Passion

I put a morning plea out for someone to coax me out into the canoe.

My friend J from Eugene is in town and rings my house in the morning to take me up on my offer of a canoe trip.  It has been almost two years since we've seen each other.  Time in a canoe, with only the distractions that one should be distracted by, is second to none.  We do the portage down to the south lagoons.  Lotus and lily pads have begun to fill in the surface where the depth is just right (those plants grow best in water that is about 2 ft deep).  Migratory waterfowl have long since left the area.  Ducklings are hatched and swimming.  Goslings have already taken the coloring and patterns of adult Canada geese.  They are recognizable because they haven't reached full size, yet.

We circle around the burial island so that I can point out the numerous beaver scent mounds.  Then we edge along cattails, a mixture of old weathered spears of last year and the new green ones of this.  It takes a push with my foot to squeeze back into the big dead end.  That is proof of the ever moving cattail bog - the opening half of what it once was.  No one else will be back there, maybe no one for the whole summer, but we find a mother duck and ducklings, and a great blue heron back in the beaver forest.

We cross the bay to explore the north shore and while returning stop at Number 2 Island (which is now in capital letters because it does appear on Google Maps) where I show her a marsh wren nest.  A marsh wren comes out to sing to us, or at us as the case may be.

3-Stars and J

Our last stop is with 3-Stars, who when I call to him looks up and says, "Hey Scott, I got something for you."  He disappears into his boat and returns with a plastic cup.  Inside is a paper napkin and inside the napkin is a tiny blue-green egg with brown speckles.  He found it on the ground a day or two earlier and hung onto it for me.  I am very pleased to have such a specimen to add to my collection, but it is not so much the egg as much as it is something given to me by 3-Stars.  Our conversations about the life of the marsh have been running for some two years.  We share a passion.

Thirty-five Years

My dad joins me on today's canoe trip.  He is always there in spirit, on most every trip, and most of the time his red wool jacket is on my back, but today he is there for real.  I select for him one of my hand-carved paddles, a birch one with a map of the Yakima River wrapping around the blade and handle.  We start the portage.  I have told him, in the past, how important the portage has become.  While the marsh remains my private experience, except on the rare occasions when I have someone with me, the portages often are all about meeting people.  We go only two blocks before we have a good full chat with a neighbor who tells me that she follows my blog.  I invite her to come out sometime.  One more block and we run into H and stop to talk with her.  I tell dad, "we're already at our quota and we still have a mile to go."

It has been at least 35 years since we shared a canoe.  I don't remember the last time, but I do remember several other trips.  I remember the Little Ottertail River, stopping at a huge beaver dam to swim in a lake called, Ice Crackin'.  I remember walking canoes up the shoreline of Many Point Lake so that we wouldn't have to fight the wind on the crossing.  I remember sleeping squeezed together under a canoe in a rainstorm next to the St. Croix River.  I remember, and it might have been the last time, a duck hunting trip in one of the tippiest canoes known to man.  But, I think that this is the first time that I have been in the stern.  That is the position of steering, it is the guide's position and this is the first time I have been the guide for us.

My canoe is a bit more tender than most and dad's balance is less than perfect since he had a stroke some 7 years ago.  He's not comfortable in the bow as we push off from shore. 
After 30 ft, he says, "that's enough, I'm done." 
I say, "What?"
We cruise another canoe length or two and he says, "let's keep going."
I had heard everything he said perfectly fine.

He trades his paddle for his camera.  I paddle alone most of the time and need no help to move or guide a canoe.  If anything, the canoe moves better with another person just sitting there anyway.  And, I enjoy playing the role of guide and having the bow person do whatever they prefer to do.  Dad takes photos of ducks and geese, and the beaver scent mounds.  It is a fine trip all through the east marsh.  I use my names for the places so that when he reads my blog, he'll have more than just a photo in his mind, but the real three dimensions of it all.

We take out near the ancient portage.  There is a daycare group there, and before we get out we are enlisted to retrieve a boat that the children have made.  We get little purple flowers in exchange.  They are fascinated by the canoe and batter us with questions and stories.  I think that this might be dad's favorite part of the trip.

Canoes they have...

Canoes they have, but these are not my people.  I find a huge party of canoeists at the put-in.  There must be a dozen whitewater canoes, round and bulbous, perfect playthings for whitewater - specialty boats that aren't much good for anything else.  It's too many people for me and I load my canoe quickly and make a get-away to the north.

Red wing blackbird

Two geese are on the rockpile.  I drift on the wind for a closer look and when I look up from fetching my camera, they are in the water.  There is no nest yet and I wasn't close enough to scare a mother goose off of her eggs.  Next, I paddle the few yards north and ease my canoe into the break of Broken Island.  This is a favorite nest site and I want to be careful not to scare a goose off of a nest.  I find one sitting on a nest eying me from behind a tree.  I back away.  The mate is not anywhere in site and it occurs to me what has been going on.  Before the eggs are laid, the pair will be aggressively defensive about their nest sight with anything or anyone that comes near.  Once there are eggs, the mate keeps a distance from the nest.  His presence would signal the existence of a nest to any predator with the female pretty much forced to stay put atop of the eggs.

