the where Peck's Mill was, there is a flock of twenty Buffleheads.  I often spot a few Buffleheads in this open section of the river.  It's just open water, so other than having long sight lines, I have no idea why they would prefer this spot.

I paddle up to the bottom of the Dragonfly factory, cross the river, and return riding the end of the ebb current.

Canoe Boxing Day

It is sunny and calm with a temperature that will rise from 25F to about 35F during the day. 

I put in on the Lieutenant River, a small last minute tributary to the Connecticut River. I turn upriver, pass under a two-lane bridge and take a deep breath.  I have been stuck inside with bad cold for the last week and I am looking forward to being outside for something other than a short walk about town. Turning the first bend, I spot twenty Hooded Mergansers. I usually spot these birds in three's - a male with two females. I add a Great Blue Heron, a flock of Common Mergansers that pass overhead, and some Black Ducks and Mallards.  There is a shelf of ice attached to the bank. It is pretty firm stuff, about a 1/2 inch thick at most. 

Some of it is dusted with snow from the other night. Out in front of the Florence Griswald Museum, the ice spans the river, but there is a lane of airy weak ice that probably formed last night. It is obvious, being dark in color, and the canoe cuts through it easily.  I get about another 200 yards, not reaching the Boulder Swamp, where the river is frozen over, most of it dusted with snow. 

I head back down, passing my start point and continuing into the back channels of the Connecticut. I flush a few small groups of Black/Mallards every so often, and another Great Blue Heron. I continue down to the Back River, which is actually just a channel that connects the main river with the smaller back channels. 

I don't usually paddle the Back, because it is just a wide straight channel and rarely has any interesting wildlife. But, it makes for a different return route, and the main river won't be the wake bounce fest that it is during summer when the motorboat drivers are out.  As it happens, I spot a raccoon working the shoreline, and then a small duck the dives with little disturbance. It reminds me of a Pied Billed Grebe, and I finally get a decent photo to ID the bird.  It is a female Ruddy Duck. Some of the unidentified ducks I spotted earlier might have been Ruddys. I don't see them that often.

Female Ruddy Duck

I head back up the big river, dodging sheets of fresh water ice that have been coming downriver. A lot of it is pretty well formed - clear and hard and a 1/2 inch or more thick, and anything bigger than the top of a coffee table is best avoided. 

One more Great Blue Heron as I near my start point.

Season of the Spirit Birds

It is calm and the water is near glassy smooth with a blue sky overhead, the sun burning through a barely visible haze of high up ice crystals.

The yachtsmen have parked their party barges for the long winter sleep, and the river has returned to something that was originally intended. Nothing would be more gauche for the  CEO, COO, CFO or some other C than to entertain their network on a boat when you needed to wear a jacket. It would brand that yachtperson as, "not one of team" to put the network through such horrors.

I put in where Ely's Ferry once was. About two miles up is where the Brockway Ferry once was, and about two miles down is where the Old Saybrook - Lye Ferry once was.  About two miles above Brockway is where the Chester - Haddam Ferry still is, and about two miles above that is the spectacular antique Haddam swing bridge.

The old Brockway Ferry Landing

I paddle up the east shore. There is an Eagle perched in the top of a tree on Brockway Island, but it is too far off to see if it is mature or juvenile. In the quiet, I hear Canada Geese. They are difficult to see being on the far side of the river. Sounds of all sort are traveling unimpeded in the calm.

Winter is the season of spirit birds. They are more visible with the leaves down and with the strong contrast caused by the low sun. A quarter mile ahead is a Great Blue Heron, or a Pileated Woodpecker, or a Hawk, perched in a tree. I paddle closer, glancing up to not loose it among the other trees. And then it is gone, not by wing, but just gone, transformed into a bent shaggy branch. 

The Selden Channel

I paddle up the Selden Channel. With the marsh plants still standing, it is quite beautiful. I spot a Sharpshin Hawk. Then, I see an Eastern Bluebird, which was very much unexpected. It is such a contrast to the earth tones of a winter marsh, but then I realize that in nature, bright blue and bright red and orange and pinks and most any color one can think of, are earth tones.

