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.