MY REACH

Paddling in Good Company

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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.

 

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Learning the Birds

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Learning the Birds

All weekend Peter is singing, quietly, “From the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli.” We are birding at the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge in northern New York State. The land is flat, grasslands, with pools and mudflats. The Refuge is known as a stopover for shorebirds heading from the Arctic to their warm winters in the south. We were there to see these birds, and to attend a workshop on identifying shorebirds.

As Peter sings, I realize I have no idea what the song is referring to. The not knowing adds to the overall sense of the weekend: I know nothing about this song or the history behind it (though it’s not hard to find this information); I know nothing about birds.  

We are up before dawn after a sleepless night in perhaps the most bedraggled motel room I have ever stayed in (the bathroom door had been punched in; the shower curtain sagged; the smell of stale smoke and sadness was so thick I could not sleep). The three-mile drive near the Montezuma refuge headquarters sits just south of route 90. So as we look across the foggy fields trying to spot shuffling little birds, the sound of semis roaring east and west joins the faint peeps that rise from the dark soil. We see them, the smallest of shorebirds, the least sandpipers moving across the ground, foraging for food; we see killdeer, a fat little plover, not as cute as his cousin the semipalmated plover.

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Post-Irene Paddle

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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.

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