Sharpshin Hawk

I round the island and although the river side is less scenic, at least it is a different "scenic".  The Haddam Ferry is still at its landing although I don't know if it is still in operation. I pass four Swans. A minute later, I here the flapping of eight swan feet on the water's surface. Unexpectedly, they pass me and continue down river. I watch them until they disappear around a bend.  It will take me more than 20 minutes of paddling to get that far.

Otter

Just above the entrance to Hamburg Cove, I spot a swimmer some 50 or 60 yards ahead. By movement, it's definitely not a beaver, and in a second or two, I rule out a muskrat. Its curiosity brings it closer - its an otter. It gives me the once over, eyeballing me from behind a boulder in the river, then diving and coming up behind me. Then, both of us satisfied, we go our separate ways.

Before the Rain

I put in just before low tide on the Connecticut River at Ely's Ferry. It is starting to cloud over and the weather service predicts rain to start in 3 hours.  A little rain won't be much of a problem as the temperature will be in the low 50's, and the winds will be light.  

I turn upstream and follow the forested shoreline, just far enough out that I have depth for my paddle. A hundred yards into it, a male Wood Duck flushes from the top edge of the bedrock apron that forms the river bank. Then, a few hundred yards ahead, I spot an Eagle taking off with something in its talons. It lands on a root ball, and then I notice a second Eagle, and then a third. A few more canoe lengths, and there is a fourth. They might all be immature Bald Eagles, but as I get closer I begin to doubt my judgement. The whistling is chirpier and raspier than I expect. We do get Golden Eagles migrating through, but I've only seen one, so my ability to identify a Golden Eagle is pretty weak. Unfortunately, once again, I forgot my binoculars. I get one okay photo and a bunch of blurry ones.  If anyone is going to bet money on the ID, I'd recommend that you go with immature Bald Eagles, just because it is far more likely.

I round the point and head up into Hamburg Cove. In a normal winter, the cove will freeze over, and that is one of the reasons to come here as it might be the last visit for the season. All the yachts are gone, and with no one to be seen, it is just myself and several small flocks of Ducks and Canada Geese. The Ducks are flushing from long distance, so aside from the obvious Common Mergansers, some of them I cannot ID.

I get up to the bottom of Eight Mile River, but without some tide, getting any further would be a portage. With a high tide, one can get about a 1/2 mile up before the river becomes more of a hike than a canoe trip. There is some freshwater ice in the nooks and corners where it stays shady and the wind doesn't reach. 

On the way back out I watch some of the Ducks in the small side cove near the entrance. Again, it is mostly Common Mergansers, but I spot three Hooded Mergansers in the mix, and a Hawk perched nearby in a tree. I let them have the cove and continue back.

I head down the river as far as Nott's Island, spotting two mature Bald Eagles along the way. I turn at the top of the island, and right on time, it begins to sprinkle.

Mystery Log

Last night, we got our first dusting of snow, just enough and dry enough that a broom cleared the walkway. If I needed an excuse to go canoeing, and I don't, the first snowfall would work.

I put in at the highway bridge.  It is about freezing with a light wind coming up the river, and a mostly sunny sky. But, the weather is going to shift this afternoon as a front comes through. Gusts and clouds are predicted, with another dusting of snow overnight.

The tide has been coming in for about 2 hours, so I follow the east shore closely and take advantage of the eddies as I make my way downriver against the current.

With the low water, the spartina is standing tall and golden, and reaching above my head. I explore a few openings that I don't remember entering. There is some tidal ice still on the banks in areas where there is no wind or current.  The plan is set and I end up wandering and weaving through the marsh in a generally downriver direction until reaching Milford Point. Then I turn and wander back with a lean to the west, eventually forcing my way out into Nell's Channel. The main opening to the interior of Nell's Island is right in front of me, so I go there. 

