It's Just What Nature Does.

It was, again, time to visit local waters and to see what was and what had changed.  I carried down the hill from the house, 250 yards and a drop of 75 feet to set out into the sea, and I headed north up the coast with a quartering headwind that caused more chill than effort.

Three double kayaks sat low in the water among the distant rocks that I must pass by.  The drivers sat erect and near motionless.  I knew they would become cormorants perched on the lowest of the rocks, but for the moment they looked every bit like Aleut sea otter hunters from a century and a half ago.

I rode the flood tide under the low bridge and into the Oyster River.  My first visit here was shortly after Hurricane Sandy and I could not for the life of me figure out why it deserved the name, "Oyster".  The bottom was nothing but clean sand and it would remain that way for more than a year. The hurricane waters rearranged many things in the marsh. Today, for the first couple hundred yards the bottom is nothing but oysters.  A natural repair for a natural disaster.

The bird life lacks the usual diversity that I normally see here.  A large number of crows are making noise in the trees, a handful of Canada geese show just their heads from the marsh well back from the river.  With every second or so bend, I flush a dozen or two mallards...lots of mallards.

Three brand new osprey boxes have been erected at even spacing along the run of the river.

I decide to paddle up to the bridge just out of pure curiosity.  The river past the bridge is choked with phragmites...not a river but just water flowing through porous marsh.  But, today I find something new.  The river has cut a narrow channel, narrow but wide enough for the canoe.  And, I continue.

A few hundred yards and the channel is still open, although it is a wading passage at this point.  I can't be sure, but I imagine that this upper section of marsh had been rearranged by the hurricane.  Another natural fix for a natural disaster...although nature really doesn't have disasters...it's just what nature does.

Timing Makes the Difference

A patch of inclement weather, at least for canoeing, has passed.  Three days of deep freeze and wind was followed by an unseasonably warm and windy day followed by a day of heavy rain.  The cold was low enough to form good layer of ice on anything a short distance from the sea, but now that is starting to break up.

female hooded merganser

I set out for the big river, but pulled up short at my town's small and protected harbor having overlooked this area for far too long.  The flows near the landing have to be pushed gently with the bow of the canoe, the ice being thick enough that anything bigger than four square feet might crack the hull.  The sportsmens boats are all shrink wrapped and hauled out waiting for summer and not knowing the secrets of winter waters.  Workmen are putting a new dock in where the oyster boats berth.  Most of the oysterboats are out.  Otherwise, there are some buffleheads and hooded mergansers, and one fearless swan who stands his ground as I approach, an unusual behavior for this time of year that catches me a bit off guard.

At the mouth of the harbor, I turn up Gulf Pond, busting the ebb tide to get under the first bridge and into the calm of the lower section.  A flock of Canada geese come in.  A great blue heron is perched on the branch of a shoreline deadfall.  I head straight up, the depth still deep enough that I can paddle where I want and I push through the current under the second bridge to enter the upper pond.  At least half of the pond is still ice covered.  Two thirds of the way in I come to a shore to shore band of ice that is too thick - the canoe just rides up onto it when I try to break it.  I will not get to the Indian River today.

long tail ducks

Back at the mouth of the harbor, my watch shows that this trip has been far too short to register as a canoe trip.  I follow the shore of the sound west, a roundabout path out to Charles Island, the Mt. Rainier of Milford, for it claims senseless people at about the same rate.  Each year a few people whose level of skill and common sense don't add up to the amount of liquor in their system head out sans PFDs to the island and become victims.  The relatives talk to the newspaper as if the deceased were mighty sea captains swallowed up by a great fog on the ocean deep, when they simply had not one ounce of respect for nature.  Well, everyone is stupid at one time or another...it's timing that makes the difference.

Charles Island

I head west and follow the long bar that leads from shore to the island.  This is winter safety.  I am pretty close to knee deep water the entire distance.  I find more buffleheads and flush a flock of mergansers.  Farther out, I find the long tail ducks.  The island is secondary.  It is the long tail ducks that make the trip worthwhile.  They summer at the Arctic Ocean and winter here.  Most of their life is spent on thirty to forty degree water.  I shoot a few photos as best I can.  They and I are bobbing in the chop...timing makes the difference.

male and female long tail ducks

I round the island and return as I came.  I have a nice talk with a woman where I take out, showing her some of my winter gear, telling her a bit about the trip.  I live in a swell town.

