After the Storm

A cold day, the night windy and snowy although most of the snow in the air was just that being blown about. The south lagoon is frozen enough to stop the canoe but there is still plenty of open water for the ducks that prefer to stay here. Some of them are sitting on the south facing banks, on the earth warmed by the bright sun of this cloudless day.

The American Coot - Column A on the winter eagle menu

I cut NW across the bay to the birch island, scaring up a snipe as I near. There, I ease up against the cattails noticing but not recognizing fresh mammal tracks coming out to the water. I pause here, the warmth and protection that I find from the wind being what I imagine the snipe seek out as well. I often find them here, but seldom anywhere else. With the cold, the ducks and coots are in a dense flock out in mid bay. I find a crow eating a coot wing, no doubt leftovers from the eagles.

Working along the edge of the north marsh, I spot the head of an otter, and then a second otter pops up.

Lontra canadensis - so cool an animal that they named a country after it.

They are hiding next to a large hollow drift log. I watch, seeing them a few times, but only briefly, until they finally move back into the brush. The log they were near shows their tracks and belly slides. In fact, I notice that all of the open areas on the north marsh are as heavily tracked as a dog run...and there are no dogs out here.

Note the otter tracks and belly slides on the top of the log.

Snow

I wake to a 1/2 inch of snow and rush my breakfast and coffee, grab my gear and drop down to Portage Bay. No ice in this spot, yet, but the cattails and the beaver lodge are beautifully decked in white.

In the crossing under place, the wind is in my face, cold and raw. But, I find the flock of common mergansers that I saw yesterday. So, the full contingent of migratories is now present.

I tuck into the south lagoon, mostly to get out of the wind. Ducks are going about their business as usual, but other creatures are lying low. As I stop to pour a cup of coffee it begins to snow hard, and I just sit and watch nothing happen at the usual rate.

An insecure hooded merganser showing off to the wood ducks

I work up north through the burial island channel, a wooded hallway now filled with falling snow. When I get to the bay, the wind in my face draws me straight across. Outlines of north shore trees are visible through the snow, but details are not. At least not until halfway, when I spot an eagle hunting. It circles, dips, feints, hovers, circles again and on until, finally, it drops to the water and pauses for a moment, a sign of success as the moment is the eagle fastening its talons and killing its prey. Then it rises, and with a bit more effort than normal, flies low across the water to the railroad island.

Winter Counts

I toil through the shallows of the east marsh, made worse by the absurdly low level that the dam keepers have chosen to hold the lake at during the winter. Just as I reach the open water of the bay with its light, cold and raw north wind in my face, it begins to snow. This is a treat for me, a Minnesota boy who misses winter more than anything, and to have it snow while I am canoeing warms my very core more than I can say.
The flapping of wings on the far side of the bay, and a wide line of flapping that it is, signals that there is likely an eagle in the area. When I am about 1/2 way across, I spot two eagles in the railroad island perch. It should be the residents from the north nest, as they would not tolerate any others in that spot. I paddle in, keeping my distance so as not to disturb them, but I overestimate my stealth and they fly off to another part of the bay. They are in hunting mode and will not leave until they have caught a coot, which I am sure they will do. I've watched these two before and they are exceptionally skilled hunters.

Below - beginning the brief hover before attacking.

I pause out of the wind along the north marsh, and when I continue, nearing the north point, I find myself on the edge of an eagle's hunting circle. It has just forced two coots to dive not 10 yards from me and so the eagle circles and hovers over my head. The coots escape, my accidental presence just enough of a distraction to the hunter.

Animal Party

It is a calm day, calm for this time of the year and even more so when one thinks of the windy days that have preceded. I start in the salt water of Elliot Bay, planning on circling the Magnolia peninsula, which includes passing through the locks and portaging from Fishermens' Terminal back to the bay. Paddling under the bluff, I pass the last surviving beach homes and the pilings that mark the locations of long lost ones that were bulldozed by winter rains that calve off hillside in avalanches of mud and trees.

There are buffleheads out here today, and quite a few at that. I expected to find goldeneyes, but see none, yet.

A seal floats high in the water, its back exposed as well as its head. Unusual to see this, an extra moment is needed to recognize what I see. I pass 4 mile rock, a 15 ft tall boulder that is now only 5 ft out of the water....high tide. And, I spot a flock of harlequin ducks. I have never seen a flock of them, only isolated pairs. The female is a good looking duck, for a female duck, but the male is tremendously beautiful. Now, there are several seals about, popping up to watch me, diving when I pick up my camera. As I cover the next 1/2 mile, it is more often than not that I find a seal watching me.