I make my way down the center of the island, which is pretty obvious if one has been here a few times. Then, unlike my last trip in here, I begin making wrong turns. Meanwhile, it has clouded over and the wind has come up. The day is turning raw. I start heading back out, needing to at least find a place that I recognize. I find the mid-island exit, which leads west into the main river channel. But, there is a mystery log blocking it. Mystery logs show up near Duck hunting season (this is my second one). I suspect that the mystery logs are the work of a Duck hunter of the fuckturd persuasion who is trying to keep other hunters from crowding the space that he thinks is his. This mystery log is clearly a man made operation as there is a well trodden path around the end of it. This pisses me off as I have to backtrack for about 20 minutes against the current and the wind to get off the island.  There are always unintended consequences when one messes with nature.

I get back to Nell's Channel and head upriver with the current and wind at my back. A quarter mile up, there is a well behaved flock of Black Ducks and Mallards dead-nuts center in the channel. It's as if they are decoys, which they are.  It is a main channel and kind of a goofy place to hunt. I paddle through and I am pretty sure that the hunter didn't notice me.

Sometimes is Good Enough

I set out on slack high tide water. It is about 40F, almost calm, and the sky is clear. The spartina in the marsh has gone golden, and still stands tall. It is beautiful. I spot three Common Loons in the river just below the draw bridge. Common Loons winter in this area and are often seen near the mouths of rivers.

I head into the Nell's Island maze. The island is one of the older features of the marsh, existing before people began dredging and mucking about with the way things were. I've never seen anyone else in the island, with "in" being the correct word as one could only be "on" the island at a low tide. I have figured out four ways to get in or out of the island and still give myself a full hour to find my way out. Aside from a few patches of phragmites, which mark high ground, the island is all cord grass. There are several ponds and dozens of deadend channels and nothing that could really be called a landmark. 

This is my fourth time in the maze, and while I am still guessing at some of the turns, my guesses are somewhat educated, and I am surprised that I get from the top of the island to the bottom without making a wrong turn. I imagine someone asking me about using GPS, and the conversation goes, "Navigating with GPS is for people who don't know where they are and don't care." At this point, I've been outdoors enough that I care where I stand, and if I don't know exactly where I am, I will figure it out by looking at my surroundings. And, that is a bigger idea than the Nell's Island maze.

Norther Harrier

I flush two Great Blue Herons from the maze. I expected to see more birds, but this is hunting season. Two hunting boats heading out passed me as I headed into the marsh. It's only a square mile and surrounded by houses, so a coupe of shotgun blasts and everything has moved to the outer edges where there is no hunting. 

Cutting across the marsh, I see a few Black Ducks, just a couple or a few at a time. I spot a soaring bird and without anything to scale it, I manage to get a telephoto shot of it. The photo shows it to be a Harrier, its white butt patch and owl face clear enough.  I push through the grasses to get to the Central Phragmite Patch, and from there, I follow more open water out and back to where I came from.

A Chill in the Air

I put in at the Coginchaug site, mostly because it got me off of the highway sooner as all of the holiday travels seemed to be bound and determined to crash into each other, and a few of them have succeeded. My start from home was delayed due to a medium sized Hawk that was trying to flush a squirrel from an evergreen in our back yard. The cats found this especially entertaining, and I did not want to interfere.

The tide is coming in and with that and the recent heavy rain, the river is running at about a normal level. It is under 40F, mostly sunny and with a light cool wind. I came here because the weather prediction is for a gusty afternoon, and the Mattebasset is fairly protected from wind.

I head down the Cog- and turn up the Matt-.  I am immediately pleased that I decided to canoe today. It is a beautiful day with spectacular light. 
There is a Red Throated Loon in the open marsh. For me, this is a come Spring sighting as they take a break while heading south. This might be the first time that I've seen one in the Fall.

