Back on the Water

I write back on the water and not on the river because this first paddle of the season was on a freshwater marsh, named the The Great Vly in Ulster County. The weather was warm, the sun out, and the wind blowing—a perfect northeast spring day. The Vly is about a mile long, choked with phragmites, and cattails. Short cliffs and woods rim the Vly on the western side and low hills cradle the eastern side. The tail end of a cement factory is visible at the far northeastern end (Lehigh Cement runs from the Vly to the Hudson River).

I settled into my kayak, pushing my back into the seat and my knees up into the side of the boat. I tugged the spray skirt into place, and took my first stroke, my hands adjusting to the paddle. As I glided forward, mute swans flew overhead, the whoosh of their enormous wings like someone bowing the air.  This was perhaps the only time of year it is possible to paddle into the Vly as in summer the surface is covered by floating mats of vegetation.  But in early spring a wide shallow channel marked the middle of the marsh.

Peter was ahead of me in his green kayak, his camera cradled between his legs.  We passed Canada geese nesting in clumps of grasses, and a few beaver lodge, the sticks piling high like water-based teepees. Ring-necked ducks, mallards and a few teal rose when we got within two hundred yards (ducks are skittish!). At the northern end of the Vly, I followed a narrow path into the grasses. I couldn’t see Peter or the birds. I knew that but a mile or so away in one direction ran the New York State Thruway, and in the other sat the cement plant. But there in the marsh was a sense of still isolation, just a drop of land protected from the rush of the world.

As I paddled about I kept thinking: this smell is familiar. And then it came to me. The Vly smells like my sister’s turtle tanks from when we were children. Inside those tanks was a mixture of algae, turtle poop and then the turtles themselves, a cast of  soft shell turtles and painted turtles that lived short but loved lives.

The tanks always needed more cleaning. Every so often, when the water became unhealthily murky, Becky would stick a clear plastic tube into the tank and siphon out most of the water. To get the water flowing, she would fill the tube with water, plug both ends, and if all went well, when she released her thumbs, the water would flow. Often, it did not, so she resorted the most assured way: sucking on the end of the tube. Only she didn’t like sucking on the tube. So she would call in her little sister. “Help me out,” she would coax. And I would. The first time I ended up with a mouthful of turtle tank water.  Later, I would watch the cloudy water zooming down the tube toward my mouth and let go just before it arrived. But there I would be, hovering over a plastic bucket of turtle water, inhaling the smell of turtle life.

So there I was, paddling in a large body of turtle water. Which means there had to be turtles.

“I’ve seen five,” Peter said, which didn’t surprise me. Peter sees and hears everything in the woods and streams—the mink by the side of the pond, the grouse drumming in the woods, a thumping beat I would easily miss.

I had seen none. But truth was I hadn’t been looking for turtles, I’d been looking at the eagles soaring overhead, and hoping to see a goshawk as well.

I scanned the shoreline. Peter told me to look on logs, and on the beaver lodges. Turtles like to sun. “Look for something shiny,” Peter said. “And if you are lucky, maybe we’ll see a yellow spotted turtle.” He paused. “They are pretty rare.”

The yellow spotted turtle is on the endangered list in Canada, and though it’s not on that list in this country, it is “vulnerable to extinction in the wild.”  

I wanted to see one. What is this urge to see the rare, the species poised to disappear, perhaps in my lifetime? This wasn’t the first time. I’ve made long detours in hopes of seeing a whooping crane, and I’ve tromped through miles of sagebrush to see a greater sage grouse. It is Peter’s stories of when he set afloat in the waters of Arkansas looking for the Lord God Bird—the Ivory billed Woodpecker—that thrill me the most. Somewhere in my thinking is that seeing these creatures means they are still here with us, that things are not as dire as I fear. But beyond this need to be reassured is something else more primitive: seeing them—when I am that fortunate--is special. It’s like being awarded that grant or residency, which always feels like half work, half (or more) chance. Or, it’s like finding that one perfect partner—amongst the several billion on this planet--to venture out with onto a marsh on a spring day.

I suppose my urge to see the rare isn’t unlike someone who flies to Paris to see the Mona Lisa or to Rome to see the Sistine Chapel. But to see these treasures simply requires determination, paying a fee (and usually standing in a long line). And it’s possible to return again and again to see these rarities. To see the turtle would require stealth, a keen eye, and good luck.

We approached the shore where we had put in two hours earlier. My lower back could feel the tender ache of this first paddle. I felt happy, even though I had given up on the goshawk,  and had resigned myself to no turtle.

“There,” Peter said, as we neared the shore.

And there they were, two spotted turtles, sunning on a log. We watched them for ten minutes before they slid off the log into the turtle water.