Paddling in Good Company

Mid-way through the fall I learned that mine was not the only book to be published this season about paddling down a river. Four other books carried writers into print this fall, from the Charles River in Massachusetts, to the rivers of the Carolinas, to the Altamaha in Georgia. I love these sorts of convergence. Certainly there are many paddle down river books but why five in one season? What has drawn us all to float and think—about rivers, about the environment, about life. Because if one thing unites these books is thinking about the world—paddling, whether in a canoe or a kayak, invites reflection. What is intriguing are the ways these books overlap, observations echo (those great blue heron; those sturgeon), words repeat ("drifting" "My") and number of pages to tell the story align (221 it is!).  In some ways, this could be because a river is a river (though this isn’t exactly true) and paddling is paddling (again not true) but it seems we all turned to rivers for ideas, solace, inspiration, love. Rivers formed this country, and if I can conclude one thing it is that being in and on a river shapes how we see the world, relate to the world.  I want to say they made us better people, though that sounds really cheesy. What I mean by better is more aware of our own thoughts, biases and desires, more attentive to the world, more appreciative of life. I’ll stop there before I write something foolish like: paddling is good for the world, not just for the soul.

Over this break, I’ve read the books of my four river companions. Here are some observations.

Janisse Ray claims the Altamaha river in her work Drifting Into Darien: A Personal and Natural History of the Altamaha River and she has every right to this little-known river: she grew up alongside the river, it’s in her blood and she lives there now. The first section of the book is a wonderful narrative of an 11-day kayak down the river with a group of friends and her husband—they have recently married, so there’s a twinge of honeymoon there as they escape the “real world.” There are delicious descriptions of birds, and the best description of paddling at night (one of my favorite things to do): “A river at night is magic. The feeling is of weightlessness, of floating not just horizontally but also vertically. Humans own the daylight, animals own night. A night paddle is about breaking biorhythms. It’s about becoming animal.” Yes.  The second half of the book includes essays about the river: forming the Altamaha Riverkeeper, for instance. There’s a chapter on fresh water mussels and one on the absence of bears; there are sturgeon and fishing trips and politics. And, there’s grief, loss that informs some of these essays but mostly love—for the river, for the creatures, for life.

Mike Freeman paddled the length of the Hudson in a canoe and wrote about it in his narrative, Drifting: Two Weeks on the Hudson. He started as near to the headwaters in the Adirondacks as he could (the river emerges at Lake Tear of the Clouds near the summit of Mt. Marcy)  and made his way south portaging, running rapids and once flipping over (a wonderfully dramatic moment). Amidst tales of eating more power bars than anyone should consume are lots of ideas on the environment, economy (Freeman was hit hard by the recent recession), politics, and religion (one of my favorite lines: “If there’s one thing I’ve always admired about churches, they were places people went to feel absolutely horrible about themselves.” ) The river, then, is a vehicle for ideas. Unlike me (and several of the other writers here), Freeman isn’t trying to claim the river as his in any way; he is just visiting (recently moved east from Alaska) for two weeks, to see what he could see and let his ideas wander with the river. Freeman is not an easy-going drifter—he’s on a fast course down the river, and his rants against everyone from polluters to coffee drinkers have the same sort of urgency.

John Lane, a prolific southern writer, took to the stream in his backyard in South Carolina and canoed to the sea via the Broad, Congaree and Santee Rivers. His tale: My Paddle to the Sea: Eleven Days on the River of the Carolinas is framed by a river accident in Costa Rica in which one of the guides and one paddler drown. There are two choices in the face of such a heart-breaking event: never paddle again, or paddle into your sadness and fear. Lane chose the latter. His narrative, then, is rich in thoughtfulness with depth. At the heart of it are two friendships, first with the larger-than-life character with whom he paddles the first eight days of his journey, Venable Vermont (by name alone he takes wonderful space in the book) and the his neighbor Steve Patton. Through the trip Lane confronts more rain than any person should have to weather. Though there’s a tension at the end—will he and Steve Patton make it to the ocean—there’s a wonderful easy-going feel to this story, and Lane is a great companion, a wilderness lover, “More John Muir than Teddy Roosevelt.” (Venable is a good antidote to Lane’s dreaming). There’s a lot of terrific, southern history, literary history, river’s history in this book. I came away smarter for it.