A report on the beaver colonies -
The Big Lodge is clearly abandoned and collapsing.
The bank burrow near the ruins of the Tepee Lodge is in use. 
Point Lodge is the star of the show. It is well maintained with lots of sign all around it. There are several trees partially cut, and a few more that have been felled.
Heading up from there, the last tree gnaw is about a 100 yards away. Then there is a gap of no sign for the next hundred yards, at which point there are numerous scent mounds - about 75 feet apart - maybe 8 or 10 total. The left bank, where the mounds are, is actually a berm between the river and a large open marsh. I suspect that there is a lodge back in that marsh, and these are the colony's territorial mounds.
The bank burrow at the next bend is in use with a few signs nearby.

I continue up another mile past the upper put-in, getting to the sandbar section. I turn back wanting some time to look up the Cognichaug. Spot 2 kayakers on the way down, and Outrigger Guy passes me while I make notes.

I get up to the powerlines on the Cognichaug, passing two new lodges, which although modest, look like they are in use. With that, I head back out.

Salt Hay and Mosquito Trenches

I set out on the East River from Foote Bridge. The sun is coming through a high haze of clouds, but it is definitely sunny. The temperature is about 40F and heading to 50F, and there is a moderate wind, supposedly out of the west. The tide has been falling for the last hour and a half and within the first mile, I will start to pick up the ebb current.  I flush six Mallards and six Black Ducks from Pocketknife Corner and fifteen migratory Canada Geese from the Gravel Flats. Just below the Flats, I spot a large bird flying up the river. It's a mature Bald Eagle and before it gets to me it turns away heading out over the East Woods.

Pocketknife Corner

The other day I went down a rabbit hole of aerial photographs of Connecticut, looking over the places that I have canoed to see how the land has been altered. The most interesting photos were the first series, black and whites from 1934. The photo of the East River Marsh was particularly catching. It shows that the marsh was trenched about a much as it could possibly be, sometime before 1934.

The East River to the left, Neck River at the bottom, with Bailey Creek
branching off between the two rivers.

I knew that the marsh had been trenched, but not to that extent. Curious about when this happened, I found a 1912 report from the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station on controlling the mosquito plague along the coast. Mosquitos were a big problem at that time and the majority of them hatched in the extensive salt marshes along the coast. (This is particularly interesting because I will paddle all summer long in the area without being bothered by mosquitos one bit). The East Marsh is a high salt marsh - it floods only a couple times each month, with the surface growth being mostly spartina patens - also know as, salt hay, a grass that stands about 8 inches tall. High salt marshes feature numerous shallow ponds, which provide habitat to crustaceans, food for birds, and nurseries for mosquitos. The trenches were, of course, for draining the surface of the marsh. The report also points out that by 1904, half of the states salt marshes had been drained for the purpose of farming spartina for packing, bedding and mulching material, at $7 to $12 per ton, in 1912 pricing. Draining the marsh increased the yield by removing the shallow ponds and by causing the ground to be firmer and easier to move machinery on.  In fact, the Neck River still has remains of corduroy road protruding from the bank, which enabled the farmers to get their hay to the river and loaded on boats. In the above photograph, the corduroy road is on the Neck River where it turns sharply up the image and goes a short way up Bailey Creek to where there is the ruins of a tide gate/bridge. The corduroy road is currently about 3 feet below the surface. In some places, the trenches cut through the corduroy road.  I haven't been able to find out when the trenches were dug, other than before 1934. It is likely that some trenches were originally dug for farming, and other for mosquito control. The mosquito trenches are deeper (24-30 inches) and longer lasting than the farming trenches. Some of the trenches in the photo are, at this time, easy to spot, while others have filled in enough to no longer be obvious.

In the Sneak

It takes an hour to get to the main salt marsh below the railroad bridge. There is still enough water to paddle the Sneak, which starts as a man-made trench and joins a natural tightly meandering channel, into Bailey Creek. But the water is still too high to spot the corduroy road. I follow the creek down to the Neck River, tehn over to the East River, and head back. The wind evens out the remaining ebb current that I have to paddle against.

 

Very Low Water

I set out from the bottom of Salmon Cove, which is one of my frequent trips. The plan is to check on the beaver lodges and the dam below the mouth of Dibble Creek.

