Cattails

I put in at the Lieutenant River. Last time I came here, the lot was overloaded with a local kayak club. Paddling in a group of twelve or fifteen seems contrary to the whole idea of... whatever I'm doing. Anyway, there's no one else here, and there are several different routes to pursue, so one can burn a whole day. The tide is just about an hour into rising, so the water is low, but there isn't much tidal current, yet. The wind seems to be picking up, which I don't remember from the morning weather report. I head down and into the back channel of the Connecticut River.

Approaching the Watch Rocks, there is a Gull circling over a stand of trees and raising a hell of a racket. Getting closer, I spot the dark shadow in the trees - a young Bald Eagle. Maybe I'm the critical mass, but it flies off east toward the Duck River. The Gull and an Osprey chase it until it is out of sight. It seems like a good idea, so I paddle up the Duck River. I haven't been in here for several years, and it is as short as I remember it, ending at a culvert that might just barely have enough room for my canoe, at low tide. I decide to check the map later and see if the road portage is worthwhile.

I head back and down, but pull up short of the Back River. The wind is still increasing, and if it keeps growing, this will not be a fun place to paddle out of. The Lieutenant River has plenty of options, and more tree cover, so I head back in that direction.

The Lieutenant River

By the time I reach Boulder Swamp, the tide has come in enough to make it an easy passage. I head up into Mill Brook, again with enough water to make it a simple paddle, but run out of water at the first bridge, which is normal. The creek needs high tide to get much higher.

Mill Brook

I come back out and turn up the Lieutenant. In this section, the river is a narrow meander through a cattail marsh. Cattails have special meaning in my world. They take me back to adventurous romps with my slightly older aunt and uncles near my grandmothers lake shore house. Today, I daydream about the tunnel that my uncles and I tried to dig under my grandma's house. We were four feet down when she figure out what we were up to. I got to fill the hole in by myself as my coworkers had disappeared to do their paper routes.

The top of the Lieutenant - cattails

The paddle out is all fun and games, as the wind is a steady 15mph with gusts into the 20's. Even so, it has been a beautiful day.

Lost in the Time

I wear a wristwatch, and I carry a compass, which I know how to use. I have a hand held GPS unit, which works if you tap it just right - it doesn't get into the canoe very often.

I almost always check the time as I set out. And, somewhere in the middle of the trip, I forget what time it was when I started. My accuracy for knowing how long I have been paddling is plus/minus a half hour. Today, this happens again and I can't remember whether I set out at 9:00 or 9:30. But, it doesn't really matter. I know where I am, I know where I will end up.

It is cloudy, and somewhat humid, and cool. There is a light wind out of the south that is supposed to shift around this afternoon. The tide is about an hour into rising. I put in at Pilgrim Landing and just to mix it up, I take the long way around Goose Island. The 120 acre island is the last mongo-overgrown patch of European phragmites, a non-native invasive reed, in the cove. The island belongs to a local hunting club and I am forever puzzled as to why they have not eradicated the phragmites. The reed grows so dense that it is not habitat for Ducks and Geese. The island should have a thin strip of spartina grass at the waters edge with cattails, wild rice, and a mix of other native marsh plants. It's only claim to fame are the swallow flock acrobatics that occur about this time of the year.

I cut across Goose Bay and head up into the cove, hitting my usual route, but in a reverse order, more or less. Great Blue Herons, Great Egrets, and Osprey are about in equal numbers - maybe a dozen each during the trip. As I went across the bay, I spotted an Osprey parked on a dead fall that had ended up stranded in the center of the bay. Then, it took off...it was a mature Bald Eagle.   

I come out of the cove and need more time. I round the outside of Calf Island and paddle downriver as far as the big bridge before returning to take out.

The Anniversary Trip

I let S sleep in. As I wrote yesterday, it's the time of the year when an early start to beat the midday heat and sun is not needed. We put in on Pond Brook, or Pond Cove as I think of it. While there is an unpaddleable brook above here, the lower mile became a cove when this section of the river was dammed in the 1950's. 

We cross the cove, it's just 20 yards, and paddle out in the shade of the forest, and stay in that shade hugging the southwest shore downriver. The big storm that came through 2 weeks ago has left the water clearer than normal. This section tends towards algae blooms in midsummer, and while the water isn't clear, I can see down well past the tip of my paddle. 

