Morning Paddle

I put in at the south end of Portage Bay, maybe 200 yds west of where the portage that gave the bay its name was located. I'm in the water by 7am.
Exiting the east end of the cut, a bald eagle circles to my right, its head down looking for prey.
There are many rowing shells out at this time of the morning on such a nice day.
I enter the channel between the marsh islands and the west shore. A heron guards the entrance, standing tall and erect in a pose that is a cliche'. Then, an eagle sweeps across at a high speed. I think it is duck hunting. It circles behind me and sweeps across once more some 200 yds ahead with its wings set, for sure on the hunt.
Pond lilies are just starting to open for the day. They close each night.
I lodge my canoe into the branches of the winter eagle perch in the NE corner of the bay, disturbing a heron that flies off just 50 yds, waiting for me to leave.
Ducks and geese are beginning to flock in mid bay. Most are adolescents that can't fly, yet. This might explain the eagles duck hunting behavior. A non-flying duck would have to act much like a coot, the eagles favorite winter food, swimming and diving to evade being dinner.
I cross the bay, round the south side of the burial island and take out.

Big Lake

I put in on the big lake and head east, straight into the sun. It is very calm and the water has only the smallest of dimples on its surface.

Halfway across I spot some birds 200 yards to the north. They are smallish grebes moving in an orderly procession to the east. There are eleven. Ten dive, then the last one dives. They surface, then dive again. Having finished writing my observation, I pivot the canoe back towards the east. The grebes have vanished. I watch, but i never see them again.

Near the east shore, a large private Queen Mary approaches at flank speed. The driver alters course and swings wide of me. This is only worth noting because such behavior is so rare.

I paddle into and briefly look around Mydenbauer Bay. I see little of interest. It is all houses and no natural appearing shoreline. So, I head southwest towards the north end of Mercer Island.

I stop in mid-lake, somewhere west of Mercer Island, to eat lunch. The quarter moon is 52 degrees above the horizon and bearing 255 degrees true. Mt. Baker is about 015 degrees true. No one, even now, knows where I am except for me.

Writing from the Canoe

It's a warm cloudy day with occasional showers. For a Sunday in July, there are very few people on the water. I see some newly hatched ducklings - ducks seem to hatch their young over a much longer period of time than do canada geese (the geese hatch earlier and in a 2 to 3 week period). Going clockwise around the bay I pass the mouth of the Montlake Cut and think about how it is now obsolete. When it was opened in 1916, it gave ships access to the 30 sq miles of Lake Washington and let loggers move timber to Puget Sound in large rafts instead of by feeding them through the log flume that was built on top of the ancient canoe portage. Now the cut is just a connection for pleasure boats. But the cost of the cut was one river (yes, with a salmon run) that stopped flowing and the lowering of the lake by ten feet, turning rich wetlands into unusable almost dry land.

Beggar ducks are surrounding me. Time to paddle on.

The lake, or at least the shallower parts, is covered with hunreds of thousands of lily pads. These are the white flowered lily pads, the yellow ones bloomed late in the spring. There were many fewer yellow lily pads. The lake is the highest that I have seen it at this time of year. Perhaps that contributes to more lily pads than normal.
The wind is strengthening.
Kingfishers have a minor convention going in the north lagoon. I see five at one time, but there must be a dozen up here.
Paddling south to pick up the last 55 gallon barrel, the wind is picking up the scent of fresh water. I breath deeply through my nose to catch the flavor of the bay. It reminds me of the pleasant aftertaste when one gets water in their nose while swimming. It is an old smell from a long time ago.

Big Item Day

Summer is back, with wind is down, the sun is out, birds are singing, found some junk in the lake.

I walk the canoe to the south lagoons and from there I head a short mile to a nook where I had spotted some large items tangled in trees and drift logs along the shore of the big lake.

Here's a 50 gallon drum. Not so heavy, but not so easy to be fitted in das boat.





And here's some of my favorite material! A 5 foot long block of styrofoam. It's a miracle material - soaks up about 50 times its weight in water and never drys out! This block weighed in at about 150 lbs, assuming that I can no longer lift a 150 lb person, cuz I'm old.

Oh yeah, that is the high part of the floating bridge that almost never appears in my photos because I think it is an eyesore (and it actually runs through an Indian burial ground - strange, but true)

It's like spring all over again

I put in at the north end of the big lake. I hoped to retrieve some plastic debris from the shoreline, but a 15mph wind out of the south blowing over 15 miles of lake disagreed with that idea.
I headed straight into the wind and small whitecaps to round a long fishing pier. Then towards the Samammish River broadside to the waves. The spray is warm, warmer than the 60 degree air. The mouth of the river is busy with birds. Many ducks with ducklings about and a heron every 200-300 yards. I see several kingfishers also. About a half mile into the river I head up a tributary, Swamp Creek. The log jam in the photo is about as far as one can get. It has more jams upstream of this first one. I collect my garbage here, "heading it off at the pass" before it gets to the lake. It is interesting to see what Lynnwood and Bothel youth are drinking these days, mostly little one ounce bottles of liquor and cheap beer. I return downstream, paddle south on the lake shore and out of the wind for a stretch. Then I head out into the middle of the lake and downwind back to the put-in.

Holiday Heck

It's a holiday weekend. The lake is overrun with boats; big motorboats, small fast motorboats, sailboats and my canoe. The big lake has big waves today. It's not from the wind, which is pleasant, but from boat wakes. I bob and weave in the erratic waves. It is relaxing even though it takes a bit more effort to keep a steady pace and course. I slip through the east marsh and south around the burial island dodging rental canoes and kayaks. Watching the occupants, I realize that they are in foreign territory, unsure and unfamiliar with the surroundings. They don't see the marsh, busy as they are with an unfamiliar craft. Cattails have just put out their dark brown pod. I take out near the cut and walk home.

Mapping the Portage

The day is warming up. On my portage to the lake I note the sun baking the south side of a hill in a pine grove and that the scent of old pine needles is dense in each breath. It is an old smell, something preserved in the memory of my youth.

I put in and talk with visitors from San Jose. The eagles are soaring above us.
A long line of canada geese is swimming ahead. It is 15 adolescents (3/4 the size of an adult) and 3 or 4 adults. It looks like a junior high school field trip.
An otter pokes its head out of the lily pads on the south side of Marsh Island. There seems to be two of them, but the other is back in the brush. It has been awhile since I have seen an otter and I note that I have never seen them in the same place twice.
The breeze is unusually fresh today. It is a comfortable and pleasant wind, just the right amount that you could live with it everyday.
Two cinnamon teal are in the cattails on the north shore. Across the bay, I see the big female eagle circling. Then I notice the male above me. I watch it fly to the perch at the mouth of the NE lagoon.
I head for the big lake and south to a takeout.