Where the mixing is

Me and A put in on the west channel of the Snohomish River, a couple miles up from salt water.  This is all new terrain for A and an area I have paddled in only two or three times before.  This is the Snohomish Estuary, an area where salt water and fresh water mix.  Currents change directions with the tides - and the changes are often counter-intuitive.  The morning clouds have broke leaving a sunny afternoon.  Low tide was about 6am and the afternoon and evening high tide for today is separated by a low tide that barely drops at all.  We should not see any great changes in current during the trip.

As we put the canoe in the river, there are seven osprey soaring overhead with a whistling chorus that is as striking as their flying.  The estuary is one of the best places that I've been for seeing osprey.  Then we head up river a mile to Dead Man Slough where we explore a half dozen abandoned boats.

this hulk is a 50+ ft fishing boat

  Then we paddle off toward Spencer Island.  The island had once been farmed, but the county has purchased the southern section and torn down the dikes that kept the water out to return it to estuary.  It is here that the trip always takes a wilder feel.  It is easy to look at the sparse swamp forest, dead snags and stressed evergreens and imagine that you are much farther away.  These are the ghostly forests that one thinks of as being geography of the farther north. With the moderately high tides we will be able to paddle the interior of the island both through old farm drainage channels and where the former fields are flooded.  We try to enter where I've gone in the past, but drift logs have made the entry more difficult then necessary.  We continue farther north.  We see more osprey.

We find a better and completely open access a 1/2 mile down the channel.  The tide is flooding the island, so at this time all currents are "in".  The opening takes out out into a broad wetland with cattails, reeds and grasses where the thin trees are distant from us.  We head south up the island until finding another channel which, fighting the flood current, brings us east into the middle channel of the river.

Undecided on which way to go, we cross the river and explore a backwater which has ten or so discarded floating dock sections in it just waiting to drift off and become shoreline debris.

After a break, A opts for circling Otter Island.  Otter Island was never diked and it is more heavily treed than other areas in the estuary.  Rounding it takes us briefly into the east channel of the river before returning to the center channel.  We see some birds we don't recognize.

Eastern Kingbird

Bohemian Waxwing

We spot an inlet on Otter Island and decide to explore.  For some reason I did not enter this opening when I was here before.  It is narrow, treed and brush lined, with tight turns and short views.  It is delightful.  We spot two does, which move off rather unhurried.  The inlet keeps going for a few hundred yards before it is blocked by a log.  On the return we surprise a 4-point buck still in velvet.

We cross the channel to retrace our route up the slough to the south end of the island.  A spots a black animal as it we startle it from a nap in the sun.  She says. "otter", but get a better look as it dives into the water and then returns to land.  "Not big enough for an otter, it's a mink."  We go back and look at the sunning spot that it spent some time creating - clipped plants - almost like a flattened bird nest.

Now we have been out long enough to fall into the rhythm of a long trip.  I think about telling A how glad I am that she is coming out canoeing with me so often before I move east across the country, but I don't...I just keep thinking it.

Killing Birds

'A' calls and asks me for a ride up to Smoke Farm.  She has a meeting and no car.  I have to take art up, so it is a kill two birds with one stone moment.  With the canoe is currently stored on the roof of the car and the Snohomish Estuary and the Stillaguamish River on the  driving route it could be a "kill three birds with one stone" moment.

After the meeting we entertain a paddle on the lower end of the Stillaguamish, but after a bumbling drive through bottom land farms we find that the boat launch is a DNR site and I don't have the required permit.  We head on to the put-in on the Snohomish instead.

Rather than repeat a trip into the Spencer Island area, we head down the river toward the sound.  As on our other trips, we have osprey in sight at all times.  At any one time there always seems to be 3 or 4 and at least one or two nests. We see kingfishers, sandpipers and great blue herons.  There are some caspian terns, but except for sea gulls, the osprey are the most numerous of the birds that we spot.

It is near low tide, maybe just a bit after.  The current is near slack in the river and we have a headwind.  We circle an island finding deer tracks in the mud of the recently fallen tide.  Our paddle is along old wooden sea walls and 20 foot high pilings where barges and log rafts were once tied.  It is all deteriorating and while it is industrial, it is old industrial and we talk about how we can still see what it might have been at one time.  The "industrial" is not opaque in this river.

 

We paddle on and with the motion well remembered in the muscles, we can watch for birds and seals (we see two) and take in new sights of a new terrain.  As we near the mouth, a distant crane leaning over a beached sailboat changes into two large sailboats that have been stranded by low tide, their owners milling about waiting for the rising tide to erase their poor seamanship. 

I tell 'A' that we should go over and portage our canoe past them.

Ahead lies Jetty Island, a sandy breakwater island made by piling and stranding old wooden barges and ships.  Neither of us have been there and with the weather calm we can safely head out across to explore.

Jetty Island

 

The island is wonderful.  It is a mix of dune and brush with some very large drift logs on the beach and derelict boats and barges in various states of exposure.

Western Red Cedar

What 'A' is looking at

 The island is visual candy and we wish we could explore more (it is 2 miles long), but we can't.  We return to the canoe and head back up river on a strong flood current and tailwind that makes the return pass as quickly and easily as this sentence.

Estuary

It is a day when I need comfort and escape, which contradictory as they seem, I find them not so. I rise early, brew coffee and bake a coffee cake. It is a recipe from Mrs. Olson, who lived down the street when I was a kid. I watched the first moon landing on her television. That cake and my canoe will feed me for the entire day.