The sky is clear with a light wind out of the south. It is quiet. We see just 3 small motorboats, and about a half dozen paddlecraft, but from a distance. It is our 37th anniversary and we don't say much... today this is a perfect, calm, and peaceful place to think and paddle. We cross the river about a 1/2 mile above the dam and follow that shore back. S tells me that she's not up for a long trip, and I have to tell her that we are already on our way back. 

We stop briefly in one of the small inlets that I am familiar with. It has a small waterfall at the far end, but we cannot get there. There is a new pile of boulders that fills about 2/3 of the width. I'm not sure where the boulders came from. They may have come down the gully in a flash flood, or it may have been a small outcrop on the side that crumbled. The boulders are all clean without any moss on them (and the water level is more than a foot higher than normal) so they are recent.

With that, we continue up the shore, cross the Shephaug, cross the main river, and head back up Pond Cove. 

The Season of Midday Starts

I set out for a short trip around the islands in the big river on the far side of town. I slept rough last night and didn't have the ambition to put this fine day to full use, but being so fine, I also didn't have the gall to not take some advantage of it.

These last few days are the first days of summer when getting an early start wasn't necessary. Finally, the high temperatures are ending up in the low 70's, and there is nothing particularly gruesome about a noon start. 

The tide has just peaked and there is no current in the river. I cut across the river downstream of the drawbridge and head up into the Quad islands. My plan is to circle around and do various figure 8's until I've had enough. I head up the west channel, cut across the tip of Carting, the tip of Long, and round the top of Pope's, follow that island down, rounding the lower tip and crossing over to the middle of Long, upstream and round the tip, cross over to Carting, which I follow down, round that tip and head up the channel between Peacock and Carting, and then finish down the west channel. I pick up a bow's worth of plastic debris to top off my recycle bin at home. Then, back across the river to my put-in. 

I flushed about 30 Mallards while paddling, plus 6 or 8 Great Egrets, a couple Great Blue Herons, and a pair of Black Ducks. Spotted a couple Osprey and one Mute Swan.

Sneaking About in the Marsh

It is overcast except for a couple of tiny blue patches of sky among the clouds. And, it is unusually dark, reminding me of the dawn starts that I used to do more often. Those sunrise marsh moments always reminded me of the early morning duck hunts with my dad, which began several years before I was old enough to have my own gun. With the conditions as they are, my guess is that I will be the only one out here for the next hour or more.

The tide is coming in, but there is already enough water to make it through most of the inner channels, and heck, if I should happen to bog out, I would not have to wait long for the water to rise enough to make my exit.

An Osprey splashes down and lifts off - a miss. A Great Blue Heron flushes, then a couple Night Herons, and a couple Egrets. I head into a narrow passage that will take me to the Left-of-Nell's-Channel Channel. This channel stays open except at low tide, while Nell's is always open for a canoe.

A bottle on a sloughed bank draws my attention. I can't use it to date the sediment, but I'm glad I made the diversion. It is probably not particularly old, but it is well embossed - "The Crystal Bottle Works" from Ansonia. Ansonia is about 9 miles upstream, but I did not know there had been a bottling plant there. 

As I get near the lower marsh, I cut across to the east shore, weaving through small islands of spartina. I flush a dozen Night Herons and a flock of fifteen Ducks. The Ducks are too small to be Mallards and too large to be Teal, and I don't get a good enough look to identify them any more than that. There are two Snowy Egrets, but as one of them flies past, I reassess - this one is a juvenile Little Blue Heron.

From the east shore, (a Sharpshin Hawk flies over, close) I head in to the Central Phragmites Patch where I flush three dozen Night Herons. Six of them are Black Crowns and the rest are either juveniles or Yellow Crowns.  I try to push through the narrow exit channel west and north of the patch, but it is too overgrown and I have to back out. I hear some voices, the first sign of anyone else in the marsh. A Harrier overflies me, as close as the Sharpshin had been. I exit without being noticed and head back across the marsh in a convoluted route towards Nell's Channel. I daydream about someone asking me if I know where I'm going.... "No, I don't know where I am going although I do know where I am." That's a pretty good description of myself.