Last night, the temperatures finally dipped to below freezing, but just barely. The only ice I will see today is in the bird bath in our back yard. It is sunny, about 40F by the time I get started, and there is a steady 10mph wind. That wind was supposed to be out of the west, but here it is coming straight down Salmon Cove - more of a north wind. 

New Lodge

150 yards out, I find a new beaver lodge. It has lots of fresh trimmed branches on the pile, and the extended entrance "hallway" that I've been seeing during the drought.   I add an unidentified medium sized Hawk and two mature Bald Eagles to that first 150 yards. The Eagles are perched on Haddam Neck with about a hundred yards between them. The second lodge on this side (river-left) looks abandoned. There are no fresh branches and the mound looks like it is collapsing in spots. Abandoned beaver lodges don't usually last too long.  After a year or so, if one didn't know it had been there, you wouldn't notice.

Bald Eagle pooping

At the top of the cove, I decide to do the side trip into the Moodus before heading upriver. But, I turn back while still in the mouth. Already I am in just 6 inches of water and I figure the tide has just about that much to drop before rising again. The idea of wallowing out of the Moodus some knee deep in mud does not appeal.

I cut across the top of the cove, picking up the deep channel and heading upstream. The low water from the drought and low tide makes this the lowest water level that I have ever seen on the Salmon, by a long shot.  I pull up at the mouth of Pine Brook. The shallows that are above the islands in this area are close to a foot out of the water. I know that I will come to a series of bars not too much farther on. It is time to call it a day and head out. This will be a high tide paddle until we get more rain.

Rock Pile on the outside of the bend

With the tide down, I am forced over to the far left side of the cove. The bottom of the shallow center of the cove is right at water level as far down as Dibble Creek. There, the deep channel swings over to the creek, but the mouth of the little bay where the creek enters is a foot above the water level. But, the low water has exposed a man-made rock pile. It is a fairly neat construction of cobbles and boulders, maybe a canoe length in diameter. I'd guess that it was built to hold a beacon. There is a similar structure just across the cove. I 'm not even able to check on the two huge lodges in Haddam Neck as I cannot get close enough to pick them out of the brush. Well, at least the Eagles are still here.

The Usual Route

I put in at the old stage ford, just a few feet above the old one lane bridge, and about four and ahalf miles from the sea. I paddled under the bridge and pulled up to shore, walked the 50 yards to my car and retrieved my saw. The deadfall arch just below the bridge has a new deadfall spanning the gap at the perfect height, about 3/4 of a canoe height above the water. It takes about 30 seconds to cut and drop it into the water so that I can glide over.

It is a sunny and calm day with the temperature almost to 60F. The tide has been coming in for about Two hours, but it is still quite shallow. More than anything, it is very quiet.


Reaching the Gravel Flats, I spot three white tail deer exiting on the right bank. I'm guessing that they probably waded the river. One of them gives me one last look from the top of the bank before casually leaping out of view.

By the time I get to Clapboard Hill Bridge, I have flushed about 30 Black Ducks. Just below that bridge I catch a glimpse of a large flying bird. My guess is an immature Bald Eagle, but it could be a Great Blue Heron - I just didn't get to see enough of its flight.

There is enough to get through the Sneak, so I can paddle my usual route down Bailey Creek and returning on the East River. I spot a Harrier working over the salt marsh between the two waterways.

A small shoreboard at the lowest Big Bend catches my eye. It's a Killdeer bathing with its mate about 10 feet away.

The low angled light at my back is making the trip back somewhat spectacular. At the top of the Gravel Flats I meet a guy in a canoe (as opposed to a canoeist). He's paddling solo from the rear seat, so the bow is pointed at the sky. This makes a canoe slow and tippy, but it all goes with the lack of a life jacket and general cluelessness about cold water paddling. I've never gotten anything but the stink-eye when talking to strangers about basic canoe safety, so I let it go. 

