The Yellow Duck

It's a fine sunny day.  I watched the sun rise up over the sound, an enormous orange ball looking very much like the fire that it is.

I put in at the feral cat park, pushing my way out through a hundred feet of shattered panes of ice, the remnants of a recent cold snap.  A moderate breeze and the last hour of rising tide helps me as I paddle upstream.  To be honest, the tide creates more current in this section of the big river than does the river itself.  I hug the shore, as usual, both because that is where there is the most life and because the banks and trees or marsh soften the current and the wind.

 

The government has been doing some phragmite control and a large patch of marsh has been cut to the surface to shock the plants so that a herbicide next year will kill them.  Phragmites is the baleen of the coastal rivers.  A seriously bad invasive reed, it grows closely spaced and filters out and holds floating debris every bit as well as it discourages birds and animals from having access.  The big mowed patch is loaded with plastic debris that has accumulated over several years, if not longer.  One normally doesn't see so much garbage, but in the winter sparseness, with the plants gone dormant, it is easy to spot.  I could easily fill my canoe to the brim in several areas without having to get more than a hundred feet from the boat.  It's a bit gross.

I try to focus on the better things, the common mergansers out in midstream, the Canada geese tucked up on this side of the island while two hunters walk the other shore, and a few buffleheads here and there.  There's not many birds around today.  Sometimes out here, I spot bald eagles and red shouldered hawks, and of course a variety of birds that migrate through. 

#2365 in situ

At the downstream end of Great Flats (some of the islands are referred to as "flats"), I spot a yellow plastic duck.  Retrieving it, I find that it has been numbered 2365 on the bottom.  I suppose it is a runaway from a local rubber duck race, where some well meaning organization tosses hundreds of plastic bath toys in the water.  There's something not right about that.

I collect the specimen, and round Great Flats to return, not wanting to fight more of a wind than I already have.  Time to figure out where the specimen originated.

East and West

I thought about the Hammonasett River, a river I've not yet been to and a chance to explore some new waters.  But, as I drove nearer, I thought instead that I'd like to return to a familiar place at an unfamiliar time of the year, an exploration of time rather than place.

I put in just upstream of the mouth of the East River in the summer nesting grounds of a thousand willets, who are nowhere to be seen unless you happen to be in South America, but instead of going upstream into known territory, I turn down and out onto the sea, so inviting in the sun and calm.  And, I round the wide rocky point to the mouth of the West River, new water to me.  The fog follows me in, catching me not too many hundreds of yards upstream.  It's thick only for a few moments and remains translucent, softening the man-made landmarks that edge parts of the marsh.  It's the dream time of places farther away than here. 

A hiker on the north side scares up a hundred and fifty Canada geese who go on honking their displeasure at the disturbance until they are out of earshot.  I spook three buffleheads and a few black ducks. 

A large motor yacht lies at a steep list near the forest edge and across three hundred yards of spartina salt marsh, a relic of the last hurricane that has been allowed to stay where it landed for some reason.  If it was a wooden boat, it might harbor more interesting spirits than does the fiberglass hull that it is.

When the sun burns through, the marsh continues to steam, a ground fog drifting with the light wind and rising as if coming from dozens of unseen warm pools. 

The fishing boat, 'Night Heron'

Past the railroad bridge, I surprise quite a few hooded mergansers.  They are most distrustful of the canoe and take flight at two hundred yards or more.  The next bridge is for the scenic coastal road into the town of Guilford and it is far too low for the canoe to pass under.  With an easy portage across the road I could continue upstream, but I am satisfied enough to come back later and turn back.

I pass my put in on the East River and continue upstream against an ebbing tide that is nearing the steep part of the curve. 

The shack at the mouth of the East River

When I think that the labor is not producing much speed, I stop looking at the bank and watch bits of vegetation speed past in the water.  The current is moving pretty good.  Just short of the railroad bridge, I spot an upside down house in the mud.  This is a most unusual specimen and although it is rotting some, it is a finely made structure with paned windows and metal scroll work holding up the porch roof over the front door.

 
I collect it, of course.

Rain Day

It's raining lightly with high tide still to come, but not far off.  The wind is light as I start the portage, shouldering my canoe and looking out at the waters as I walk and seeing small waves without any white on the peaks.  I decide to paddle down to Gulf Pond, having not been there in a very long time.

