Housatonic Two

I put in at Indian Well and head up river.  This section of the Housatonic is a reservoir, held back by a 150 year old dam that lies about a mile and half downstream.  The old reservoir is narrow and just over 5 miles long. There is a steady flow of water that is good enough to keep the water fairly clean and free of the algae blooms that haunt the next stretch up from here.

A mile out, I am surprised by a Black Crowned Night Heron that watches me from the water's edge.  It flushes when I fumble with my camera, but it circles around seemingly waiting for me to leave the area.  I think it will return to the same spot when I am one or two hundred yards away.

I find the current at the Shelf to be easy.  The Shelf can be impossible to get past when the water is higher or when there is more water coming through the upstream dam. The Shelf is a bedrock ledge that runs all the way across the river.  At this water level, I am pretty sure one could wade the river.

I make it up to the minor rapids below the dam, and pass through it with reasonable ease.  Getting upstream is a matter of hopping several eddies while not grounding out on submerged rocks.  This rapids was reconfigured by last year's flash floods.  There was a ravine on river left that I did not know about - well, I knew there was a valley there, but not that it ever ran with water. The rush of water coming down the ravine blew out the road and dumped a large amount rocks and gravels in the river.

I paddle up as far as a landslide on river-right, also from last year's storm.  I turn and head back.  The wind has come up and while it doesn't slow me down too much, if I pause my paddling, I quickly come to a halt. I find the Black Crowned Heron exactly where I first saw it.  Again, my camera is not ready.

Mapping Marshes and the Maze

I head out on a rising mid-tide with about 3 hours til peak.  It is under 70F, calm, and overcast - all in all, a pleasant day for canoeing.

I head into the Nell's Island maze, after looking around to make sure that no one is watching - there are rewards for exploring, and I think that the maze counts as one.  My first trips in here were at high tide.  I had been convinced, because the island is a named feature on the maps, that Nell's Island was something like an "island".  It is in fact, no more of an island than any other part of the marsh and the reason for potting it at all was probably because the navigable channel of the Housatonic is on the islands west side. 

At high tide, I found a path of open water channels that would lead me from one end of the so-called island to the other.  More recently, I started entering the maze during a rising mid tide.  I got lost.  The wider and straighter channels that I had used at high tide turned out to be shallow and not passable at mid tide.  Instead of backing out, I tried the remaining narrow and very twisty channels, which turned out to be deeper and to link together into another route through the "island".  It was a lot of fun.

The oldest maps of the area (in a usable scale for canoeing) date to ca 1850.  That map is one of a series of town maps for New England. That map does show Nell's Island, but not the rest of the marsh.  While trying to figure out what the marsh might have looked like, I had to consider what the purpose of that map was.  It is quite accurate as far as roads and basic shorelines, and it has the houses and names of homeowners.  It does not show property boundaries and topographic information is limited to hachures - a cartographic shading method to show hills.  It seems that the main purpose of the map is to be an 1850 "telephone" book if you want - in 1850, if you wanted to talk to John Smith, you had to go find him.

The first government topographic maps are from about 1890.  These detailed maps were produced by old fashioned on-the-ground surveying, a laborious process performed without the benefit of  aerial views of any sort. Nell's Island appears on this first topo just as it appears in the 1850 town map...suspiciously so.  If you study most any of the 1890's topos enough, you will find errors where surveyors just didn't go.

The next topo map of the marsh is 1951.  Overlaying this map on the most modern maps shows very minor differences. The detail of the marsh is impressive. The 1951 map benefits from aerial surveys that were performed starting in the 1930's.  

Having seen this jump in map accuracy and detail, I reviewed other river/marsh areas that I am familiar with (Chipuxet, Lieutenant, Mattebasset, Salmon, and East Rivers). In all cases, I found that the rivers on the 1890's topo maps were plotted incorrectly when passing through marshes, but lined up closely on the post-WWII maps, which all had aerial photo data to draw on.  While rivers do shift channels, these changes didn't line up with standard river dynamics. The big change was the quality of the available data.  Another thing to consider - all of the rivers couldn't all shift their channels between 1890 and 1950, and then not change significantly over the next 75 years.