Two Black Crowned Night Herons

When I get to Nell's Channel, I turn upriver, taking the little side exit that I used to enter the marsh. A pair of faddleboarders are coming by, so I wait for them to pass, and I exit unseen.

The Naugatuck Flush

It is too nice a day to not go canoeing. I put in under the bridge on the big river on the far side of town. The tide is close to peaking, so I head upriver and will take advantage of the extra downstream push as the tide drops. 

I cross over the river just above the railroad drawbridge. The engineer in me enjoys looking at old school constructions where I can visually assemble the parts and load paths that keep such things in the air. I head back into the Quad Islands taking the narrow channel between Carting and Peacock, as I usually do when I get the chance. There is a lot of trash in the water and I figure quite quickly that I could fill my canoe without leaving this set of four islands. But, I can also fill my canoe by paddling upstream a couple miles and back.

I've noticed that after heavy rains, the Naugatuck River flushes large amounts of trash. About 8 miles upriver, that river joins the Housatonic, and if one happens to be at the confluence after heavy rains, the difference between the two rivers is obvious. It might exceed a 50:1 ratio of junk items with the Housatonic being surprisingly clean. Almost two weeks ago, there was a tremendous although localized downpour in the river valleys upstream from here. It looks like the trash stream has finally arrived, and it's not just bad, it is the worst that I have ever seen. 

I have my own ideas as to why one river flushes so much more trash than the other. The Housatonic flows through a lot of farmland and forest preserve lands with a few towns. It is also constrained in a few large (for this part of the country) reservoirs. Meanwhile, the Naugatuck runs through a series of old mill towns and one good sized mess of a mill city, Waterbury. The river is situated in a deep valley that it shares with a substantial state highway. I wonder if there are a series of point sources for the debris. It's easy to blame Waterbury, if you've ever been there, but it's probably not the whole problem.

I "opportunity" collect trash, grabbing stuff as I paddle nearby. I only go out of my way for the inflatables, which today are 2 beach balls, 2 inflatable buoys, and one of those rafts that get towed behind a motorboat. There are two reasons to get the inflatables. First, they are particularly unsightly because of their size. Second, I get to take out my frustration by stabbing them with my knife. There is something nice about hearing them wheeze as I crumple them up in a ball and toss them into the bow of the canoe. Another good find is an almost new horse-collar pfd. I'll cut it up and salvage the straps, foam and nylon shell. It's debatable, in my mind, whether horse-collar pfds are beneficial in general. While they will save a life when worn, they are uncomfortable as well as being most peoples first experience with a pfd. My guess is that most people don't wear pfds because they have decided, unfortunately, that they are uncomfortable and bulky from the experience of wearing a cheap-ass horse-collar pfd. A cheap horse-collar is a $15 item, and a basic comfortable vest that someone is more likely to wear costs just $10 more. And, pfds are pretty useless if they aren't being worn when you need them.

I return back through the islands, riding a nice current. Spot several young Night Herons and a few Great Egrets in the back channel.

Beaver Creek

We put in on the big river on the other side of town. It was a surprise to find the water pretty much to ourselves being that it is a Labor Day Friday with perfect weather other than some wind. 

The tide is still dropping but I figure that the current will fall off some by the time we head back from the marsh. The wind is out of the east, so we will have some protection as long as we don't venture out into the middle of the marsh.

"Night Heron, straight ahead in the branches"

We spot a couple Night Herons as we reach the top of the marsh. I steer us into Beaver Creek. I haven't been in here for a couple months, which is a sideways excuse as it is well sheltered from the wind. We flushed a Green Heron on the way up, and then where the creek bends north, we start flushing Night Herons. It is young birds and mature Yellow Crowned Night Herons, although the young ones are probably Yellow Crowns (you have to look close to differentiate young Yellow Crowns and young Black Crowns. There are also a couple Osprey in here.  We turn back when the water gets thin. We've seen about 15 Night Herons.

We head out of the creek and take a quick look up one of my inner secret channels, going until we run out of water. I'd like to go see if we can sot some Clapper Rails, but it's just too windy to go up Nell's Channel, where I've been spotting them on the last couple trips.

We head back up river jumping eddies by hanging near the shoreline.