The Sound Comes Back

The sound has returned to the salt marsh.  All winter long there was little more than the wind on one's ears.  The osprey came earlier in the spring with their piercing whistles, but it seemed a long wait for the others to arrive.  The sound of willets comes across the marsh even before I can get the canoe in the water, and they remain unseen not much longer than that.  I head up the Neck River and there is always a willet or two or more in sight on the mud bank, difficult to see in the morning fog and blending into the mud and spartina stubble, but when they raise their wings they are hard to not see, the bars of white and dark as obvious as a waving flag.  It is the easiest way to identify them - it separates them from similar looking shore birds.  They nest here, probably attracted to the short grass on a wide open marsh where they can build a nest and watch for predators...it's not the ocean they come for as they also breed in eastern Montana.  It's all willet, sandpiper, and osprey calls with silent white egrets for punctuation.

Two terns fly over with their long thin tapered wings and just a hint of fork at the end of their tails.  They add their call to the mix and go.

I spot a black bellied plover...but I have to look that one up in the book, which says it should be on its spring migration to the tundra. 

I make the turn off of the Neck into Bailey Creek, racing the falling tide to get through the sneak back into the East River before the sneak runs out of water.  When I get to it, the sneak is skinny, the turns are tight.  I put the lightweight cedar paddle away and take out the walnut one, which will survive pushing off the bottom much better.  I can always walk out if I have to, but I get to the high spot and the ebb current changes from fighting me to carrying me along...and the water gradually gets deeper.  I beat the tide by about ten minutes.

Snowy Egret - black bill, yellow feet

I found my arms and legs fatigued this morning.  It had been five days since my last canoe trip and most of those days were good paddling days.  I spent two of them in the big city, working at a museum.  I love being in the museum, but the 20 block walk through the big city, with all its rush and conflict with wildness is something I just endure.  As I canoe up the river, as each bird whistles at me or warns the others of my arrival, the strength returns.  It is getting right with nature.

I find 20 some glossy ibises mixed with some Canada geese at the rockpile bend.  The ibises are busy stabbing their bills into the mud...feeding.  The willets are noticeably fewer here as well.  This is still salt marsh and spartina grass still rules, but it is not far to get to the end of that.  After the next bend I start to find turtles, in rather large numbers, on the mud banks.

The river changes most and quickest as I pass under the stone arch bridge.  Above this bridge, it is a freshwater cattail marsh.  The raucous nature of the salt marsh gives way to a calm humid sleepiness that is still packed with birds and animals, its just that these creatures are quieter.  The egrets are here, the osprey too, and the great blue herons.

a bruiser

I visit the stone dam remains and then paddle a few hundred yards more before the river goes shallow with the low tide.  I turn and paddle back, into a warm fresh headwind, with not much changing except that when I get to the rockpile bend, there are fifty glossy ibises...and they get up all at once and fly a short distance up river.

Something New and Something I Should've Known

A lesser yellow legs walks ahead patiently on the left shore until I drift too near and then it begins its sentinel call, which alerts the nesting osprey on the right shore, and it begins its sentinel whistle.  "Beware the man in the canoe."  I'd say there is no peace, but this is the peace of any wild place, no matter how small.

 

I have both a stiff headwind and a strong current to work against.  The water level is still above normal from last week's rains and the low tide compounds that into a steeper gradient.

Quinnipiac River

Snowy Egret - left bank - What mechanism of evolution has caused the snowy to have a black bill and canary yellow feet while its larger cousin, the great egret has a yellow bill and black feet?  I'm pondering and paddling...and I notice that I've come to a standstill...time to move over into the slower water behind the sandbar.

I notice something that in five hundred some canoe trips I have never noticed before.  A shell midden.  But, not a man made shell midden from an ancient village.  This is an animal made midden...enough shells for a few good meals under a small root ball that would provide good cover from hunting raptors.  My eyes in tune, I find a dozen more in the next half mile.

Then, a herring gull swoops up to 50 or 75 feet and drops a pencil sized stick, and swoops down and catches it in midair.  It repeats this five or six times until it drops the stick nearly straight above me, and it thinks twice about swooping towards the man in the canoe.

