Getting Stuff Done

Garbage eroded.  Always worth a look.
The 4 inch pvc pipe sticking out of the mud is actually the body of a ornate ceramic creamer.  A heavy clay piece is a bicycle pedal once the mud is rinsed off.  I gather several more objects.

eroded garbage

I set out from the Gifford Pinchot Sycamore, a sycamore mind you, that has a DBH..diameter at breast height of about 8 feet.  A worthy dedication to the first leader of the National Forest Service, which for all of its limitations, deserves enormous credit for preventing the wholesale land rape that would have occurred without it in the western United States.  He came from Yale, in a state that has no National Forests.  Today, 60% of Connecticut is forest.  Enough.

The Farmington River is fairly wide, a middling sort of width, and it has long gradual bends so that one can see a quarter or a half mile ahead.  There's no sharp turns and there's no debris to dodge. That middling width keeps the interesting things that happen at the edges close enough to the canoe for fine observation.  The river is always a bit short on wildlife, a result of too many towns, farms and golf courses  hidden behind the trees that line the bank.  But, the floodplain keeps houses and other buildings out of sight for the most part.  I spot a couple deer, a pair of Canada geese tending 5 goslings, a mother mallard guarding 9 or 10 ducklings...mostly it is song birds and a hawk or two. 

Today, it is the perfect river for me.  It requires no concentration to navigate and there are few of the natural distractions that cause me to pause from my paddling.  Today, I just paddle and let my mind run.  There is no point that I must reach before turning back, there is nothing that I need to investigate.  I work out the text, as much as I ever work out the text, for a presentation.  I think about far off places and far off ideas.  I paddle a lot without pause.  I accomplish much.

I go upriver 3 hours and downriver 1-1/2, starting and ending at the big sycamore.