Danger Rocks

On the weekend Bill took the kids whitewater rafting in West Virginia, one of the things I did by myself was go canoeing on quiet waters. It was kind of a protest. I wasn't too happy about having my family on whitewater, being a rapidophobe myself. I had to chuckle when I saw this warning buoy at Wolf Run:

No, actually, it doesn't. Quiet waters rock.

Phoebe and I were on high alert this day when we went out together, and it paid off in spades, because the beavers I'd spotted on my last visit to Wolf Run were around again. The first thing I needed to teach her was to be conscious of keeping the paddle from hitting the sides of the canoe. I told her that you can spot a rube a mile off over the water by the clunk-clunk of paddle hitting canoe sides. You should always paddle as if you're sneaking up on something, because in all likelihood, you are.

There is great pleasure in silent conveyance on still waters.

In the first cove we checked out, a beaver floated quietly, watching us. It circled, always keeping an eye on us.

Finally, it drew close, and I could tell it was winding up to smack its big flat leathery tail on the water. I could just see it in that glittering eye. So I focused on his back and was ready when it happened!

He's taking a big breath in. Something's going down.

KER-SPLOOOOOSH!

This is one of my favorite pictures of the summer--it shows the enormous webbed paddles the beaver uses to swim so swiftly and dive so deeply. There is a big roostertail of water on either side of the tail, which has been smacked down on the water. Gosh, beavers are so cool. Beavers do this to let you know they see you--it's analogous to a white-tailed deer flashing its big white flag at you. Hey you. Don't bother chasing me. I'm already gone.

Herons were everywhere. I took a lot of heron photos. And no, I don't use the "burst" or rapid-fire/multiple frame function when shooting birds in flight--though I must try it soon. Probably would have been useful for the beaversmack.

Big birds that sit still and then flap off majestically are irresistible to me.Who says pterodactyls are all gone? His croaking rasp only enhances the metaphor--it sounds like someone opening a stuck root cellar door.

Speaking of irresistible, I saw a water naiad on the shore. Where's Maxfield Parrish when you need him?

Another heartbreakingly beautiful September 11 in southern Ohio. Soon enough, rain will come--all these hurricanes have to amount to something. But for now, it's pellucid and clear and the cool afternoon air is like a draught of Riesling. This morning before dawn I stood in the dissolving dark and listened to the calls of dozens of migrating thrushes--pips, peeps and queerps!--headed for destinations only they know. Most of them Swainson's, but maybe a grey-cheeked in there, too. There were so many, calling unseen from horizon to horizon, just as the shivering light broke. We marvel at them, so brave! flying through the starry night, but they have a clearer idea where they are headed than do we, and they have the wings to go.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

from The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

For you, of course, sweet B. Thanks for the sweet canoeing companion and the scowly little Art Elf; thanks for the 15 (17) years; thanks for the acreage and the warblers, and thanks for sticking around. I love you.
*thank you for this poem, Kris.

Taking the Canoes for a Ride

I had one day free this one week, one day when I might possibly call Shila up (who also had one day free that week) and load the canoes in the car and take them out on the water. It was the day we were to leave for Akron, where we’d catch a flight to Massachusetts the next morning. But I had a few free hours to rub together, and Shila and I were itching to get both canoes, newly legal with their big ugly numbers, out for a paddle.

Never one to shoot low, I decided I wanted to explore an arm of Seneca Lake, a mere hour north of home. The skies were gray on wakeup, and the clouds got thicker as the morning progressed. I looked at Intellicast weather—big fat green front, spangled with yellow and pink—covering most of central Ohio and racing toward us. It’s the only day we have. It’ll have to do. I got the kids on the bus, threw the canoes, seats, paddles and lifejackets in the car, tied the back hatch down, called Shila, and met her at a filling station. She jumped in the car, and we were off. I was accelerating up to speed on I-77 when the first raindrops hit the windshield.

Shila and I started laughing, which is mostly what we do when we’re together anyway. We kept going toward Seneca. Maybe it’d stop. The day would be what it would be.

I wasn’t crazy about the idea of rain coming up off the highway and into the back of my Explorer, but I liked that idea better than tying the stupid things on top and watching them waggle their way free in the 65-mile-per-hour wind. The car might get wet. Big deal.