I pass the protected lands of the park, pass the light house and turn the point that it sits on, and head towards Salmon Bay. Ahead, something sits on a rock that is just barely awash and 50 yards from shore. I beach the canoe and walk the shore so as not to disturb it. It is, in fact, a baby seal that has been left on the rock while the mother feeds. This is a common behavior, and one needs to walk carefully on the beaches here because the young seals are often stashed rather carelessly. Nearing Salmon Bay, I turn and head back the way I came, hoping that the animal party will continue. I spot a great many more harlequin ducks - I've never seen so many. Nearing 4 mile rock, the seals pick up my trail. I am being followed...and for the next half mile, more often than not, when I turn my head to look over my shoulder, there is a seal, sometimes 30 ft away, sometimes 10 ft.

Out of Sorts

Yesterday was all wind. A day when canoes stay on shore even in the smallest of waters.

My shoulders still ache from the portage of two days back. On a real canoe trip, an hour or two of paddling might follow a portage and the stiff ache replaced by fatigue.

The blur of a kingfisher leaving for someplace farther from me

Today seems out of sorts. I am neither here nor there and I am never quite happy when I am between. A beaver has begun to work on a maple near the put in, where I find raccoon tracks intermingled with those of a dog or two. I pass through the crossing under place and begin a circle of the bay. All the migratory birds are here, except for the large mergansers. I imagine that I might find them in the rivers still, picking the leftovers of salmon spawning.

In the NE lagoon, a new pile of branches is perched atop the beaver lodge. A dead Canada goose floats in the water with one eye open and skyward. I find beaver and raccoon tracks in the mud, pretty much where I expect to find them. Then, I leave, bucking a headwind across the bay, noticing at one moment that I am the center of a big scattered crescent of ducks.

I sit and eat my lunch in the south lagoon, watching ducks do what ducks do. I spot something small and white darting through the water. It turns left, then right, and then it stops. I take one or two quiet strokes with the paddle, aiming the canoe towards it and then letting the momentum coast me closer, my eyes fixed on the critter to catch any evasive movement. It holds still, frozen to escape notice while I near. It is a duck pinfeather.

On the portage home, a woman comes out of her house to ask me what I am doing. She has seen me several times before, her house and her developing garden sculpture on one of my favorite routes. She is charming and we chat for a good 15 minutes. I am no longer out of sorts.

The Portage

It is a historical craft and if one chooses, they can access forgotten history and forgotten spirits, and it makes no difference whether one uses the worst of plastic tubs or the finest birchbark vessel made by a distant craftsman, or the featherlight curve of miracle fibers. It is all there for the taking. It is the act where the heart of it lies.

A friend's song, again, works in the background, deep in creativity and spirit going somewhere and coming from somewhere else. I hold it in the background so that my own thoughts can come, drawn forward, helped along by the song.

It looks like this, if you drop this into the middle of the city.

I am on the portage, one of several I can choose to use from my house to the water. I am heading to the dead lake on a whim. I portage the 2000 yards with a cart. I am not a fool. Even the voyageurs used carts and rail lines where long portages were used repeatedly.

3/4 of the way to the dead lake, the axle snaps clean off of the cart. I sit for ten minutes pondering my next move. I don't carry a cell phone and don't wish for one now. I find nothing that I can jury-rig the cart with, so I load up, caching the broken cart, and stuffing my pack with the things I usually just toss in the bottom of the canoe. It will be a double carry, the pack, my paddles and the canoe on my shoulders. It is just less than a hundred pounds. It is worse to think of than to perform. I have almost a mile with 250 feet of hill. It is in the middle of the city and it will be a spectacle that I can't observe, head up in the canoe and all. I know that I won't feel much like talking either.

I make it with 3 breaks. At my second pause, a guy walks by and looks at me, "party time," he says. "Yes, party time for sure," I reply.

Funny shit.

Ten Days

I have been out of the water for ten days and a damp yet sunny morning leads me down to the big lake. Ten days in fall, so much I will have missed, the steady colorful decay of the marsh and the trees that edge it, the arrival of the rest of the migratory birds.


Two buffleheads are to my left and another is directly ahead. In the distance, 200 yards, are the white necks of grebes. I've just started.

A person who had just seen one of my canoe videos asked me if I meditated.

The lake on a calm day, when I can just repeat the paddling motion, is the clearinghouse of thoughts that can't be spent.

I pass a solitary scaup, a duck which I seldom see in the big lake.

The song of a friend runs quietly in the back of my mind, the soundtrack, and an appropriate soundtrack for the day. I know it will repeat endlessly seeming new on each repeat.


And finally, I round the point into the bay and find the first flock of buffleheads, the males so handsome in their birch bark colors. The winter flocks, if not complete, are now nearly so.

My marsh has turned gold in the last ten days.