Basha Kill Paddle
“Turtle!” Peter called. With two swift strokes, he paddled toward the beaver lodge and snagged the turtle before it dropped into the water.
I grinned as he held the turtle up to identify it. Clearly Peter had spent his childhood scooping up turtles—that strike and capture took years of practice.
My camera had inconveniently died just moments after taking this first of morning picture so we couldn’t photograph the turtle. “Memorize this,” Peter said. The yellow line along the face, the edge of the shell, the shape of that shell. Later we matched this small, struggling catch to a stink pot, or the common musk turtle. It slid into the water and was off. Peter put the tips of his fingers to his nose. “Smell this,” he said, and I leaned over to take in the musky smell of turtle.
Peter and I were paddling through the over 2,000 acres that make up the Basha Kill Wildlife Management Area. It’s an area that draws birders in spring migration and we had been there to spot warblers in May. We were now back looking for marsh birds and to move about by kayak, not on foot.
We had put our kayaks in the water just south of Wurtsboro, off of route 209 in Sullivan County around 6:30 in the morning. The water was clear and still, with a gorgeous fog hanging over the low lying hills that surround the marsh.
Moving by kayak was easy as the water was so high after a very wet spring. We meandered past pickerel weed, putting up its baton of purple bloom, and a range of sedge grass. We could hear moorhens cackling from within stands of reeds, and several shy wood ducks flew by overhead. As the fog floated off and the sun warmed the water, dragonflies darted about, and we could see fish gracefully working through the clear water. For me, used to the turbid Hudson, this view into the water was a treat.
When we reached Haven Road, which cuts across the wetland, Peter paddled across the flooded road in his boat. And though this was fun for us, for the birds of the marsh this high water is a disaster. John Haas, a local birder, had reported that many moorhen nests had been drowned, and the birds had been frantic, trying to save or rebuild their nests.
Forty-five minutes out, we circled an island, then began our return. Peter stopped paddling. “There,” he said. He pulled out his camera, which he had been cradling between his legs, and focused. I followed the line of sight. But I couldn’t see anything. “Least bittern,” Peter said, to help me focus my gaze. Still, I couldn’t see the bird. He snapped photos, then paddled closer, the bird not moving. “Where?” I asked. Peter pointed to where I had been looking. There are times birding when the birds are invisible, when something about shape or color are elusive. This bird was unmoving, perched awkwardly in the grasses. When it came into focus, the long lines of light brown amidst green grass, I felt a rush of excitement. But soon it flew off.
As we returned toward our car, we looked again for the stinkpot on the beaver lodge. It was gone, replaced by a fat, four-foot long water snake, it’s subtle red bands weaving into the sticks of the lodge.
We pulled out onto Haven Road where John Haas was just arriving for a morning paddle. He’s the Basha Kill Birder, the man who knows and sees everything in this little paradise. We shared our sights, echoing his sights of least bitterns of a few days before. He showed us a stack of dead bowfin, left by fishermen to rot in the sun. They were about as long as my forearm, solid and sleek. Flies darted about their still bodies and something had ripped into one of the fish. “The fishermen don’t like the bowfin, so they shove a knife in their heads and leave them on the shore here,” John explained. Bowfin, apparently, eat other, more prized fish. And being a bony fish, they aren’t good eating. But the bowfin joins only the gar and the sturgeon (one of my favorite fish) as contemporaries with the dinosaurs. It’s a primitive fish, with a line of short, menacing teeth. When water is too shallow it can surface and breath through a swim bladder, which works like lungs. And there they were, a stack of dead, wondrous fish. The sadness of this left me dazed.
In the beautiful, isolated Bash my thoughts had been meandering like our own paddle. This slow time made me feel like we had been gone days, not hours.
We loaded our kayaks onto the car, and too fast we were back in the world. We drove into Wurtsboro to have a late breakfast at Kathy’s Tea Kozy. I picked up a Post and read about Anthony Weiner buying his wife flowers. Who cares about Anthony Weiner, I wanted to ask, when a least bittern is sitting still in the grass, when stink pots are sunning on a beaver lodge, when bowfin are lying dead by the shore?