There is a good reason for the errors.  On the ground surveys require a landmark or an assistant who holds a survey pole at the point of interest.  The surveyor can then sight and/or triangulate on that point and collect map data.  With a river running through a marsh, it was, most likely, just too much work to send an assistant out into a marsh to accurately plot an area that could not be farmed, logged, or built on.  

The reason the plotted river/marsh courses changed wasn't because of natural processes, it was because aerial photography allowed for an efficient method of plotting channels in a difficult to survey area.

I spotted two  immature Yellow Crowned Night Herons - last year's fledglings, most likely.  Also, I saw a pair of Mute Swans with 4 cygnets, 3 of which were white.  A white cygnet is somewhat rare. Three in a brood must be very rare indeed.  The Willets were more perturbed with my presence than they have been this year.  That is their m.o. when nesting is going on. They flew around when I was near and made lots of noise so that everything in the marsh knew I was there.

East River

The water is still quite low even though the tide has been coming in for a couple hours, but I've done this enough times that I know exactly where the canoe will squeak through the narrow gaps between submerged boulders. It is about 70F and fairly humid with a light wind that seems to come and go.

Just before the first bend, I flush a Green Heron.  It lands nearby,  but I lose sight of it while digging out my camera.  But, I find it perched on the bank just around the bend, and it poses for a few photographs before the canoe drifts into scare distance.

I cross the Gravel Flats without wading.  There are a couple of Osprey and they are about as interested in chasing each other as they are in fishing. I spot two more Osprey as I near the Clapboard Hill bridge.

It is very quiet today with no one else in sight.  Below the railroad bridge, there isn't quite enough water to make  it through the sneak, so I continue on the East River.  By the time I get to the confluence of the East and Neck Rivers, there is enough water to return by paddling up Bailey Creek and taking the Sneak back into the East River. I spot an Oyster Catcher on the bank of the Neck River.

Up in the forest section, near the Goss house, a mature Bald Eagle drops out of a tree and flies a big circle, all the while hassled by black birds until it leaves the area.  

 

Terrapin Station

It is a calm and sunny day. I set out with about 2 hours of rising tide to go. 

I'm in the maze thinking about my success rate at getting through without having to backtrack, "about 4 out of 5 I suppose." Then, I find myself in a pond with no exit other than the way I came.  I spend the next 20 minutes wandering about.  There are no landmarks other than a couple of stands of phragmites.  Phragmites grows on slightly higher ground than the spartina that dominates the marsh, so it marks un-canoeable turf.  I decide to head for the west entrance and I find that channel via a smaller twisty channel that was quite nice.  Then, in the west entrance exit channel, I notice the upriver channel that I had been looking for all along.  That exit is still blocked by a big log, but the alternate path out to Nell's channel is open.  It was all quite a bit of fun.

Yellow Crowned Night Herons are well distributed throughout the marsh.  Just when I think there aren't any around, I spot the head of that bird with its dull yellow mohawk poking up out of the spartina.  The lower marsh, which is well flooded, is occupied by the white birds - Swans, Great Egrets and Snowy Egrets.  I see a single Oyster Catcher. 

There are a good number of terrapins basking on the remaining high points.  They slide off into the water whenever I get within 60 or 70 feet.  Then they poke their heads up out of the water - it looks like dozens of thumbs.  Going through the maze, I turn a bend and watch 30 to 40 terrapins all slide off the bank in unison.  

 

Clear the Head

I head out for a quick trip, a trip with the intended purpose of clearing one's mind.  Between an ankle that I tweaked a couple days ago and the political horseshit that occupies this country, a couple hours in the solitude of the marsh does wonders for the soul.

