summer's end

Morning, morning.

Another day, already shorter by many minutes of daylight, with the light -- yes, that precious summer daylight -- now streaming lower, as if tired of hanging too high for too long. Overhead: two-tone passing clouds, shifting shadows and dark foliage of trees. Below -- and almost underfoot -- sweet slugs on mushroom stems, moss cushions and tall ferns: taller than ever. It has been a wet month, so wet that shrooms emerge already moldy and our heads spin as the barometer jumps up and down like a flea on speed.

Never mind: we have what we have, and the wet is considerably better than the dry and many destructive forest fires out West. We slip our shoes on, check the straps tying our canoe down, and go. It is usually eight minutes to our home lake, a bit longer now that Hurley Mountain Road became a detour for Rt.209 while one of its bridges is being replaced. We pass a growling 18-wheeler which brutally squeezes us right on a tight turn, an empty school bus, some pickup trucks seemingly just cruising back and forth, and join state highway 28W which unspools its 280 rural miles between Kingston, NY, and Warren County way south. 

Before we turn off the highway a few minutes later, I notice a bank of clouds already assembling above the Catskills. The recent forecast of our local Hudson Valley Weather is a replica of yesterday's. It starts with a neighborly concern and then tells us what we already suspect. 

We hope everyone made out ok after last nights storms. Unfortunately we are not done with the unsettled weather; it appears that passing showers and occasional pop up storm will be possible into the early afternoon. A more organized line of storms looks to propagate through the region from NW to SE. This will bring a new threat of storms with heavy rain, gusty wind and frequent lightning.

We park by the lake which came up several inches overnight, gather our paddles and push off. Usually we turn right first, heading for blueberry bushes hanging above the water. But today the bushes move, and another berry eater looks out of the thicket. A yearling whitetail buck, with rusty velvet covering its young antlers. Soft mobile nose. Alert eyes. And the berries he nibbles on are the last of the crop, for everybody has been feeding on them all summer: blacks bears, Green herons and Canada geese, chipmunks, squirrels — and us. We never take many, just enough to feel included at the lake's table, and we like their intense and tangy sweetness. Surely Mary Oliver has something to say about them?

She does, of course:

Picking Blueberries 

Once, in summer

in the blueberries, 

I fell asleep, and woke

when a deer stumbled against me.

I guess

she was so busy with her own happiness

she had grown careless

and was just wandering along

listening

to the wind as she leaned down

to lip up the sweetness.

So, there we were

with nothing between us

but a few leaves, and wind’s

glossy voice

shouting instructions.

The deer

backed away finally

and flung up her white tail

and went floating off toward the trees -

but the moment she did that

was so wide and so deep

it has lasted to this day; 

I have only to think of her - 

the flower of her amazement

and the stalled breath of her curiosity, 

and even the damp touch of her solicitude

before she took flight -

to be absent again from this world

and alive, again, in another

for thirty years

sleepy and amazed, 

rising out of the rough weeds

listening and looking.

Beautiful girl, 

where are you? 

©Mary Oliver

We move on, keeping Edy the canoe close to the lake's shore: this is where we are the least visible and disturb little. We see a young Green heron we noticed some weeks ago when he, still a fledgling, was trying to fly and kept crashing into the bushes. Then the larger of the two resident families of Canada geese -- our Periscopes -- floats out of a green eddy and swims close to us. The lake is warm and thousands of bluish bubbles cover its surface. They probably emerge from a cyanobacterial floating mat which trapped these miniature gas domes filled with the gaseous byproduct of the algal bloom, and may disappear during the day.  And these painted turtles on the log behind the geese? I want to see the turtles but John takes Edy among lily pads. He wants one, with -- as he calls it -- its heart of gold. Rendered in pixels. I do not have Mary's soaring words but I have my pixels, all these digital zeros and ones.

And there is a tiny baby turtle, sunbathing confidently on a lily pad: as it grows larger and heavier, it will need a solid sun porch. This one is perhaps three inches across and seemingly unafraid: it stays put as I lean out of Edy this way and that to avoid sun reflections on its smooth shell. 