Black crowned night heron

After the wild apple tree bend, I begin to push a pair of black crowned night herons up the river, hundred yard hops at a time, until I finally see them no more.  Just after the slate roofing tile midden, I find a third black crowned night heron.  Its right leg is broken and when it flies the damaged limb dangles.  I don't know how this will effect the birds survival, but it seems to move well enough and it doesn't rely on talons to catch food.

At the highway bend, two baltimore orioles criss-cross the river.  I don't care what they are doing, they are too pretty to not watch.

I turn back just after the highway bridge.  Here, the river current is stronger.  It is a lot of careful maneuvering during normal water levels, but today the high and fast water is creating a menagerie of strong eddies and whirlpools and unpredictable currents.  It isn't worth the effort or risk to go farther.

The trip back is fast, the bank speeds by, but the rate is most noticable when the water is shallow and I can see the bottom as the canoe races over.  It was a 3 to 1 river today...2 hours up and about 40 minutes down.

Chain of Lakes - May 2

Two days of wind and rain followed by a day of wind and rain and how has brought the river levels up several feet.  The Quinnipiac and the Farmington are well out of their banks and into the trees and it can be assumed that all the others have followed suit.  Exploring the bottom of the Scantic is put off.

So, I head to a small chain of three lakes, each separated by a short portage, which only serves to make the trip more worthwhile...the act of lifting and carrying the boat from one body of water to the next being what canoes were made for.

The first lake is housed, an older development plan that let people build all too close to the water... but even that seems to have purpose in the journey.  I paddle away from town across and up the egg shaped lake to the far end and towards something farther away.

Just as I reach the top of the lake, a mature bald eagle drops down off the forested hillside and sweeps off leading the way.  I grunt the portage...so short that except for my pack and one paddle, I leave my other gear in the canoe and forgo throwing it up on my shoulders, just manhandling it into the second lake, where I slip off the bank and perform the wetting of the feet ceremony.  This second lake has houses also, but they are back farther from the shore, which is only half developed, and the lake has a dogleg in it with a rather fine stone gazebo at the point, which would bother me if it wasn't such a fine classic design.

The second portage is easier, being just as long, or short as the case may be, but without a hump to carry over.  I guy is fishing there on his lunch break.  We have a short chat before he figures out that I'm not fishing.  Usually, if fishermen figure out that I am canoeing without fishing before talking with me, they treat me as if I was deranged.  If we do it the other way around, I end up being one of the guys.  I do like to pick their brains and get their observations since they have a different focus on it all.  He did not see the bald eagle, if it came this way.

It is this third lake that is the pearl of the trip.  It is S-shaped and has just two or three houses that can be seen from the water.  The first is at the portage and the others are high and away from the lake...and they can and should be ignored.  The lake is shallow enough that I bet one could wade across it most anyplace.  It is also exactly the right depth to grow lily pads, and by June it will be blanketed in them and nearly uncanoeable.  A rocky forested ridge forms much of the east shore while the rest of the boundary is low wetland or swamp.  An osprey perches in a tree on the east shore until I come too close, whereupon it gets up and moves to a tree on the west shore (later, it will reverse the process).    I flush a great blue heron, which moves off no farther than it feels necessary so that it continue hunting without having to watch me. 

When I round the second point on the lake, the wind comes up at my back and pushes me towards the large cedar swamp that is the top of this lake.  I do not like being pushed.  There are a half a dozen
Canada geese and I spot two nests on isolated hummocks that are well out in the lake.  The closest one has eggs but the female has left the nest.  I'm not to blame as she was gone well before I got near...I spotted her head low swimming next to her mate.  I've observed geese before, I've never seen them leave a nest like that unless it has been raided.  I move past as quickly as I can. 

I spend less time in the swamp than I planned keeping in mind the stiff grind that the return trip could become.  The high water makes it a good day to explore the narrow channels that lead into the low cedar tree swamp, but the wind... 

 As I return, I find the mother goose back on her nest and give her a very wide berth - she stays put.  The wind changes directions.  It seems that storm cells that haven't quite yet become storms are moving through the area.  The wind is running around the clock...in my face, at my side, at my back, and then dying off, only to repeat a quarter hour later.  I take one extra turn around the third lake, take my time staring into the forest, watch a heron catch something.