A Rare Naugatuck Trip

 

After a week of showing and driving artwork around, I finally have time to put the canoe in the water. I put in from O' Sullivan's Island, which lies at the confluence of the Naugatuck and Housatonic Rivers. The tide is unusually high, and while it is an hour past down where I paddle more often, this far up the river, with the lag of some 10 miles, the river height is probably peaking. In fact, O' Sullivan's is just barely awash in many places that would normally be a foot and a half above the water at high tide.

Witness the new glow in the dark drysuit.

It is 40F and the water is in the upper 50's. Today marks the first day of winter paddling - it is the first day for me to put on my drysuit, which is brand new after trading in my old suit after 11years and some 400-500 days of use.  In Connecticut, I can paddle most of the winter and I am in a drysuit from November until sometime in April.

The brush pile hides a beaver bank burrow

I head up the Naugatuck. I've only gone up the Naugatuck a coupe times before. The right side of the river is a 30 ft tall boulder levy that was built after a huge 1955 flood. It isn't much to look at. About a mile up, the river has a short section of shallow fast water that stopped me in the past, and with the ugly levy, working around it wasn't worth the effort. Today, the tide has flooded the fast water out, and the upstream paddle is easy. Just short of 2 miles up, the river goes shallow. I spot some beaver gnawings, but no place that would work for a lodge or bank burrow. Then, I cross over to the far side looking for a deep channel, but there isn't one. At any normal high tide, this would be a gravel bar with the river trickling through. There is about 300 yards of this before reaching a bank to bank ledge, some 2 feet high. But, there is a bank burrow on a small island just below the ledge. There is at least another mile of river above the ledge until reaching a dam, but without doing some reconnaissance, I can't justify the portage. Also, in a half hour, I would have to portage the 300 yards of gravel. Time to retreat. 

I get back to my put-in and continue up the Housatonic. I spot a few Great Blue Herons and my first Bufflehead of the season. I go up as far as the island below the Shelton Dam, and return via the other side of the river.

 

Observations

I start out from the put-in off of Route 3, the paving job that was being done in the lot having been completed, finally. The water is the lowest that I have ever seen, even considering that the tide is out. It has been a long time since we've had a good rainy spell, and all of the rivers show it, but especially the smaller ones like the Mattabesset.  

I suppose that most people might avoid this spot with the low water. But, I know that I will get to observe riverbanks that are seldom exposed as well as getting a good look at the bottom of the river in places that are usually too deep for a view.

I wanted to make another check on the beaver colonies in this river. Last years three floods encouraged some of the colonies to move out. The first lodge, coming downriver, is before the bend above the goat farm. At first look, it doesn't look used, but then I spot a fresh stripped branch in the pile that covers the entry tunnel. Below the bend, I spot a couple scent mounds and a couple of recently gnawed trees. 

As I continue, I note several old entrance tunnels in the bank, the lodges long gone. 

The Point Lodge is occupied. While the lodge doesn't show a lot of recent work, there is a fresh brush pile over the entrance tunnel and a couple of recently gnawed trees nearby.

Across from the Tepee Lodge site, the exposed bottom is covered with quite a few bricks. I've never seen the water low enough to expose the bricks. Bricks often have dates or a manufacturer's name, so I pick one up. It is not a clay brick, but a shaped stone cobble. While there is an old quarry a couple miles away, I have no idea as to why these were be deposited here, or how they got here.

The bank burrow below the former Tepee Lodge is more obvious. With the low water, the beaver have built brush piles that cover the exposed entry tunnel. In this case, the pile extends 8 or 10 feet out from the normal bank. There is a good deal of fresh green branches on the pile, which shows that the lodge is in use. 

I head up into the Cognichaug. The Big Lodge looks abandoned and as if it is slowly collapsing. The last flood topped this lodge by at least 5 feet, and the lodge itself was about 6 feet tall. There is no sign of activity, no peels, no gnaws or new cuts anywhere nearby.

I have some wind to work against on the way back, but that is one of the reasons I came here today. This river is well sheltered from the wind in most places.