The rain picked up as we found the first possible put-in place. We laughed some more and decided that this would be a reconnaissance mission, a way to explore the perimeter of Seneca Lake, and find all the best put-in’s. And, Shila and Zick being who we are, it would also be a photo safari, an exploration of low light, mist and its effect on fall foliage. Or something like that. We started shooting pictures.There aren’t many draft horses left in the United States, and we owe much to the Amish for keeping the knowledge of how to work and care for them. Speaking of vanishing things, how many more rains will this Mail Pouch barn sign withstand? Mail Pouch isn’t repainting barns any more, and people who want to preserve this iconic advertisement must maintain it themselves. A tableau of disappearing beauty: draft horses, Mail Pouch barn, and a hayrake.Hayrolls in the rain. Jim McCormac has told me, once or twice, that the Department of Agriculture is going to outlaw round hay bales, because the cows can’t get a square meal any more. Hee haw.

A log cabin. More vanishing beauty.Beauty that thrives everywhere: Poison ivy.The vine-draped windows of an abandoned house. I hate to see a house abandoned, but the phoebes and barn swallows, squirrels, coons and mice don’t. Where would you start pulling poison ivy off this house? At the bottom, or the top?The rain poured down. Shila donned her featherweight, fashionable plastic raincoat, which should probably not be used as a toy for babies.

This is Zick, discovering that the extra camera battery she so conscientiously brought is also dead. Just as we found this creeper-smothered barn. Arrrrrggh. End of safari. Photo by Shila Wilson.

We were glad we brought the canoes along for the ride, because they would have been lonely at home. Note nice big legal numbers, just the right size and color to spook waterbirds.To be continued...

Rock Me On the Water

On the afternoon I got the canoes registered, I beat it a couple of exits north on I-77 to Salt Fork, Ohio's largest state park. Now, like all but two of Ohio's lakes, this lake is a dammed reservoir (I could easily have spelled it with an "n"). Repeating: Ohio has two natural lakes. Yes, that's sad, but I'd have to take that issue up with the glacier, and it ain't answering questions. So if we Ohioans are going to disport ourselves on big water, we have to be happy with our dammed reservoirs.

Salt Fork is big, and some people waterski and jet ski on it (bleccch), but there are two long arms of it that are designated as no-wake zones. It is here that I appreciate the men in khaki; they can bust speedboats all day as far as I'm concerned, if they're not too busy busting small women in 10' canoes.

I was not the happiest of campers when I finally got to Salt Fork. I'd had a tough couple of weeks. The sun was already low in the autumn sky and the best part of a glittering day had been spent on getting the boats legal. But the water's gentle rocking worked on me like a masseuse and before long I was humming and noticing and one with the elements like I ought to be.

The pokier the water, the happier I am. Shallow water means the roaring smelly boat engines can't follow me. Shallow water means dragonflies and algae and wading birds and warblers
and banded watersnakes and painted turtles. My canoe draws about four inches of draft so there's very little water I can't navigate. Or: I can navigate very little water. So I launch at the boat ramps and beat it for the nearest elbow or embayment or slough--the places nobody else wants to go.

It was pretty quiet at Salt Fork, a few killdeer, the aforementioned herps, some warblers sifting through the trees. Let's face it--reservoirs are useful and pretty for people to look at, but they're not exactly burgeoning wildlife habitat. When you've got oak-hickory forests marching down right into deep water, there's little room for sedges and cattails, little habitat for the crawlers, waders and sliders. They're picturesque, and sometimes little else. I yearned for the messy, mucky wild rice marshes of Hadlyme, Connecticut, the salt marshes of Great Island, rich with the scent of sulfur and decay, teeming with life. Lois and I had navigated those waters, gotten all muddy doing so. This was too clean for us, like a decorated store window or a movie set. I mulled this over as I stroked over the quiet water. I decided to revel in the reflections of early autumn leaves rippling before the bow.
And then I noticed it--the soft popping sound of fish lips all around me. Evening was coming on and there was an embarrassment of fish, everywhere. Fish feeding, jumping, swirling, everywhere. And then an osprey beat by, and another, diving again and again, right into the light, impossible to photograph but so deeply appreciated. And right behind the fish hawks, a phalanx of Forster's terns. Oh, oh, oh, oh. How I adore terns, how they bring me back to New England. Their creaky calls and slicing wings speak of sand and surf, even on this manmade inland lake.
Oh beautiful bird, with your bandit mask, thank you for saving me.
Hold on. I'm coming. Hold on.