The tide is falling to a minus 2 ft. level today. So, the trip to the Snohomish Estuary needs to be somewhat scheduled.

When I put in I find a stiff, but do-able current to work against as I make my way the mile upstream to the the top of Smith Island. The osprey are active on the far side of the river where they have a couple nests, but I have to keep paddling to make any headway. My schedule isn't and can't be planned to avoid upstream paddling - the idea is to minimize it. When I round the point and head back down Union Slough, I still have a current to work against even though I am heading towards the sea. This is the tidal flats of Smith Island draining and taking the path of least resistance. It is no big deal.


At the first slough exiting the island's center, I stop on a sandbar for a moment. Swallows are whirling about for their breakfast. I have a cup of coffee. It is a fine day.

It is a pleasant paddle down the slough with banks of primordial ooze - dinosaur words out of context come to mind - eocene, cretaceous, brontosaurus. This has happened before. It is triggered when I see drift logs and trees encased and pasted with silt and mud. They might be only a year old, but when they are painted and washed in fresh silt they look ancient, they look very ancient. They require interpretation. I wish I could do something with them. They photograph poorly. "It" doesn't translate. They have to be seen. They are fascinating.

At the bottom of the slough, where it meets Steamboat Slough, 2 harbor seals are swimming. They keep their distance from me.

I cross Steamboat Slough over to Otter Island and decide, for no particular reason, to head counter clockwise around it. I have to head a half mile up Ebbey Slough to start and the current in Ebbey is, currently impressive. There is a grounded boat laying on its side and there is another where I turn off of the main channel. While there is very little trash anywhere in the area, there are a lot of abandoned boats.


I stop and watch a red tailed hawk. The red tailed hawk stops and watches me. Otter Island does not have the ghost trees that Smith Island has. Otter was never farmed, never had a levee on it, so the trees that are here are trees that belong here, unlike Smith where trees took root behind man-made barriers, which are now broken - hence the dead ghost trees.

It's about 2 miles around Otter Is. back to the main channel. I turn back preferring to paddle the back channel again. There were many tracks along the shore, although most of them had been washed once with the tide. I turn a bend and find two deer on the bank a hundred yards up. When I get there, they are gone, of course, but there are fresh raccoon tracks on the bank.


I decide to head back up Union Slough, the way I came. This time it is shallower. Low tide is nearly here, but this narrow slough is more pleasant than one of the larger options. I have to wade for much of a half mile in the middle portion, but there is a layer of sand over the primordial ooze that makes it go okay if I don't stand in one place too long.

There is a head wind on the main river for my last mile, but with low tide, there is a strong current and the going is easy.

Estuary

We put in on the main channel of the Snohomish River. This is ish river country - most of the river names, at least those with something like their original names, end in -ish. The Skykomish isn't far away and neither is the Stillaguamish. We are just a bit over a mile upstream from the Salish Sea. This is a tidal estuary. We are starting on a flood tide, but the once it is in there will be little change for the next twelve hours. With a predictable current and water level we stand less chance of having to portage out. Less than a mile into the trip we spot two osprey nests, both with young inside.

I have often driven past this place, but not taken the time to paddle here until today. The main channel of the river is broad and was once more industrial than it is now. It is slowly sliding back to a more natural place, but it will be a long time for the evidence to disappear. When we get to the upstream end of the island that we started from, we find a few channels to choose from and the main channel is the least interesting. A wrecked fishboat draws us up Deadwater slough. This is still a place where things are abandoned and no one comes to remove them. We find the remains of three large boats in the slough, but there are probably more.

We return back down the slough and follow a fairly wide channel, which leads us to a smaller channel, which draws the curious in. The island that is on the map in this place was once farmland, but is now being reclaimed to its former saltwater estuary status. It is a maze of narrow channels. Some go through, some don't, and some go through at higher tides. We follow one that was once the drainage for the farm. It still flushes in either direction with tides, so it remains deep although it is a narrow and intimate route with grasses, reeds and the tops of logs that were driven in to support the bank. (Unlike a river marsh, route cannot be determined in a tidal marsh just by watching the flow of the water - it can go in either direction, and sometimes it is just filling or emptying a basin with no outlet) This channel brings us to a broad flooded area, an area of shallow water that would be mud flat at low tide. The channels that lead in and out of this place can be tough to find. We take one that dead ends, return, and have to bust up a fast current for 10 yards through an old levee to try another route. We wind along that and come out to the east channel of the river.


We follow the east channel towards the sea, not intending to get to that open water as the wind has come up. This is a new place to me and my location is estimated by bends and inlets. After a mile, we enter another inlet back into the island that we had come from. This leads to another broad flooded area. The effects of returning to saltwater estuary can be seen. There are stands of ghost trees - silver-grey in death, killed by the return of the brackish water that belongs here. A pair of bald eagles uses one as a perch. We follow a deep channel through the shallows and find ourselves back at the same gap in the levee that we had gone through an hour and half ago. We meet G. here, a fellow that comes in here often and we have a talk. We are of the same mind about places like this.

And so it continues until we find our way back to the main channel. As we round that point, we spot a 30 foot cedar dugout canoe. It is part of the annual canoe gathering that the area tribes take part in. The Swinomish are hosts this year and they live a long day to the north by canoe.

We meet up with G again at the take out. I have met my match in talking...but he has good stuff to say.