And then I work my way back to town.

Wildness

"In Wildness is the preservation of the World."  - Henry David Thoreau

I came here today because of the beaver dam that I have to cross some two miles or so up the river.  For me, it is, and they are, reminders that there is a something that is greater and untameable.

Thoreu's wildness quote is often misstated, wilderness being placed where wildness belongs.  Wilderness and wildness are two very different things....wilderness being a place, and wildness being a quality... all wilderness being wild, but not all wilds being wilderness, and so forth.

The water in the mill pond is high and when I turn up the brush and tree lined Scantic River, the high water carries more current against me.  But, it also gives me deep water to take full and powerful draws with the paddle, and the upstream progress goes with ease.

We need wildness, even though society most often acts like it is an opponent to be tamed.  If all of the world's wildness were gone, I am sure mankind would create some, and probably by destroying ourselves.

A muskrat crosses my path and dives when I get too near.  A great blue heron takes off from low, and soon, another takes off from a treetop.  There is beaver sign all along the river...felled trees, girdled trees, piles of peeled branches, a bank burrow visible now with the foliage still down, some scent mounds.  It is good.  It is wild.

the dam awash

We need the wild.  We need the hurricane and the earthquake, the landslide and flood and thunderstorm and tornado, the drought and the monsoon.  We need to hear things that are real, and things that aren't when we are alone in the woods at night.  We need to know that there might be a bear in that brush, that wolves exist, that a cougar might be watching from above.  Even though these things might cause some very real harm, the billions that go unscathed need to know that they exist.  We need to be reminded of our place.  We need to be told that in the great scheme of things, we are small.

 The beaver dam is awash.  The spot where I can nose the canoe up against a tree and step out to lift it over is fast water today.  Instead, I step out onto part of the downed tree that forms the foundation of the dam and slide the canoe into the pond.  I pause in the pond for lunch near a tree where two nuthatches are scampering up and down the trunk mining for bugs.  They ignore me.  Perhaps, I am wild.

The current above the pond is faster and water is high.  This section is "the meanders".  It is constantly turning in tight brush lined bends and for me, every stroke of the paddle is an adjustment in direction...a draw stroke, a sweep, a backstroke, a blended mix of all of the above.  If I was paddling with someone else, we'd probably spend a lot of time up against the brush.

I turn back at a fallen tree that requires a portage to continue. 
We need the fallen tree to remind us that we are not in charge.

The Ritual

I turned right, headed towards the Lieutenant River put-in, planning to explore the higher reaches that I didn't on my last trip, but as the put-in came into view, I made a u-turn and headed the opposite direction.  It seemed at that last moment that it was too soon to return to the Lieutenant, maybe the memory still too fresh to make the section that I would have to paddle again something different to me.

I stop at Pilgrim Landing, across the channel from Calves Island, not far downstream from Lord's Creek and I put in from the gravelly driftwood strewn beach.

I explored some of Lord's Cove not long ago, but as large marsh areas go, I like to figure out the scheme of the islands and channels and there reference to landmarks...or else one gets lost...a second trip is preferable to a grueling day of being lost.  I have one destination, the odd round opening in the marsh known as Coult's Hole.  After that, I have the northernmost parts of the cove to visit.

Add caption

I paused to jot some notes in "hunting blind bay", a wide open expanse of water boardered mostly by phragmite marsh and six or eight equally spaced duck hunting blinds.  There are a few osprey around, a pair of black backed gulls, and a fine line of cormorants sunning on a drift log.

I am frequently asked how often I go canoeing.  And, while there is a number, an average yearly rate, a distance, and who knows how many other statistics, my preferred response is that I try to canoe often enough so that I am in my canoe when I dream.   That is the point when my canoe trips cross over from a "something" to a ritual.  It is the point when I cease to be a visitor and become part of the landscape.  I know no other way to do it than by being there, a lot.

Mute swan nest..no eggs, yet.

