Confluence of the West River and the West River

For two years we have been trying to meet.  It was first supposed to happen in Seattle, but she moved east.  Not long after, I moved east, not near, but not too awfully far away.  Then a year and a half of misses went on....bad weather postponing the canoe trip meeting numerous times.

Finally all the things aligned.

We met for the first time in the garbage patch park on the edge of the West River.  The West River is a New Haven urban river, but once one runs the gauntlet of abused park land, it becomes a rather scenic trip that few people bother to try. 

We start in the afternoon.  The water is high...spring levels with a high tide that passed by an hour earlier.  Our first bird sighting is a very large wild turkey.  A and I glide over shallows that I've had to wade in the past.  The current isn't too bad, and the downed blocking trees of previous trips have deteriorated enough that we have easy passage with just a minimum of limbo gymnastics.  Osprey fly overhead, not as a rare occurance, but rather a quite normal one.

We talk about things and become familiar.  And, we talk with people on the banks who all seemed to be surprised to see a canoe.   We get to my previous high point, a place where the river becomes shallow under West Rock.  But, it is more the current that turns us back.  To continue up is to wade, and that's not the point of this trip.

We spot one kingfisher, a couple of wood ducks, two egrets, a great blue heron, several red wing blackbirds, another wild turkey, a muskrat, and a few Canada geese.   And we take out as the sun is beginning to go to the long shadow light.