De Pan

Low tide limits my choices.  The smaller tidal rivers are too scratchy, if passable at all.  I paddle away on the big river, rounding the first point and finding five swans up close.  The large adult takes a position between me and his following.  It is three cygnets, with just a touch of grey left in their feathers.  The fourth is either a small adult or a whiter sibling.

I paddle across the channel to Pope's Flat, the spartina well above my head, my horizon the primordial proto-peat that centuries of growth has meshed into a deep brown soggy adobe.  Two shorebirds with dark and light patterning flee without being identified.  A lone cygnet rests on the shore.  A great blue heron flies off a good 1/3 mile downstream.

Near the island next to the island next to Pope's Flat (which is an island) I find a bird killer hooked on an old rope snagged on a water logged and barnacle encrusted tree limb.  I collect the specimen.

I continue down following the other town's shoreline eventually noting that theirs is mostly marinas and docks while ours is a sizable and often vibrant salt marsh.  The point where river becomes sea is my turn around.  The marsh still too shallow for passage, I return as I came except for using the more protected inner channel.  I find a few common loons as I near the sea.  One surfaces 20 yards away and takes its time eyeing me before diving.

I add a couple more herons and one mature bald eagle to the daily count.

It is above the stone arch bridge, near the Duck Hole Farms, that I notice that I am the noisiest creature in earshot and then some.  Only when I pause my paddling do I catch on to the din that my paddle has been making with all the swirling and gurgling that comes from a power stroke.  It is quite a calm day.  It almost makes my ears hurt.

I put in near the confluence of the Neck and East Rivers just as the tide begins to cross the broad top of the even sinusoidal wave that describes tides in this area.  As I head up the Neck, I observe the vegetation and pilings just to convince myself that I have not misread the tide chart, as my car is parked not more than 3 inches above the water level.  The ebb is slow today and I paddle a short hour before I start to notice and inch of wet above the water.


The osprey nest that was built last year on a detached dock is below eye level and I stop to examine it.  It never seemed a secure location for a nest and I did not see the pair raising any young.  The nest is intact with an old sandal near the center and the carapace and wing bones of an unidentified bird left behind.  The bones are what I would expect from a medium sized shore bird...larger than a pigeon, but smaller than any duck. I suppose they could also be from a young osprey.  I collect them.

Osprey Nest

Cloud cover during the night kept the temperature warm enough and the wind that comes from the north is hardly worth the paper it takes to describe it.  I push some buffleheads up the Neck and then up Bailey Creek, but there is not much else for bird life down here.  The Sneak is broad at this tide level, so much so that it takes much less time to pass through as each of the kinked bends has been widened into gentle curves.

When I pass the highway bridge the bird life improves.  I flush mallards and some Canada geese and a good number of black ducks take to wing from the typically large distance that they customarily do.

mid 19th century sawmill dam

I pass under Foote Bridge and over boulders that are well buried in the high water but I stop short of the jungle, the last 1/3 mile of paddling, because it is also half gymnastics.  The tide is now dropping fast and the current has picked up.  It will be an easy return.