From Ely's Ferry

At Ely's Ferry, one large pile of stacked ice remains on the cobble breakwater but on the beach only odd chunks of ice wait for the the next high tide to lift and carry them to another spot until they finally melt away, water to water.

As I get organized, floating ten feet from shore, an immature bald eagle passes over heading in the direction of Hamburg.  Then, I head up river against a good current, this section of the river being a long drawn out bend, and this side being the outside of that bend the current is just that much stronger.  But, the headwind is not severe and there is not one single cloud in the sky. 

Ely's Ferry

I make no decision on my route until I have to because I have no good reason to decide such things and my route choices all have good reasons to head in those different directions.  When I get to the middle of the mouth of Hamburg Cove, I continue past and up the river hugging the shore, scanning the trees, scanning the bottom of the river through the clear winter water...it seems that I'm always looking for something.

The water is thick with debris today.  Ice that formed on the shore has drifted off and melted, releasing the twigs, grasses, branches and litter that it captured in freezing.  Even floating in the river, the debris is recognizable as all that stuff that gathers in the cobbles and roots near the high water line.

Approaching the bottom of the Selden channel, I spot three mature bald eagles.  Two of them are doing mating flirtations, whirling and dancing and then grabbing talons and falling twenty feet before releasing and repeating.

beaver lodge

I head up the first side channel, the one where I've seen lots of beaver sign.  I find active drags and scent mounds, but the lodge seems that it might be abandoned.  Usually, lodges show some winter preparations and this one doesn't.  There is also a lack of winter food storage - saplings jammed in the river bottom that can be eaten if the river ices over.

I return, but this time I head into Hamburg Cove finding some large sheets of soft and easily cut ice.  The cove has a good number of common mergansers wintering in it.  I flush three dozen at the narrows where one can see the town.  It is far enough.  I head back out and down river to Ely's Ferry, but not before another young bald eagle can fly overhead.

The Big River

I set out from the feral cat park knowing that the big river would be open and free of ice and that I would be able to paddle as far as I wanted.  Only a thin sheet of ice was on the lagoon where I launched and the canoe cut through it without effort.

I headed upstream, riding some of the flood tide with the winds calm, with the sky mostly sunny.  I spot a red shouldered hawk near one of the osprey nests across the river from where Peck's Mill once stood.  A mile further upstream, I pass a buck white tailed deer that lets me pass.  I watch and not once does it make any of the telltale motions that indicate flight.  Then, I spot a grey bunch high in a tree, too high for that much wood, and it becomes a young bald eagle that flies to put some space between us, because humans are, after all, the most unpredictable of animals.

At Great Flats, which is the second island upstream from the start, I meet eyes with two red foxes who move back into the brush before I can bring my camera up.

I turn back at Two Mile Island, which is no longer an island, someone having allowed a gravel company to fill in the side channel sometime after 1926 (I prefer the old map because it retains the earlier names...and the river hasn't changed enough to matter).  It is far enough, I have work ahead of me.  The wind has come up and it has shifted as predicted now coming out of the SW.  I begin paddling into a headwind.

The return takes almost 3 hours, an extra hour over the paddle out.  I hug the shore to take advantage of the buffer that the bank and trees provide, but it is a crawl.  It is worst at the highway bridge, as I expected and the half mile beyond it is a grind before I can get some relief.  When I take out, I am as cold as I have been in a long time, three hours of wind chilling me through all of my layered clothing.  But, I saw a pair of foxes.

Crushed Ice

I start the trip by making an unplanned tour of my favorite Connecticut River put-ins.  The Chester Ferry site has a fixed ledge of ice running about 75 yards out from shore.  I could launch from it without much trouble, but the return might be an issue.  At Essex, I find a smaller and less stable ice platform, but out over deeper water, and I pass on that too. 

The Lieutenant River site is open although the calm air of the morning has now been replaced by a steady breeze off of the sea.  I put in and head down river on a flood tide that is already high.  Just beyond the RR bridge, which is no more than ten minutes in, I find a large jam of small ice. 

Pushing into it, I find it to be mostly broken shards of some previous sheet ice.  I make three attempts, each coming to a bogged down halt...more like being stuck in mud than running into anything hard.  It seems a good time to turn around and explore upriver.  I stop to write.  I finish writing and decide to try one more time along the left shore. The jam is tons of small pieces, window glass thick and mostly dinner plate sized.  But, the jam is two or more feet thick with it.  It is like paddling through a giant glass of crushed ice...it even makes the same sound. 