In the meantime we lost the sight of our geese. Where did they go? Already by the east side of the lake, swimming in the same tight formation they held for several months. And soon they split: both parents and two big chicks swim left and come close to Edy, while one youngster turns right and takes a nap: an individual preference clearly stated. The chicks will stay with their parents for about a year and then take off and become adult birds of consequence.

Having made sure everybody is accounted for, we move to the sunny west side of the lake and look for more wildlife. Here are two dragonflies in their late summer lustful unison.  But we already know our home lake summer is almost over. We may still come and paddle and watch for a few days, and the life will continue. The showers held off this morning and the sky is still bright. But we are already sensing the slowing down movement of the season, clearly ebbing away and losing its "let's grow" explosions of passionate energy. It is different now, more contemplative and grounded. It is advancing like an avalanche loaded with small events which add up and change everything in a profound way. Day after day. Hour after hour. Rain after rain. 

Soon we will grab our folding canoe we named Julia and drive maybe north to Maine, and then west once the distant forest fires burn themselves out. Where? We have no idea but it will all take shape, slowly, as we go.

©Yva Momatiuk

Onteora

It is the beginning of August and the dog days of summer are hard upon us. Dog days? Since no reasonable canine would wish to sizzle in this heat and cook in the oppressively steamy air, I check the origin of the phrase. 

The phrase “Dog Days” conjures up the hottest, most sultry days of summer. The Old Farmer’s Almanac lists the traditional timing of the Dog Days: the 40 days beginning July 3 and ending August 11, coinciding with the heliacal (at sunrise) rising of the Dog Star, Sirius. The rising of Sirius does not actually affect the weather (some of our hottest and most humid days occur after August 11), but for the ancient Egyptians, Sirius appeared just before the season of the Nile’s flooding, so they used the star as a “watchdog” for that event. Since its rising also coincided with a time of extreme heat, the connection with hot, sultry weather was made for all time: “Dog Days bright and clear / indicate a happy year. / But when accompanied by rain, / for better times our hopes are vain.”

That much for the Almanac and its dog days. I am not a farmer, just a mere mortal who hates heat. I do not take kindly to any of this and already think winter thoughts. Deep cool snow drifts. Blue shadows. Hard nip of frost. Ice cracking. Fingers cold to the touch. Ah!

We have paddled on the soup-warm Onteora Lake for many days now, always in the morning to catch some cool breeze and see animals coming to drink or just be. But today we go late, close to sundown. It is still hot, sticky and not great. Never mind; we are pushing off, which consists of me crawling in first (my new hip is still maddeningly stiff) and John doing a young elephant maneuver and jumping right in from the back. We named our aluminum Canadian 14-foot long Radisson canoe Edy after its previous owner, who bought it after he retired with a sole purpose of paddling with his adult daughter when he was finally free to indulge his fatherly love. 

And unlike Julia, our folding 17-foot green-and-yellow canoe which went with us clear around the country last fall and created quite a sensation due to her unusual upside down umbrella principle, Edy is ordinary in appearance, simple in construction and ready for any punishment we may bestow on its hard body. We jump into it, smear Onteora Lake blueberries all over it, make it carry the garbage John fishes out of the lake, and drag it on coarse gravel. We also take Edy places, and tonight we let it float in the reflected clouds as much as he likes.

Soon the sun dips, fishermen pack their bags and leave, and we -- and the clouds -- stay. We know what animals we may meet because we have been here so often we seem to know every flying, sliding and walking creature, but as the evening thickens our chances of seeing any are dwindling. 

Edy moves well and we do not hurry; a paddle stroke here and there, no splash, just a gentle pull of the blade and a sense of the immediate conversion of our muscle power into a simple linear movement. We pass my favorite clump of ferns and grasses -- now fading in the stubborn heat -- when one of two families of Canada geese living on the lake slips out of the bushes just ahead of us. This is the larger of two clans: two parents and three chicks, almost as big now as adult birds. But instead of swimming away, the geese turn and approach us.  Closer. Closer. 