The fish are feeding and so are we. We're not afraid of you; the fish are all around you in your little boat, and we're catching them.
Thank you. I'm all better now, not grousing about sterile Ohio reservoirs any more. I'm going to come back soon. Will you still be here?
We may have to move on, it'll get cold before long. But we'll look for you, and you look for us.

I will. Thanks again for coming to me.

Oh, people Look around you
It's there your hope must lie
There's a seabird above you

Gliding in one place

Like Jesus in the sky

Jackson Browne, "Rock Me on the Water."

Messing About in Boats

There is nothing-absolutely nothing- half so much worth doing
As simply messing about in boats.

Ratty to Mole, Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

This fall, I've resolved to get out in my boat, Lois, as much as I can. To float around on quiet waters. To move silently through water weeds, companion of heron, duck and kingfisher.

But first I had to get our two canoes registered. A man in khaki and aviator glasses and a mustache and too many badges busted Shila and me at Wolf Run, one of my favorite retreats, for not having numbers on the bow of our two one-man canoes. I played dumb that time, but knew I couldn't play dumb twice. There was a hundred-dollar fine awaiting the next time he busted me. And, as an aside, he'd already busted one of my friends in the same (borrowed) boat twice on the same lake...clearly it was time to get legal. I mean, you can't have people paddling around in UNREGISTERED one-man canoes, can you? Lawlessness would prevail; we might load the bulkheads with Lord knows what and sneak in close to some strategic building and...oh, who knows. People in one-man canoes are not to be trusted. I'm told this is all new since 9/11, just another little noisome fillip to be coped with, along with taking your shoes off in the airport and having someone in a uniform throw your bug juice and Swiss Army knife away.
orange sulfur interlude in the fire and brimstone...seen from the canoe

In Ohio, you've got to get even hand-made one-man canoes registered; you have to put three-inch high white letters and a registration sticker on both sides of the bow; you have to pay $10 a year to operate them. But there's more. You have to drive them, yes, load the boats on the car and take them to the nearest watercraft office (Cambridge, OH, an hour north). At least the drive was pretty.

There, you have to fill out an affadavit of ownership because of course if you had a bill of sale you've thoroughly lost it and hand that back to the cute Watercraft Officer who's been inspecting your boats and then get a serial number assigned and from there you get a title and you have to go find a notary to notarize it (the first guy at the pawn shop was out on Mondays, but a used car dealer in Cambridge obliged) and then you get your OH number assigned back to the Watercraft Office and then you go to Wal-Mart and buy sticky boat numbers in a pack of 154 which really ought to be enough to put four OH numbers on two boats and try valiantly to follow the detailed instructions on how to apply them reading left to right with the registration sticker EXACTLY six inches from the first number, and you get them crooked anyway and sure enough daggone it you run out of O's and H's and have to cut the tails off the Q's and make H's out of E's, and by then you're cussing a blue streak and about five hours later counting two hours in the car you are all legal and ready to rock on the water.

And you can get
anything you want
at Alice's Restaurant.

So. Having gone through all that on a fine September day, culminating in a fabulous Legal Paddle at Salt Fork State Park, I decided that I had better take my newly legitimate canoe out as much as possible this fall. How many of us have canoes in the garage or out back of the house, malingering, languishing...unused? It's a crime, with only ourselves to blame. I'm convinced that it's all because we have to tie them atop the car, a stressful, stupid and inefficient way to carry a boat. When I discovered that BOTH my canoes would fit in the back of my Explorer with only a couple of feet sticking out the back I was just about the happiest girl in the whole USA for that golden moment. It takes me about eight minutes (yes, I've timed it) to throw them in the car, grab the PFD's, paddles and seats, tie the back hatch down and git goin'. The whole point being to be able to go canoeing on the spur of the moment (ever the best part of the moment for creative souls).

I take my good camera. Yes, someday I may tip over, but as badly as I swim, the camera will be the least of my worries. I wear a PFD all the time, and I take the good camera, because that's what it's for.

Boats in the harbor are safe
But that's not what boats are made for.