The Missing Link

Since most always, I paddle alone or with just one other person in a tandem canoe, m y canoeing day trips are out and back affairs. Today's trip on the Pawcatuck, is to fill in  one of the missing links that can be paddled in both directions. There are a couple short sections of the river that are so fast that they are one way trips, especially so as they don't have portages that can be used to bypass the fast water. 

I put in at the dreaded Bisquit City Landing. It sounds impressive, but it is a small parking area at the end of a dirt road with nothing resembling a city in the area.  The route is to paddle upstream on the Pawcatuck until reaching Worden Pond. I was in here once before, several years ago. I spent much of that day going in wrong directions - down the Pawcatuck to where it is fast water and up the Usquapaug until it peters out in the swamp. Finally finding the right channel, I ran out of time about halfway to the pond.

The launch is on a small creek that passes under a railroad bridge and heads into the swamp. Passing through a narrow spot in the brush, I get to what you might not recognize as a river. This is true swamp - marshland with a forest, and the river is located by watching for the current - if there's no current, you're not in the river. My memory is hazy in that distances are very approximate, but I am do remember the directions of turns where I want to go, or not go.

It's a beautiful day, calm, warm and sunny. And, the marsh is also beautiful. The paddling is an occasional straight stretch of a hundred feet or so, and endless tight turns everywhere else. Maneuvering skills are required as there is an impressive poison ivy crop reaching out into the channel.

The easy log crossing

If I remember right, about a 1/3 of the distance to Worden Pond, the river goes under dense forest canopy. I'm not that far when I come to the first blocking log. It is an easy climb-over as the log as a perfect handhold limb to hang on to while standing on the tree and pulling the canoe over.  Too soon, the second block arrives. This one I can squeeze through after sawing off a half broken limb. It's not much more than 200 feet and three tight turns til I come to the third block. This one is ugly, actually two trees across the river with just enough space between them that I can't step from one to the other, just enough space that I can fall in between. I can't puzzle out the crossing without taking a dumb level of risk or bashing around in brush that is in three feet of water. I turn back.  On the way out, I head up the Usquapaug for half mile. It's wide open and easy paddling. Too bad it peters out into nothing.

Plan B - I load up and drive to the bottom of Worden Pond. I'll come in on the Pawcatuck from the other direction. With calm air, the pond is in good shape. It is a shallow pond and develops a nasty chop with any wind. The crossing is a mile and a half, and I find the opening just about where I guess it will be. This entire half of the pond's shoreline is swamp - the pond just melts into the shrubs without much hint of any solid land. To back up my dead reckoning, the state has placed a small sign announcing this as the Pawcatuck River.  

The river is narrow, a bit more obvious than the other end, but just as pretty. Again, the poison ivy crop is working overtime, but I don't have any log crawls, just a couple of limbo moves. After a half mile or so, I get to a blocking log/beaver lodge combo. There is a circle route around the lodge to bypass this, but before getting back to the "so called" main channel, there is a required paddle through a cloud of poison ivy. I'm sure that I'll have a few spots of PI, but I don't need to get it all over. I turn and head back to the pond. The missing link remains missing.

I paddle from the Pawcatuck along the north shore until I reach the mouth of the Chipuxet River. The Chipuxet should be called the Pawcatuck, or vice versa - some quirk of colonial thinking. From there, across the pond and out.