I would say that all of these books have an environmental agenda, but the most explicit is in David Gessner’s My Green Manifesto: Down the Charles River in Pursuit of a New Environmentalism. It has the outrage of a manifesto—outrage, interestingly enough, against environmentalists (in particular he slays two: Shellenberger and Nordhaus, who wrote “The Death of Environmentalism”) whom he sees as nagging and who repeat “global warming” too frequently. Which means that Gessner has a sense of humor, a rare quality in environmental writing. What I appreciated most is that birds are his “soft spot.” And it is through birds, through watching birds (though not being a birder!) that we really observe, and in observing we “migrate outward.” This looking outward is the first “step toward falling in love.” And it is when we love something, someone, a bird or a place that we want to protect it. So Gessner’s manifesto is really a return to caring for what we know, for where we live. This gives new life to the NIMBY environmentalist (which is what I am and have continued to preach for in these days of global warming). The journey down the Charles is conversational, even casual and is filled with beer and jokes and nearly breaking the canoe in half—in this sense it will appeal to a young audience. And that is exactly who Gessner wants to get with his book; he wants to light a fire under those young butts. So it is a manifesto indeed.

Last of the Season?

First of the season is easy to mark. The first warbler, the first crocus up, the first paddle. We know we have been deprived and the first arrival or event is a joy, the mark of more to come. But last of the season is tricky. Sometimes it passes without realizing that was the last climb, the last rose in bloom, the final hummingbird at the feeder (or, the last kiss…). I was afraid I had already paddled my kayak for the last time this year. The trouble is, I didn’t remember that paddle, had not cherished each minute as it needed to sustain me for several months. So when a string of warm, sunny November days arrived, I decided that this was my chance. My final paddle of 2011.

I drove to the Tivoli landing at 3:30, late for a November paddle. The dock was underwater at high tide. “Four and a half feet of tide,” a motorcyclist loitering by the water’s edge said. He then asked if I had any matches.  I shoved onto the water as I smelled the distinct sweet smell of pot float out onto the water with me.

Just south of Callender house, a long, yellow mansion that grins down onto the water, I saw a mature bald eagle perched in a tree. A twin to this bird stood high in a pine tree at the northern tip of Magdalen Island. This seemed good luck.

The tide was so high I could barely slip under the railroad bridge and into the North Tivoli Bay. But once I squeeze through an even greater calm took hold. I realized I would be paddling into dusk and hoped for an owl—why not?—to come out and join me. 

I meandered past the dried cattails, the reeds now dusty beige. A swamp sparrow hopped up to look at me. I took my time, savoring the texture of the water, the clear coolish air, the quiet. Then I heard a shuffling along the shoreline, in the leaves. I imagined a beaver there, or some other animal coming to drink. To my surprise, there shuffled a pair of wood ducks. I had never been so near to these beautiful, vivid ducks,  with their magnificent colors—the glossy green of the male’s head and the distinct white circle around the female’s eye. I slid away, whispering to them: don’t move, stay right there. Still, they took off,  a rush of wings. They took to the air and looped south. I paddled on, unsettled that I had flushed these birds. And then: a shot rang through the air. I stopped paddling; my shoulders hunched. My wood ducks had been shot. I looked to the sky to see if one tumbled to ground. One duck lagged behind the other—perhaps wounded?—but they were both winging north. I watched until they disappeared on the horizon. I would never know what happened to those ducks. But my first thought was: I killed these ducks. If I had not flushed them they would be safe on shore in the north bay. And in that moment I vowed not to paddle in the bays during duck season again. This is not what I had in mind for my final paddle of the season.

I couldn’t bear to paddle on, so I turned around, heading back for the river. The sun made an indecent display as it sunk behind the Catskills. The colors were so wild, so vivid, for a moment I forgot my sadness over the ducks. I loitered in the wide bay by the tracks where a man stood, a pole extended into the water.

“Do you fish here often?” I asked.

“I do,” he said without looking toward me.

“Do you ever hear owls?” I asked.

“Not owls,” he said. “I saw one once, but it was hit by a train.”

No, this was not what I was looking for on my final paddle of the season. I coasted out of the bay and back onto the river, then chugged my way north. As I pulled my boat out at the dock—now above the tide line—darkness set in. And I thought: this can’t be my final paddle of the season. Though it is often the complexity of the river that intrigues me—tug boats sharing the water with kayaks, industry next to snapping turtles—on this final paddle I wanted only the good. So I will go out one more time looking for an outing that leaves a cleaner taste, a happier memory.

Hunting

“The river is calm,” the man said, walking past me and my boat. I nodded in agreement. But he wasn’t a boater, just a man at the launch at 7 in the morning with a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

The water grabs my ankles, seeps through my aqua socks. Too cold already.  I slip into my boat and settle in. A few strokes out I pause to take stock of a large freight boat shoving north. The water is calm, for now. Ten minutes later the bow of my boat slaps into the water.

The far shore is speckled with the early morning light, while the eastern shore remains cloaked in shade. I have on two jackets to keep warm. But the rotation of my shoulders and torso warms me quickly. I spy a few yellow-rumped warblers in the scraggly bushes that grow in the rocky shoreline.