The wind is out of the south and light as it is, the eight miles of open water gives it time and energy to build a small onshore wave.  Near shore, near the safety of shore that I paddle in during winter, the wave is a messy chop no more than a foot high, but constantly irregular in shape and size.  As I near Pond Point, the shore becomes a seawall.  It is a neighborhood known as Point Beach, but this is a name given to it by people who look out from land.  From the water, in a small canoe, it is just a seawall and the registered name fits poorly.  The onshore waves come in at an angle and echo back off of the wall at an equal and opposite angle.  Waves add, peaks double and wave troughs descend twice as normal, and there is everything in between, and there is no weather side to watch because the waves come from all directions.  Clapotis - the omnidirectional jumble. 

I round Pond Point into Calf Pen Bay and the waters mellow into simple foot high waves out of the south.  I follow the shore around the bay in its relative kindness, the rain still light and steady, but I rethink the trip to Gulf Pond.  There will be more chop around the next point and it is slow steady work paddling in such stuff.

I turn back at the south end of the bay, stopping for a moment in the mouth of Calf Pen Creek.  The tide is still flooding and the clearance under the bridge is barely enough, so I exit the creek not wanting to be stuck up there waiting for the water to drop (I could portage out, but I'd probably have to cross private property to do so). 

I spot a loon in the bay as I head south. 
I find three male long tailed ducks off of Pond Point.

The clapotis is still having its fun when I get to the seawall, but beyond that the sea has calmed some as the wind is either dropping or shifting direction.  It tempts me to stay out.  I resist.

The Phase Change

A big cold snap has kept me shorebound for too many days.  But, it wasn't the cold that kept me out of the canoe, but rather the wind that spun off of that mass of dense air and arrived here at twenty plus miles per hour for several days.  As the arctic mass that froze the midwest moved east, we had single digit temperatures with snow and wind and freezing rain.  These things change the view.  So much happens near the freezing temperature of water.

The weatherman's optomistic prediction of light winds and sun puts me in the canoe.  And while the sun is there, the NW winds are a little stronger than expected, but offshore that they are, they just push me about some and don't produce any waves.

Though no longer windbound, today I am tidebound.  I set out in a very low tide from the rocky beach and head north up the coast paddling from tip to tip along the boulder groins that were built to collect sand and reduce erosion, in part so that people could build houses ridiculously low and close to the water.  But, I am completely content to be paddling in three feet of water, if I can.  The small tidal rivers are closed off to me, both by tide and by ice.  Yesterday, I walked past Calf Pen Creek and at low tide a slumping salt ice blanket had sagged and molded itself over the bottom of the creek.  Salt ice is flexible and when the supporting water drains out from under it, it does not break into sheets and plates, but instead it just sags, very much like a thick blanket.  When I passed Gulf Pond, I noticed the large number of waterfowl that had taken refuge, many of their other preferred places being frozen over.  There were even a couple of common mergansers in the mix, a bird that I associate with fresh water rivers.  Gulf Pond would've made a good trip if the wind direction was different.  The shoreline and a good fraction of the pond were filled with pancake ice while the harbor was frozen over thin enough for the fishing boats to break through, but probably too stout for a canoe.

I paddle north toward the Oyster River.  Enroute, the flag rocks are alpine, projecting out of the low tide and snow capped above the high tide line.  The shore birds that I normally see among the rocks are not present, except for the sea gulls.  A small flock of scaups is farther out, noticable because it is a small flock.  Scaups are normally in flocks of 300 or more.

I stop and turn back at the point south of the Oyster River still 600 yards from the mouth.  The shallow bay is mostly sand at this tide level.  To go any further is to walk.  So, I paddle back.  It was all I needed.  All I needed was to know it was there.  I take out and sit in the sun on a boulder drinking coffee and finishing my notes.   A long tailed duck comes unusually near, not seeing me behind the canoe, and then it moves back looking over its shoulder to the sixty yards that the species seems to find comfortable.

Calf Pen Creek

The first bird drifts 50 yards off of the mast, a sixty foot tall wood pole, actually a whole tree bole, that serves as a flag pole for a neighborhood.  Old sea charts show a mast in that area as a navigation landmark for ships.  It's possible that the mast has been replaced as need be since those days, a holdover from a tradition of not fooling around with seafaring landmarks.  I have to look at the bird several times, distant as it is and the waves not letting me hold a glass on it, but finally, it turns its head just so and I can see white on the throat and breast and with its head held as it is, I know its name to be, Loon.  It dives and stays under for a good part of a minute surfacing fifty yards farther out - loon.