Nells Island Maze

M was long overdue for a trip, and by the time she arrived, the unexpected early morning wind had died down. We went to put in at the Refuge launch, but there was an sketchy idiot with a stalled truck...wait for it...parked at the water's edge of the rather steep and rutted dirt launch. He needed a battery jump, which I could not help with, and given the whole picture, I decided to put in upriver rather than run the risk of returning to find my car without a battery.  

The day was most excellent with clear skies, a very little wind, and temperature in the mid 50's. We headed downstream from beneath the high bridge on the last hour or so of flooding tide.

With the high water, it was time to show M the interior maze of Nell's Island. This time, we headed in on the most upstream entrance, which I had not before used. In about 200 yards, we came to a log jam that I remember, although from the other side. We took our time and pushed the floaters out of the way and eased over the main log with just enough water that we didn't rub. Then, M spotted a critter to our right, and we backed up to confirm it as a opossum hunched on some drift wood staying dry.  It definitely looked interested in staying dry, so we moved on. We managed our way up and out through the main entrance channel with just a couple of wrong turns. Tidal marshes fill from the outside in, as a sponge set it in water. Nell's Island does the same with a couple main flood/drain channels and a maze of others that don't fill/drain with much of a current.

We crossed the marsh to the east zigzagging through spartina islands and channels. Spotted a couple dozen Black Ducks, one Teal, a dozen or so Canada Geese. The Geese were migratory, being that they spooked from quite a distance. Then in and out of Beaver Brook, where we spotted some more Ducks and a couple of active Kingfishers.

Draw Down Day

I get to Pond Brook and find the water down about six feet.  Surprise... it's reservoir draw down so that the dam can be inspected. I can't reach water that is deep enough to float the canoe without going knee deep in mud. I get back in the car and head upstream a mile to the bigger launch that the motorboats use. 

Three motor boats are at the ramp, their owners struggling to get them out of the water. The ramp is greasy with old algae growth. Their tires spin as they try to haul up the slope. I promptly slip on the greasy surface and get pile driven into the ground by the canoe on my shoulders.  I get out of it with a bang on the knee and a fresh new coat of algae on my pants.  One of the guys asks if I'm okay and I answer, "Yes," but I'm thinking, "I'll let you know after I go canoeing for a few hours."

It is a fine day with the temperature already at 70F, no wind, and nothing but a high haze of clouds between here and the sun. I head upstream.

Drown down exposes six feet of shoreline height that is rarely seen. It is all rocks - some bedrock, and a lot of boulders and cobbles that most likely come from the same source. The edge of the forest floor shows that the soil is not much more than 12 or 18 inches thick before it begins to mingle with the underlying rocks. The reservoir, of course, washed the soil away from the exposed shoreline, which I imagine settled fifty feet below in the old river course. There are still quite a few stumps on shore from when they cleared the forest before flooding the area in the mid 1950's.  I paddle close to shore just in case something interesting is exposed. However, I don't expect anything of significance as this modern shoreline was just a line of elevation high in the forest above the river, which is where any people would have chosen to live.

The other thing that the draw down exposes is the infestation of zebra mussels. The broken shells litter the bottom, and many of the boulders and drift logs are coated with them. They are harmful non-native invasives, and inedible. They are why I make my partners wear shoes when we canoe here.

I paddle upstream to the Poison Ivy Island.  From here, it is about an hour and a half round trip to Lovers Leap, which I would like to see at draw down. But, my late start and my tumble at the start makes this, far enough. On the way back, I hear a mammal calling from the bank up ahead. I can't place it, but finally I spot the critter. A racoon. I recall that sound from a time when, one night,  we had a family of them climbing in the tree outside of a our bedroom window.  A bit farther on, a mature Bald Eagle passes me and takes a perch on the far side of the river. Add sixty Mallards, two dozen Canada Geese, a Great Blue Heron, and a few Kingfishers.

I get back to the put-in after three hours. I saw not one other boat the entire time.