Into the Wilds of Nell's Island

It is the day after Independence Day. It should be busy on the water, but it is not. It's 10 o'clock and my car is the only one at the launch. The river is glassy smooth under a thick and humid overcast, The tide is an hour short of high. There's no wind.

I put in and enjoy the quiet paddle of the mile down to the marsh. With no motorboat traffic to be seen, I stay in the main river. Aerial photos of the marsh show a channel that zigzags through Nell's Island and I have wondered if it has enough water in it to get through. High tide is the time to explore.

Great Egret

Osprey are quite active at the top of the marsh, and as I edge along Nell's, Willets come out to scold me and warn everything in the marsh of my presence. The first channel I get to is about 30 feet across. It winds into the island but peters out after 300 yards. I return to the river and continue down finding a second channel in a couple hundred yards. This channel is at least twice as wide as the first and looks more likely. I expected to find a channel to follow with maybe with a few short dead ends. But, a hundred yards in it just blows up. I get up on my knees and can see that there are good open channels all around. It looks like a shattered pane of glass. One thing is for sure, this is where most of the Willets are nesting. I flush at least fifty while in here. As the channel dies out, I look around and find channels heading off in all directions. I paddle through a narrow bit of spartina and pick up a new trail, repeat, repeat...  I come out into Nell's Channel pretty close to where I expected, but not in the channel that I expected to. This is worth coming to in the future.

The wilds of Nell's Island

I spend the rest of the time connecting some of my favorite inner marsh routes. A few people are getting started from the marsh launch, but they are paddling the perimeter, as almost everyone that comes here does.

With the high tide, my eye is just a few inches above the tips of the spartina. the heads of Yellow Crowned Night Herons are distributed all through the green expanse. Great Egrets are also out there. I saw a couple of Snowy Egrets in the middle of Nell's Island. And at the central phragmites patch, two Black Crowned Night Herons. Twice I hear the scratchy scolding of what might be a Clapper Rail - once on Nell's and once at the central phragmites patch. If it was a rail, it acted like a Rail and stayed hidden. I've only seen them a couple times.

Willet

I head out and up the river. Even now, boats are just beginning to appear. The fireworks parties must have been ferocious last night.

Wood River, Trip 2

 This might only be my second time in this river. It does not take long for me to wonder why that is. 

I start at Alton Pond, just above the dam and about a 1/2 mile from the confluence with the Pawcatuck. It is an ideal day for canoeing, sunny and with temperatures in the upper 70's and a light wind out of the north. A wide and clear main channel runs through the shallow pond, a big S leading to the river. It is the start of wild flower season in the marsh. Pickerel weed started blooming a week or so ago and now it is all over. It will bloom for a long time as the plants don't all "pop" at the same time. The marsh bees are quite happy about this, working the blossoms as they would with a lavender plant. White and yellow water lilies are also in bloom as are several of the marsh shrubs.

Pickerel weed

After reaching the top of the pond, the forest gradually begins to dominate, overhanging and closing in. But except for a few short passages,the channel is plenty wide and always deep enough. I flush, and will continue to flush, a Great Blue Heron or Osprey every so often. In this terrain, I rarely see them before they take wing. I spot a muskrat swimming a good bunch of swamp grass to its nest. 

The portage at Woodville Dam comes after about 45 minutes of easy upstream paddling. As I finish the portage, I meet a guy putting a kayak in. He puts in at a different spot than I've been using. Aha! not only will this shorten the portage, but I won't have to climb over a metal road barrier anymore.

There is a short pond above the Woodville Dam. The river closes up quickly when you leave the pond. There is a short stretch here where the current runs through the shrubs and it is easy to get side tracked into a small channel with a running current that will close up into impassable brush. One wrong turn and I get back into the river. From here on up, this is a small river running through the forest.  I surprise a whitetail fawn that was resting on a small island. It leaps into the river and swims the narrow channel to make its escape.

Wrong turn

I don't remember much about this section. I don't even remember why or where I turned back on that first trip. Sometimes, increasing current makes the decision, and other times it is log jams that I just don't want to deal with anymore, knowing of course, that I have to re peat them on the way out. Well, the first logjam jogs my memory. It was a double - two logs where I stepped from one to the other while lifting the canoe over. This time I can end run it as someone has trimmed some of the upper branches of the offending tree. The current never builds to anything particularly bad. It is a 2:1 current at worst. I do a 30 foot portage around a second log jam and continue up to a messier tangle. 

The turn around logjam

At this point, I can here the interstate well enough to make out individual vehicles. I sour grape it and decide that if I wrestled over this log jam, I would be returning to it in pretty short order, and I am getting close to being 3 hours out as it is. Time to head back.