High Water and Strong Current

Sometimes I look and wonder if anyone ever thinks about what they are doing.  We live in a world of too many "it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time".  This river is one of past industrial abuse.  Even now it is hemmed in by old factory buildings, landfills, and highways.  At low enough levels the shoreline is littered with antique automobile parts.  It gets wilder as one gets farther up...nature reclaiming properties that probably had too much environmental liability to be reused by new owners.

I put in on the Quinnipiac at the usual spot.  I came here because it was too windy to go out into the exposed salt marsh and see which birds were showing up.  I found the river to be quite high with a strong current.  This is a tidal section of the river, but I am pretty sure that the tide will not be high enough to slow this river after the heavy rains of the past couple of days. 

 

My paddle was a slow crawl upstream, very slow.  It took about an hour to cover one mile.  I hopped eddies when possible, but most of the time the swift current ran bank to bank.  Eddy hopping is a white water technique for moving upstream in rapid flow... it is not commonly necessary in wetland rivers. 

And that's it.  I paddle up a mile in about one hour.  The current will not let up.  I turn around and get back to my launch site in a tad bit more than 10 minutes.