Paddling to Nowhere
The DEC launch, located beneath route 481 in northern New York, clanked and rattled with the movement of traffic overhead. A pick up with an empty trailer parked to the side. A sign advised us to clean our boats of invasive species. Like every boat launch in the country (it seems) a man sat in a white Buick, watching the water go by. And watching me put my boat in the water.
I write “the water” because at the point I was slipping my boat into the calm river I did not know the name of the Oneida river. I noted the launch site on my map, and as I drove home from a lovely visit to a writing class in Oswego, decided to make a short paddle stop. I didn’t know where this river ran or what I would see. In this way I concoct small adventures.
I struck out to the east. The river divided and I chose the left fork. Houses lined the water, docks allowing easy access for small motorboats. The river was about one-hundred and fifty yards wide. I paddled down the middle, flushing mallards and a stray great blue heron that loitered on the far shore from the houses. The river felt intimate and calm and I wondered at these hundred or so people who got to live there, watching the river shift along: what did they see? No one was home, though I wished for someone to appear so I could ask where this river led, what this river is called.
The sun hovered high in the sky warming the air and my thoughts. I thought in comparisons: the Hudson is wider, bolder, more textured. Would I be happy paddling smaller rivers. Would I have become a paddler if I lived near a smaller river? Because the truth is, I bought my kayak in order to know the Hudson, to enter onto and into a big river. I’m not a paddler; my boat was a way to get to know the Hudson. I have only twice paddled on rivers beyond the Hudson. It felt, I hate to say it, a bit traitorous. I was cheating on my river.
Soon, the riverside houses started to bore me. I wanted the intimacy of cattails and maybe a turtle or two soaking in the last of the summer’s warmth. I wanted sparrows dashing from sight. And if I could not have that peacefulness of no-people, I wanted a cement plant to entertain me.
Just as I was deciding to turn back, to give up trying to find the magic of this little river, it took a sharp bend. In front of me yawned an underpass. A man stood with a fishing pole on the far side of the pass, as I coasted into a narrow channel, grass and cattails in front of me. My heart soared. “Excuse me,” I said, “what is the name of this river?” The man looked surprised to hear a voice. “I don’t know it’s name. But around these parts we call it Big Bend.” “Thanks. What are you catching?” “A few sunnies.”
I coasted onward into the reeds and isolation. The houses had vanished. Calm descended. I stroked forward feeling as if my paddle had just begun. This wide, empty swamp land confirmed my sense that if you just paddle long enough you’ll end up nowhere.