Over the Threshold

The canoe is nested in the branches of a deadfall.  Two more inches of water and I would have slipped through without any effort.  In fact, the gap in the branches where I sit was caused by other paddlers squeezing through during higher water.  Anyway, it is a nice place to sit as it took 3 hours of steady paddling to get here.  I guess that I might be a mile or so short of the Jay Cronin launch site, but there aren't any landmarks to go by - especially since I am not carrying a map to refer to (my guess is pretty close).  

Someday I'd like to do the full trip to Jay Cronin, but I figure the round trip between here and there might take 45 minutes to an hour with all the weaving through deadfalls.  I even toyed with referring to the mile below me as the "woodpile." Fortunately, someone has cleared passages through the deadfalls, although it still requires a lot of tight maneuvering.

I slide back out of the nest and head downriver.  I am three hours out, and at least two since I saw the last person.  It's threshold time - the point where I become part of the surroundings, when I stop quantifying and identifying.  It is the deep soak of a wild surrounding.  I spot a pair of Osprey after seeing one splash down into the river.  But the big bird is the treat - a Great Horned Owl that flushes silently and takes a perch to watch me pass.  

The trip down is easy with the current faster than I though as I paddled against it on the way in.  I portage the Burdickville dam remains, but take a moment to look over the old mill turbine that is in the mill race.  I've never bothered to walk over and see it up close and I am impressed that it is a 4-foot diameter cast iron turbine, which explains why it isn't decorating the lawn of some nearby home.

I pass the owner of the weird catamaran fishing bug cage, which is made of 2 canoes and a wood deck - truly a Jethro Bodine invention if there ever was.  That ends 4 hours of seeing no one else.

I take out fairly tired, and washed out.