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.