There are quite a few great blue herons around today.  I see a half dozen just in the short channel by the West Islands.

There is a new goose nest on the West beaver lodge.  No eggs, yet, and the pair are together on the lodge, but she will lay soon, I bet.

I see a woman and a boy out bird watching by the north point.  I pull in for a chat since they are standing about 10 feet from a beaver scent mound and almost no one ever knows what those dirt piles are.  We have a nice talk.

One of the big flat backed turtles from the north marsh (18-20 inches long)

I pass two guys fishing from $15000 of boat with a 7000 hp outboard motor as I paddle into the NE lagoon.  I flush a ringneck duck.  This year, there won't be a goose nest in the lagoon because the little island has gone awash in the high water.  But, there are about 3 dozen turtles sunning themselves on drift logs.  As I leave I spot a cinnamon teal.

There is a new goose nest on the NE corner of the #1 railroad island.  I've never seen a nest here before.

I cross the bay to check for a nest on the Big Lodge.  It was the first nest of the year last spring, but there is no nest, yet.

In the east marsh, I head down into the big dead end just to listen to redwing blackbirds, marsh wrens, and from an unknown distance, the whooping howl of the tiny pied billed grebe.  The grebes are making quite a racket today.  Few will know what that sound is.

The workbench lodge goose nest is abandoned.  The pair is not too far off.  There are no eggs in the nest.

I pass by the canoe club - it is a class - a kind of paint-by-number canoe paddling thing that I've never believed in, but then again, I'm not in the class.  It does not look like fun.

I head to Portage Bay.

The Last Spring and the First Nest

I leave the house on my portage thinking about this being my last spring here in the marsh.  If all goes as planned, next spring will be in a different marsh in a river that is new to me and that seems to be an awful long ways off.  It takes little time and few steps for waves of emotion to overtake me.  At times, the waves come as tears and I am thankful to not be having the usual conversations that occur on portages.  At one point, I block the narrow street as I walk, two cars ahead and two cars behind, waiting for me to get out of the way.  But, instead of being angry, they smile or wave when I finally let them pass.  I take my pencil and notebook out when I get to the big cedar that sits on the outside of the big bend in the switchback section of the Harrison Portage.

The big lake is calm under the high thin layer of clouds.  It is a grebe day here, for some reason.  There is one pied billed, a pair of large westerns, and a dozen or so of the mid-sized, which are either eared or clark's...I cannot distinguish them without the binoculars that I never carry.  An eagle appears sweeping out from behind a cottonwood.  A male bufflehead bobs his head in a dance designed to impress his mate.  Four cranes stand on the opposite shore, their long necks visible from this distance as they lift metal, gravel and cement for the new bridge.  They are the harbingers of doom for the marsh as I know it.  Folly on a dozen counts.  It is one thing that makes me look forward to this being my last spring.

as far as I can go into the beaver forest

I stop at the big lodge to check for a goose nest.  There is no nest yet, but there is a pair of Canada geese staking claim.  I push as far as I can back into the beaver forest and the two geese fly in and land and then watch me through the hummocks and wood tangles.  As I paddle out, one of them comes straight at me, near hovering just a few feet away, making itself look quite huge.  It is a threat for sure, and it lands and then circles me closely, the glare in its eye can not be mistaken for anything other than warning.

The cattail island of the east marsh is once again on the move with the high water.  I find it wedged under the bridge and the western channel has opened up once more.  Paired geese are all around in this area, but none have a nest, yet.  At the opening of the big dead end, there is a male marsh wren on either side, announcing there many nests.  I find one that is unusually out in the open, for a marsh wren nest.

marsh wren nest

As I near the workbench lodge, I spot a nesting goose.  It is high on the south side, very close to where a pair nested last spring.  She does not move a feather as I observe.  Because of this first nest, I head over to Broken Island, a usual nesting spot, but the geese there have not nested.

I take out and have the first of several conversations with people as I portage home.  Everything is as it should be today.  It is enough.

Make up for lost time

It is a day to make up for lost time.  Other projects, of both art and life have required my attention.  It seems that I have had little time for my canoe, but I know that it is temporary.  M joins me today.  She is a poet and has a reputation for taking on difficult tasks.  I plan two very long trips and wait for the weather to decide which will happen. 

north of the lighthouse, in calm air

NOAA predicts light winds, so the trip is out to the sound in a very nice spring day.  We walk the Dead Lake Portage and M holds her own in conversation...we are well matched for enthusiasm.  At the put-in, I coach her briefly on paddling, but just so that she understands the rhythm.  And as we cross the lake heading west, she shows herself to be natural at paddling.

Our route takes us west through the Fremont Canal and to Fishermen's Terminal.  Wind has started to come up, so we will do our portage south to Elliot Bay now, rather than later and in the opposite direction.  This will give us a tailwind in the water.  We roll the canoe through a drive through at a coffee shop.  We are civilized.

Elliot Bay is already quite wavy.  There are small white caps coming at our side as we paddle out to 4-mile Rock.  It is enough to slosh water over the gunwales at times, just enough that while M looks for interesting things, I keep an eye on the waves as they come in.  The water is cold and I keep close to shore.