The tide is on its way out and by the look and feel of things, I've timed my start to catch a near maximum ebb current.  It is 70F, mostly sunny, and the wind is out of the east.  There are a lot of motorboat drivers around.  It is something like a middle class beach blanket bingo, without brains.

Once I get to the top of the marsh, I turn into the inner channels.  I see no one else for he duration.  

Yellow Crowned Night Herons are owning the marsh today.  There seems to always be one in sight as I make my way. I head in to check the Central Phragmites Patch, and that is the only place where I do not see any Night Herons.  I have to think about that, but later in the summer after the young have fledged, the patch will be densely occupied with Yellow Crown and Black Crowned Night Herons.

I run down the length of Cat Island before heading back. 

Whirling Derbish

I planned to put in at Indian Well State Park, but the town of Derby had other ideas.  Derby is an old mill town parked in between the Naugatuck and Housatonic Rivers where the rivers converge. In the good old days, it was also a good spot to put a bridge over those rivers.  So, that is how the roads are laid out, with a variety of arterials all aimed at Derby.  If a road crew so much as stops to scrape chewing gum off of a sidewalk, everything comes to a grinding crawl.

The logical choice is to use the stuck-in-traffic- time to actually go someplace, and I end up at Pond Brook, where I can set out for a trip up to the cascades of the Shephaug. It is warm with a hazy sun and calm. I am surprised that no one else seems to be around on such a nice day.

On the way, I pass a fisherman in a kayak, a bassboat going the other way, and one runabout.  I see a few Great Blue Herons and a mother Common Merganser with a few ducklings.  Carp are the main show however.  There is always a couple carp splashing about in the shallows.  I see a few that are on the order of 2 feet long.  Last week, someone caught a State Record 45 pounder in this body of water.

There is less water coming down the Shephaug than on my last trip and I can paddle right up to the base of the cascades (I think this is called, Roxbury Falls, but it's really not a waterfall). At the 2nd bend below the cascades, I hear a Bald Eagle whistling somewhere above me in the forest. When I pause to look for it, the Eagle quits calling, and I never see it.

I turn and head back out... a very peaceful paddle.

 

Back to Dibble Creek

We're in the car heading east and S keeps asking, "where we going?"  
I keep replying by asking."Where do you want to go?" 
I  throw out several options, and she picks Salmon River. It is a good choice even if I was just there a couple days ago.  The Connecticut River is still running high and extra water in the Salmon is good for opening up smaller inlets and passages behind islands.

Dibble Creek

We put in at the bottom of the cove.  The day is predicted to be in the mid 80's and sunny, but the sky is completely overcast with high smoke from the Manitoba and Saskatchewan wild fires.  It is thick enough that there are no shadows being cast. We cross the channel and follow the river-right side into the corner of the cove.  Then I turn us into the Dibble Creek bay.  S has never been in here and I want to show it to her.  We pick up speed and aim for a narrow gap in the brush that grows out of the top of the old beaver dam.  The water is a few inches lower than when I was last here, so it I have to finish the crossing by putting a foot on the dam and pushing us through.  Then, we weave our way up as close as we can get to where Dibble Creek tumbles in. S is impressed by the solitude of this little hidden place.  

There once was a cabin up in this area

We cruise the full length of the dam before heading out, stopping up against the hillside for a moment. Old maps show that there was a cabin on the knoll above us.  It would have been an exceptional spot for a hideaway cabin. Nothing is visible and no doubt the structure was removed when the power plant was built about a 1/4 mile away. Of course, the power plant has also been removed.  

We push out through the dam and head upstream.  We pass a few people, mostly in the vicinity of the State Park. Four tubers* are portaging the dam by dragging their plastic kayaks across the ground.  
"Not a life jacket in the entire group. Let's put some distance between us and them," I sez.  We turn and head back down the river, down the cove, and out.

* Tuber is a subclass of humans that are capable of nothing more than floating in an inner tube, often with a six pack of cheap beer. They tend to be slightly less intelligent than a potato and frequently are seen wearing tube socks.