The north Tivoli Bay lures me in. As I glide under the train overpass, the stillness of the bay immediately wraps me like a comfortable blanket. I stop paddling and coast.  In front of me is a dock that cut loose during Hurricane Irene. It washed into the Bay a few weeks ago and stands there, an odd adornment in a wide bay.

I move forward, wondering what treasures I will find this morning in the north bay when gunshots erupt from the reeds. My shoulders hunch. Duck season. I should have known that the same place I wanted to be would be where a hunter wanted to be. Part of me believes we can both be in this bay, part of me doesn’t want to get hit by a stray bullet.

Just as I decide I should backtrack onto the river I hear the call of a great horned owl.  Hoot hoot hoot hoot. It’s like a magnet to my heart and I forge into the bay. I follow close to the reeds, spying white throated sparrows, and  a chipping sparrow or two. Swamp sparrows peak out at me when I pish.  

Though I’ve decided to go into the bay, I’m not at ease. I try and calm my thoughts, which ping with ideas. The shots I heard were to the south. Hunters shoot at close range, and I’m visible in my pepto-bismol pink boat, wearing a blue jacket.

Truth is, I have respect for many hunters. They know these woods, the bays and the secret spots where ducks hide better than I do. They know ducks better than I do (this actually isn’t saying much! Ducks are low on the list of birds I am capable of identifying). But I wish they didn’t need to bring them out of the sky. As my friend Sonia said, “I just don’t like guns.” It’s that simple.

I spy a marsh wren, tail erect, in the cattails. A white throated sparrow practices its song. And then there’s the owl again. As I round a bend, my heart races, but not for the bird; I’m wondering if a hunter is around the corner. It’s happened before. But I often don’t see the hunters in their camouflage until I’m right next to them.

Today, though, there’s no hunter. And I start to wonder about insisting on paddling on, on insisting on sharing this marsh area when the sounds of guns in the distance leaves me on edge. The point of the paddle is to take in the morning light, the morning peace.

The owl hoots one more time, then I turn and take sure strokes back to the wide river.

Post-Irene Paddle

The first thing I noticed was that my usual launch in Tivoli was over a foot thick with water chestnut, laced with bottles, Styrofoam and other debris. The water chestnut pulls up in the fall, forming green rafts on the water. But these plants had been ripped off by the winds and water of hurricane Irene (or tropical storm Irene?). So I slipped my kayak into the water at the small dock. It had weathered the storm—still in place—but was slick with a layer of mud. Clearly it had drowned in the storm. The water was chocolate brown, more silty than usual and scanning the wide river I could see flotsam, logs, and other debris drifting swiftly south with the current.

I stepped into my boat, noting the cold at my ankles was not the fall-warmed water of a few days earlier.  I struck south, passing a wooden dock, sloshed up on shore. Swallows zipped across the water and landed on the wires next to the train tracks. A great blue heron took flight. In many ways, it was just another day for the birds, and for the baby map turtle I saw taking in the last of the day’s sun. But for me, the river was transformed. I recognized everything: the Catskill mountains in the distance, the puff of trees in front of me that is Magdalen Island, the houses on shore that peer down at the river. But the texture of the river was foreign. There was a sense of dereliction, I want to say of lawlessness. It was as if the river itself was not following its own laws, but also that those who live in and on the river had given over to new ways of being, one where anything could and did float off in the river.

The raft of logs and sticks laced with debris was so thick at the entrance to the north Tivoli Bay that I could hardly shove my way through. The water poured out of the narrow entrance to the Bay, pushing me quickly south. There, just a hundred yards off of Magdalen Island was a small island of river junk. A long wooden dock. A large refrigerator and a small refrigerator both knocked against the wood. A pile of sneakers stacked on top of one end of the dock. On the far end, a submerged motorboat, engine still attached was lashed to dock. It too had been dragged south.

A man motored in on his own boat. “I get stupid when it comes to collecting crap,” he said, pulling out a toolkit. That’s what this was, crap. He set to work removing the cleats attached to the dock. “These are worth twenty bucks a piece.” I watched for a while, taking inventory of what was there. “This morning there was a kayak washed up on the end.”  A kayak? Now, a kayak I’d like to find. “But it wasn’t a nice boat like yours,” he said. I smiled. “Don’t you want to get out and help me or something?” he asked. I didn’t.

So I headed south, seeing a brilliant orange red scarlet tanager in the late day sun, several king birds, and a kingfisher. I thought I might scoot into the North Bay from the southern entrance. But the water there, which I know to be sweet, often placid, was so fast, so violent I knew I couldn’t make my way against the current. So I headed north, taking to the river side of Magdalen Island.

As the sun set I saw the same colors I knew well, slurping down the back of the Catskills and I started to feel this was the river that I knew. And then I heard the engine of my crap collecting friend’s boat as he slowly towed the sunken boat home.