In the distance, the terminal moraine of the Wisconsin Glacier -  AKA, Long Island

Four ducks float together a 100 yards out to sea.  Dark shapes in a bobbing chop, their names go unknown.

But, just after I have passed the mast, I see a lone male long-tailed duck bouncing in the chop, the color pattern unmistakable.

There is often a chop of unknown origin as I round this short section of shore coming up to Pond Point.  Today is just that.  But, as I sit near the point, it seems that the water is flowing north, a possible trick on the eyes played by the light wind and shallow waters.  But, as I write some notes, I see that I am, in fact, drifting slowly back.  Apparently, in the ebbing tide, the waters in the small bay at Calf Pen Creek sweep around the point rather than out to sea, as common sense would tell me it would.

I work my way into Calf Pen Creek, paddling upstream against the draining tide and using the underside of the low bridge to propel myself past the narrowest and fastest flow.  It is quiet, as usual in the small tidal marsh.  Just past the second bridge, I sight a kingfisher on an old piling before it has time to get up and scold me.  Rounding the next bend, I surprise two hooded mergansers, spot two Canada geese, and flush a few black ducks and mallards.  Tracks in the mud show that there were more geese here, and I find them as I spin the canoe to exit, a dozen geese watching me from where the first two were...and a hooded merganser swims out of a side channel, spots me, and flies off.

Refuge

The harbor, the winter harbor at Milford is buffleheads and thin sheets of ice here and there, that the canoe knifes through with ease.  They are just thick enough to hold the canoe from drifting with the light breeze while I write and drink some of the hot mint tea that I brewed as a last minute thought before beginning my portage from the house.

The harbor is small with a narrow inlet, a well protected place that would have been good refuge for a 17th century ship and it is at its best in winter when nearly all of the yachts, weary from their ten or twelve days at sea last summer, are hauled out on land and shrink wrapped in white plastic.  The winter harbor is refuge for the working fisherman, and my canoe, and wintering ducks.

S asked me if I get lonely, having moved across the country from my friends and being slower than she is at making contacts (largely because I work alone).  I paused, thinking about what "lonely" means.  I miss friends and family, but I can't see myself fitting into the definition of lonely.  I've traveled solo often enough to know that the first few days of "lonely" are just a period of adjustment to being "alone"...and alone is not lonely.  I tell her that when I feel out of sorts, the closest thing to lonely that I can think of, it is time for me to go to the canoe.  There is no "lonely" in the canoe... lonely is being surrounded by people and having no one to talk to.  The canoe is all about "do", and "see", and "think".  In fact, "think" turned out to be so dominant in the canoe that I started writing this journal.  The canoe is my refuge.

eared grebe

I take few photos in the days overcast, but I take few photos because the wind comes up as I leave the harbor and I paddle home in a trailing chop.  It is a chop that would be of no consequence or interest on most days, but when the sea temperature dips below 40 degrees, nothing is to be ignored.

Long Tails

the put-in boulder

A silvery grey calm is the salt water today and I start off from the beach, such as it is, somewhere between low and mid tide.  Birds are visible as black silhouettes from a half mile or more in these conditions.  With the calm, a distant call is all it takes to put name to the shape.  A loon lets out a short whoop, then the charming chatter of long-tailed ducks begins to arrive...uh..uhuh (repeat endlessly).  Outside of the bay at Calf Pen Creek, twenty or so long-tails are busy feeding.  They dive and stay down for 20 or 30 seconds before surfacing.  Unlike loons, which usually travel 50 or more yards horizontally, the long-tails come back up to the same place that they started.

Halfway out to Charles Island, in the navigation channel which I suppose is somewhat deep (but not too deep as there is an old oyster boat working its allotment nearby), I find more long-tails, in fact, more than I have seen in one place before, although I have only been familiar with them for a year.  There are four dozen, some in a loose flock and others scattered one or two hundred yards away.  The noise is fantastic.

I paddle the island counter-clockwise, having realized that I have always gone around it the other way.  The tombolo, the half mile long bar that connects the island to the mainland, is well submerged and I coast over not far from the island, which is rimmed in golden spartina grass and centered with grey winter deciduous trees that, during summer, are home to hundreds of herons and egrets.  Completing the circle, I find that most of the long-tails have moved off and that four brant geese have arrived.  These are the first brants that I've seen since spring.

Back out in the navigation channel, I find a dozen long-tails, and a dozen more when I get to the point.  The bulk of the flock is off Calf Pen Creek bay.  Each time they move they leave a few more ducks behind, their flock apparently based more on convenience than allegiance.