I find Coult's Hole and recognize that I touched its far side on the earlier trip without knowing it....it is only a round shape on a map.  On the north side of the hole, I hear my first marsh wrens of the spring.  I spot one briefly as it flies between clumps of cattails.  With a bit of patience, the call of another takes my eyes to it as it perches on the side of a cattail.  They have not yet begun building nests, so they seem timid, preferring to hide.  Once the males begin building nests, I suspect they will be much bolder, staying exposed and singing endlessly to protect their turf and attract a mate.

marsh wren

The wind has shifted when I finally decide to return, and the predicted NW wind has been replaced by a stronger unexpected SE wind that blows right in my face at some 15mph.  It is a bit of work paddling through waves that are stacking up - current against the wind, until I make my way across hunting blind bay where I can paddle in the lee of Goose Island and Calves Island until I cut back and downwind to the take out.

Returning to the small river

I put in from a muddy ramp just below the bridge on the Lieutenant River no more than a mile above the Connecticut River on a calm and sunny day, the weather being what brings me here to an open marsh so close to the ocean.  As soon as I have taken 20 strokes, I pass some fishermen and a couple of osprey, all of which have the same goal, although fishing must be tougher for the osprey in the silt laden water of this tributary.

The Lieutenant River

Once at the big river, I turn seaward and follow the east shore just as far out from shore as I need to paddle without striking bottom.  There are many osprey either on nests or in the air.  Occasionally, I flush a mallard, some buffleheads or some scaups.

Osprey nest in a rootball on Great Island

Low tide prevents me from entering the smaller side channels, so I stay in the big water.  The area had been recommended to me, but as is usually the case, it's a little less interesting to me than to others.  It is "big", and it looses the intimacy of smaller rivers and marshes, although the sandy beach out near the mouth is probably a fine place for a picnic, if one is into picnics.  Near the mouth of the river, I make the ten minute crossing over to the Old Saybrook side aiming for the taller of the two lighthouses.  The strength of the current and swirls from the tide and river colliding show that this side of the river is the deep water...the traffic lane, although there is not a single boat in sight on this day.

I head back upstream, but the shallows keep me a hundred yards out from shore.  Even with that taken to consideration, there is far less wildlife on this western bank of the river.  When it comes time, I cross back and into the Lieutenant River once more.

The Lieutenant River

I pass my put-in and continue upstream with a tailwind and a flooding tide current, thinking about returning at each bend, but wondering enough about what is beyond the next turn that I keep going, mentally and physically running from one point of land to the next.  This is a delightfully fine river, bounded on the sides by still grey deciduous trees and rocky hillsides. And, finally I get to a wide spot where the river will next become narrow, and here three osprey circle overhead and hover at times, fishing in much clearer water than I found downstream.  A half a dozen times I watch an osprey drop from a hundred feet, plunging into the water after fish...climbing out to resume the hunt, until the sixth... a catch.  And off it goes.

Oprey in a dive

And off I go, back to where I started.

Confluence of the West River and the West River

For two years we have been trying to meet.  It was first supposed to happen in Seattle, but she moved east.  Not long after, I moved east, not near, but not too awfully far away.  Then a year and a half of misses went on....bad weather postponing the canoe trip meeting numerous times.

Finally all the things aligned.

We met for the first time in the garbage patch park on the edge of the West River.  The West River is a New Haven urban river, but once one runs the gauntlet of abused park land, it becomes a rather scenic trip that few people bother to try. 

We start in the afternoon.  The water is high...spring levels with a high tide that passed by an hour earlier.  Our first bird sighting is a very large wild turkey.  A and I glide over shallows that I've had to wade in the past.  The current isn't too bad, and the downed blocking trees of previous trips have deteriorated enough that we have easy passage with just a minimum of limbo gymnastics.  Osprey fly overhead, not as a rare occurance, but rather a quite normal one.

We talk about things and become familiar.  And, we talk with people on the banks who all seemed to be surprised to see a canoe.   We get to my previous high point, a place where the river becomes shallow under West Rock.  But, it is more the current that turns us back.  To continue up is to wade, and that's not the point of this trip.

We spot one kingfisher, a couple of wood ducks, two egrets, a great blue heron, several red wing blackbirds, another wild turkey, a muskrat, and a few Canada geese.   And we take out as the sun is beginning to go to the long shadow light.