At 4 mile Rock, we turn more downwind.  On the steering end of things, I stay busy as waves overtake us, but the waves ease some and we paddle close to shore, not only for safety, but because this is where the interesting stuff happens.  I spot a seal.  There are quite a few golden eyes around, and I spot a pair of harlequin ducks flying off.

The water is much smoother once we round Discovery Point, and we can stop and rest.  There is a flock of Brandts here along the shore.  They are a goose that migrates through here, nesting at the Arctic ocean.

We get to the locks just as a load of boats exits into the sound.  So, we have a short wait, and then follow a fishing boat in.

Rather than take-out in the dead lake, we continue north and into Portage Bay.  The walk home is the same distance, with only an additional two miles of paddling, 22 miles total.  But more important, we fool ourselves into thinking that we have gone someplace...even though we have.

on a whim

The day turns out nice, unexpectedly.   K takes up my offer to go canoeing, our first trip out together.  We portage down to Portage Bay with a plan of visiting all of the beaver lodges in Portage and Union Bays.  I send K over to examine a very large cottonwood that the beaver felled this winter while I pack the canoe.  It was a good 60 ft tall with a 2 ft diameter at the base...it is a good example of their capabilities.  We start with the bank burrow on the west side of Portage Bay, which is accessible again now that the water has come up in the lake.  I aim the canoe for the familiar deep channel that leads up to the lodge, but we run up on the mud.  The beaver have changed their deep channel location (constant use and the dragging of branches back to the lodge creates a 3 ft dredged water path for the beaver where the rest of the water may only be several inches deep) about 20 feet south.  We stop briefly at the main lodge and then head north and through the crossing under place with a so-so headwind.

New lodge construction on Marsh Island

We pass an immature bald eagle on the west shore and then I stop us at #2 island to see if we can spot the marsh wren that was working here yesterday.  K spots the first wren nest of the spring.  I had seen the wren pushing cattail leaves around, but now there is a thin round shell of cattail fluff.  It isn't completed, we can still see through gaps in the construction, but it will be finished soon.  The male wren will build 10 to 20 nests here to attract one female.  She will fix one of them and lay her eggs.

There are still some herons gathered near the mouth of Ravenna Creek.  Six are on the point and we flush a few more.  This is the end of the spring congregation that goes on here early each March.

At North Point, I have K sample a beaver scent mound.  She agrees that the castoreum is pleasant and sweet.  It is a smell you never forget.  It is a smell that you catch on the wind every once in awhile in beaver territory.

We visit the NE lagoon before crossing the bay to the Big Lodge, which gets its name from the fact that it is 30 feet across.  There is enough water to get back into the beaver forest behind the lodge, but new low branches stop us all too soon.  So, I steer us to plan B, the sedge meadow.  It is a twisting path through hummocks and cattails, poling and nudging the canoe through to a meadow of sedges that lies hidden and surrounded by cattails.  The new 520 bridge will wipe it away, but it is still here.  K is a particularly good canoe partner.  She is up for crossing all the way through, which involves bog walking on floating cattail mats...and the chance of getting wet.

We do the big dead end, we take all the cattail short cuts, K spots the hidden lodge, geese are setting nest territory on the workbench lodge, we stop and chat with 3-Stars who reports pied billed grebes doing the mating dance thing (I've yet to see this)...K is a good partner, we just keep going until we seem to have no where else to go...delightful.

We always trade swamp data

I head north off of the Harrison Portage in sun and calm weather.  Solo in my canoe, it is a dozen or so strokes on one side, then a dozen or so on the other.  The switch comes not after a count, but when it feels right.  The sound of a dozen eddies swirling and falling behind comes to one ear, then the same sound repeats to the other, only the eddies know that they are going in opposite directions.  With each switch, an arc of drops spatters the water and crosses the bow of the canoe.

An eagle perches above the first street-end park.  Goldeneyes float ahead or out in the deeper lake.  Greasy black cormorants fly past heading south down the lake.  Ten geese come by looking from a distance like more cormorants, but honking their identity.  Every so often, a spatter of drops crosses the bow of the canoe.

I circle the bay and then some, a figure 8 created by curiosity that isn't satisfied with just a circle.  Redwing blackbirds and kingfishers convince me to go to the usual marsh wren nesting sites and, each time, I find a male declaring his territory.  At #2 island, the wren is already starting a nest, pushing cattail leaves together, the foundation for the cattail fluff that will form the insulated shell. 

The water is higher than usual for this time of year.  I can once again go anywhere.  I visit the big dead end, I pass through the summer sneak, I take the bending cutoff through the east marsh.  It's the way that the lake should be.

The partially built and abandoned beaver lodge on Marsh Island has grown. New beaver, recently kicked out of nearby lodges (they do that each year) have moved in.  They will need luck if they are to stay.  The lodge is very close to and in the territory of the Workbench Lodge.

I stop and talk to 3-Stars just before ending the trip.  It has been a rough last week in the marsh with all the bad weather, but he is well.  We trade our swamp data, as usual.