John speculates they are by now used to Edy and to us because we move gently and never push them. And maybe, like all wild animals, they calculate their potential risks and rewards, and -- in case of the Onteora geese -- they can tell boats apart and decide which may be more trustworthy. But -- coming closer? This is a very different chapter of behavior. Maybe when you fear less your curiosity can emerge and let your flat rubbery feet paddle closer for a better look? The geese stay around for a while and eventually swim slowly away as if making their point: all is well, and no speed is necessary. We look up, and see the still blue summer sky crowded with cumulus clouds flaming with warm hues of fire. 

And now a young beaver is crossing the lake on his way to the lodge; he may well be one of the newly weaned babies we saw only  a few weeks ago, swimming so close we could touch it with our paddles. There are three active home mounds along the lake and two are erected close together to accommodate a growing family: no strange unrelated beaver would dare to settle that close to the main lodge. 

It had been a good hour since we came and it is getting seriously dark. But here comes another resident of the lake and settles on a fallen maple trunk just a few paddle strokes from us: an adult Great blue heron in his rich breeding plumage tinted with rust. He perches. We float. No one moves. Time passes. It is very still and very quiet.

And as we paddle away, we see the last colors of the evening: sky high and slowly burning into the night.

©Yva Momatiuk

Roundout

After our recent float on the fat and glossy Delaware River whose current gathered strength after recent rains, we are seeking quiet waters much closer to home. The Delaware has its long and dam-free channel, its speedy shad and magical John McPhee's writings about its watery soul and the fish within. And the Roundout Creek, our home stream, is -- according to a fellow paddler -- easy, gentle and kind. 

The creek emerges from the slopes of Rocky Mountain in the eastern Catskills, rushes downhill and dives into the Roundout Reservoir, then emerges again and squeezes between the Catskills and the Shawangunk Ridge. Then it slows down on its way to High Falls, joins the Wallkill River and spills into the Hudson near Kingston, NY. It is 63 miles long and changes from its mountain-rambunctious headwaters to the already mentioned easy, gentle and kind stream, also known as flat water. But even flat waters can roar, and after prolonged rains our Roundout Creek does inundates backyards, streets and roads. A local geologist wrote that during one of the major floods, on Sunday, August 28, 1955, between midnight and noon when the rain was the heaviest, the creek rose from 10 to 27 feet and hit the flood stage at 6am. He noted that "folks went to bed with a normal river and woke up to raging floodwaters" which filled streets and basements of Rosendale, a village built partly on a natural floodplain.

That much for the kind stream and its sudden changes but I am curious what other paddlers discovered here. In his long ago written essay, "A Bed of Boughs," naturalist John Burroughs commented on the purity of the creek' waters and compared its transparency to that of the air. He drank from its cool pools, called their sun-dappled sheen the "untarnished diamonds" and concluded by saying: "If I were a trout, I should ascend every stream till I found the Roundout. It is the ideal brook."

No longer. In 2010, almost 3,000 tons of terribly contaminated soil were removed from the mouth of the creek. The area, full of boats and swimmers, was denounced by the state as the place presenting "a significant threat to public health or the environment." More appeals to clean the stream followed and still not much has been done. The pollution comes from a number of sources but the major contributor is the B.Millens Scrap Yard which leaches hazardous waste into the lowest stretch of the Roundout. Other hazards are more spotty and seasonal, and the recent drowning of a teenager in the fast current bellow the High Falls is just another in a series of swimming accidents along the creek. 

We have no plans to swim, so we just put our canoe in above the falls. And before I even find a good center of gravity on my seat, a mature bald eagle swoops above our heads. I follow the bird with my camera's lens but only the last picture, cropped by the bird slipping out of my frame and flying downriver, clearly reflects its passing but powerful presence.

©Yva Momatiuk