But, the shore route goes through to the first fork.  To the left is the inside passage to the sea.  It has another bank to bank jam.  To the right is the river route to the Connecticut River, and it is open.  I flush a dozen buffleheads, which is pretty much the wildlife report for the day.

I reach the river and confirm that there is a secondary way out, and I confirm that the wind is pretty strong out in the open.  So, I return, push my way back through the jam, and continue upstream.

The river is open for a good stretch with a easy jam to push through at the highway bridge.  Beyond that, there is long ledge of ice on the east shore that is of no issue to me with most of the river open.  I get within a quarter mile of the big boulder marsh before the ice covers the entire width.  I could push on, but there is no open water to push on to.  So, it is time to return.

Ice Paddling

It is a short trip.  I put in at Foote Bridge, walking softly and sliding the canoe over the snow, and then over the tilted apron of ice that extended out over and into the water.  And when the ice wouldn't hold my weight, I put one knee on the seat of the canoe and pushed off with my other foot, pushing off of whatever it could find until the canoe began to slide into the clear and cold winter waters.

It is calm and the sky clear.  The forest and marsh are blanketed with new snow that fell a couple days back in a very windy storm that kept all canoes off of the water.  As I paddle down towards the sea, I pass through thin night ice, ice that is barely stiffer than the water it sits on, crushing and dispersing easily with each stroke of the paddle, slowing the canoe not a bit.  But, when I get to the well submerged gravel flats, the ice thickens.  Here, the river spreads out wide and shallow and without much of a current, thicker ice has formed and collected with the changing of the tides.  I push through and over it using my old Sawyer club paddle as a pole when the ice is thick enough to hold.  It is a matter of linking open pools and finding the weakest ice.  It is not quiet, the canoe focusing the sound of breaking ice in my direction.

I get some open water near the stone arch bridge and I hope that it will continue when I pass under and enter the open marsh land.  But, it does not.  In fact, the river is more frozen over with a uniform layer of ice that runs about 3/16 of an inch.  I can paddle through it, but there is no end to it in sight and I figure it will go that way to one of the big bends, which are another half mile.  I turn back and take my time, retracing the same channels that I've opened up, and just enjoying the contrast of snow and ice and marsh and winter forest on a calm and sunny day.

I pass by the Foote Bridge as this upper section is open water, and head further upstream to the tangles.  At one of the bends, I flush about 75 mallards.  They take off in four shifts, each time impressing me with the amount of noise they make as they go airborne.  And when the tangle makes passage difficult, I return to Foote Bridge.

Not Much to Say

I set out from the feral cat park, made the short crossing to the top of Pope's Flat, and a second short crossing to the top of Long Island (this one not so long as that Long Island) and then I made my way down the east shore of the big river to the sea.

I spotted a familiar wing beat as I started, and even at great distance, because it was well over where Peck's Mill once stood, the white head and tail confirmed it to be a mature bald eagle.  Crossing one of the small channels, I flushed six buffleheads, evenly split between sexes.

I ride the river current down as the tide is near its lowest point and the minor wind is of little consequence.  It is a pleasant march of two hours during which I pass 3 boats, all oystermen.  They are small boats with crews of two or three.  Oyster dredging within the river has to be done by hand; no winches permitted.

boat remains

With the tide low, the contemporary spartina roots are at head level and stratification of who knows how many years is exposed.  In places, I also find the remains of things from a time when people could abandon stuff in the water.  Trying to figure out what I am looking at keeps me busy.  I find the rusted carcass of an engine sitting in the collapsed remains of a wooden hull.  Most of the finds are large timbers...remains of boat launches and mooring facilities.

1926 map...there's more than mud and marsh

Near the mouth of the big river, I enter Wheeler Marsh, which is often a maze of channels equally divided between dead ends and actual passages.  I have few decisions at low tide and paddle up the only likely route.  There is a height of land in marshes...and it is the crux of passage at low water.  I continue in, the water getting shallower bit by bit.  For a couple hundred yards I paddle in six inches or less, and then, bit by bit, it becomes deeper.  The current starts to go against me until I am out of the marsh.  Then I can ride it upriver to where I came from.