A Summer Row, Remembered

This piece was written for a middle school group in Fayetteville, New York, for a project on maritime observations and activities...   --jps, February 2003

       A Summer Row, Remembered, up to Essex from Old Lyme
                                                                                by John Stratton

Here at the mouth of the Connecticut River there are hundreds of acres of salt marshes and twisting estuaries — shallow creeks and small rivers through which the tidewaters run rich in fish and crabs. The broad, low  marshes have many birds...big ospreys, egrets, herons, cormorants, swans, geese, ducks and clouds of gulls and other shore birds. The tides of the river extend about fifty miles up to Hartford, and the whole river, of course, goes all the way up to Canada, about four hundred miles.

Because the river is wide in  the five miles or so near the mouth where its meets Long Island Sound, and it is fairly shallow, it's very good for small boats.  

And so I explore, starting on the Old Lyme side of the river where I live, often putting in at the landing where the Roger Tory Peterson nature preserve at Great Island is located.  The big island is low,  mostly marsh grass with a few clumps of trees on rocks.  Some rocks have initials carved in them more than a hundred years ago, when fishermen were waiting for the tide to turn...or for fish to be caught in their nets.  Shad-fishing is still important to people, and there are lots of shad-festivals when it's the right season. Shad tastes good if you watch out for the bones.

So my small rowboat — usually my 16-foot, double-ended Appledore Pod — can poke around the estuaries, and zip out into the rougher water of the Sound. I often bring a camera along, and often stop and get my feet muddy as I rescue someone-unknown's life preserver, boat fender, or even canoe paddle from the tangled riverbanks.  These come home with me to fill up my garage.

Once you get started by taking your boat out of the yard or garage (if there is room) or wherever you keep it, and put it on the car — it's nice to have help — you drive down to the landing, take it off and place it at the water's edge.  Then you put in the oars, the life jacket (called a PFD, or "Personal Flotation Device" in Coast Guard-talk) and park the car and walk back. 

Then you check to see that you have included a water bottle or two, a bailer (a plastic soap or bleach or milk bottle with its bottom cut out does fine), and then slide the boat in the water trying not to scrape it too badly, and at last, finally, get in carefully (this can be the most tippy part of your day!), put the oars in, and pull off shore with a couple of short strokes. Then look around.  

Look again to see that you have not forgotten anything (insect repellent? sandals?), and then pull off in earnest, going wherever you want to go. Rowing is nice because you do not need much water depth —  in boat talk, you do not "draw much water." And if you do run aground, you are going slowly. And if you do get stuck, well, you can just push yourself off with an oar...or even just get out (hoping it's not too muddy!) and shove off again.  Anyway, off you go up the estuaries, twisting and turning and steering carefully as you look over your shoulder every few strokes to not end up stuck in the grass or reeds or mud. 

When you row, you are looking "backward," where the boat has been:  backwards at your life, in fact, so there seems to be time to think a lot of thoughts -- usually good ones. There is time to remember things, memorize things, or make up new things.* Because you are so quiet, you can sneak up on various little creatures and look at their little lives as they eat or avoid (usually) being eaten. This is nature, not TV.

It is surprising how fast, though, a good boat and a good pair of oars can go. The oars are important: the longer and lighter the better — that's about nine feet, nine inches for my Appledore with its special rowing setup, and about eight feet for many other good boats whose oars rest in oarlocks on the gunwales (the pieces of wood that run along the top edges of the hull). Good oars, with practice, can make you a very good rower who can travel many miles in a day without getting too tired out.  It's something like having good jogging or running or basketball shoes; you can go further, in more comfort, with less effort.

Well, let's back to the water, and where we are on it. I first like to go southward out the estuary, inside a long strip of beach called Griswold Point (which was given to the Griswold family by the King of England in the early-1600's) and then out into the Sound.  If it's a little rough it can be fun. If it's too rough (and my precious camera, and unprecious clothes, might get wet), I will turn back to the north and head upstream, way upstream, in the calm water, toward the town of Essex. 

Once in a while I will pass someone who is in another boat who has stopped to fish or go crabbing. Once in a while I will see a train, silvery, crossing the railroad bridge; always I can see the big Route 95 bridge in the distance with its tiny cars and trucks going over it, up one side and down the other. 

To get under the railroad and car bridges I have to leave the calm estuary and poke out into the main river, where it's narrow for a half-mile or so. It's fairly calm there most of the time because it's about three miles from the river mouth. And if I stay on the shallow Old Lyme side of the river there are not too many boats going to and fro making big waves (called wakes), which can slop aboard my little boat, and not tip me over (I hope).

But between and under the bridges the current is strong, especially when the tide is going out and it merges with the normal river current.  I have to pay attention to rowing with a strong and steady pace — you can't stop to rest, or the current will pull you right back to where you've been.  The river is telling you that you can sightsee later; just keep rowing. 

At last, just north of the bridges the river widens again and there are more estuaries and places to see. One of these is the small town of Essex, about four more miles, so you just point that way and maybe go around in back of a few islands, or stay off to one side of the river's  deep channel and look around at boats and birds and waves and houses as you go.

Back in 1814, on a cold night in early April, the British took this trip in several big rowing boats, in order to surprise the people at Essex and burn their ships.  It was the War of 1812.. They burned 27 ships, and mostly got away without injury to themselves — one of the biggest raids in the war (the raid on Washington, D.C., is another story!).

So here we are following the British course, but in daylight and warmth.  It's just something to think about: What if the Americans had been warned, and they had set up cannons where the bridges are now?  Bad news for the King.

But now it is peaceful here. In fact, the river is one of the most beautiful and peaceful places you can find, with its water coming all the way from Canada, and passing all those cities and towns in Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and upstate Connecticut.  Once the river was used like a highway, with steamboats and barges loaded with tobacco and lumber and Colts and onions, and sandstone and granite that built cities.  

You think about that too.  

And soon you are at Essex, a bit hot and sweaty, and take another nice long drink of water, and deserve a little stretch on the Town Dock. While you are there, before letting the current and your oars zoom you back down to Old Lyme,  you take a look into the Connecticut  River Museum, and say hi to a few people looking at the river, and maybe look through their binoculars at birds...or whatever there is to see that day.  

Maybe they are looking at the nice sandy beach on Notts Island across the river, where it's fun to swim in the summer, which I for one am thinking about on this cold January day.

--j.p.s., January 2003