Sunday, October 27, 2024

An Idyllic Week

 

Summer's encore provided some idyllic paddling conditions this past week with the high point for me occurring while paddling into a warm summer-like breeze across the Kickemuit River towards Bristol Narrows (photo above).  

Started my week with a Sunday morning paddle on the Sudbury River in Concord where the Egg Rock inscription stood high and dry...

Plenty of fall foliage to be seen...
...and temperatures reached the mid 70s F.

On Tuesday morning I drove south to Assonet, MA where I launched from Hathaway Park and paddled a few miles down the Assonet River to its confluence with the Taunton River where Little Conspiracy Island sits...
While I only stopped at the island for a quick snack, local legend has it that this island is the place where the Pokanoket sachem Metacom (aka King Philip) planned his attacks on the English settlements in 1675. 
Went upriver from the confluence with the incoming tide to Dighton Rock State Park in Berkley, MA...
...where the elaborately inscribed 40-ton boulder, Dighton Rock, resides inside the museum building pictured above. 

The museum was closed but one of the outdoor kiosks included this 1768 drawing of the inscription attributed to Steven Seal (perhaps Harvard professor Stephen Sewall)...


I last visited this spot in 2014 which now seems an eternity ago.  As far as I know, the meaning of the etchings has yet to be deciphered.  
Another kiosk referenced the Taunton River's Wild and Scenic status...



On Wednesday morning after lodging in nearby Fall River I drove down Rt 24 across the tip of Tiverton, RI and across the Sagonnet River to Bristol, RI.  Before arriving at the Mount Hope boat launch I decided to take another stab at locating the 'Miery Swamp' where Metacom's (aka King Philip's) life came to an end.  My previous attempts at locating this place had failed but this time I had one of these new-fangled hand-held computers.  Carefully following directions found on The Historical Marker Database.org website brought me past a myriad of 'Private Property/No Trespassing' signs to the spot...
The historical marker...
...reads "In the 'Miery Swamp', 100 feet from this spring, according to tradition, King Philip fell, August 12, 1676, O.S.  This stone placed by the R.I. Historical Society, December, 1877".
The mentioned nearby spring...

Hard to believe that this peaceful setting was where Metacom's life came to such an abrupt end.  The way his body was disrespected by all involved is hard to understand, regardless of how much they feared him. Earlier that summer Metacom had been at Mount Wachusett and his world began to unravel.  The federation of tribes he'd assembled dissolved, his wife and son had been captured by the English and were going to be sold into slavery.  He and his remaining followers returned to his Pokanoket home near Montaup probably knowing the end was near.

It was just a short trip from the 'Miery Swamp' to the Mount Hope Boat Launch in Bristol...

  After launching into Mount Hope Bay I paddled south to the cliff at the foot of Metacom's Montaup...

Landed at a small cove between the cliff and a stony beach...

My boat and I were about a half mile from the 'Miery Swamp' marker at this point.

After a lunch break I headed north with the tide and a lively southerly breeze in my favor.  A white-tailed deer watched me pass by...
...en route to the Bristol Narrows.  Fall River could be seen across the bay to the east...


 I passed through the narrows into the Kickemuit River and its wide tidal estuary...


Once back at the boat launch and with everything packed up I drove to the northeast with one remaining objective...a visit to "Anawan's Rock".  After Metacom's death, leadership of his remaining warriors fell to Anawan (aka Annawon or Annawan)) who continued raiding English settlements.  Captain Benjamin Church was ordered to find and capture or kill Anawan.  

The location is about 13 miles as the crow flies from the 'Miery Swamp' and off of Route 44 in Dighton, MA,  The road is fast moving (50 mph) and the sign is easy to miss...

There are several accounts of what unfolded here.  As far as I know they're all based on Benjamin Church's recollections and involve the element of surprise.  One version can be found in Nathaniel Philbrick's book Mayflower and another version is in Leo Bonfanti's Biographies and Legends of the New England Indians Volume IV.

The slope to the rock's top...
...from where Church is supposed to have looked downward upon Anawan's encampment...

The view upward from the rock's base where Anawan thought his camp was secure ...
Despite Captain Church telling Anawan his life would be spared, Plymouth Colony officials had him executed a short time later.  Like Metacom, his severed head was displayed on a pole in Plymouth.

My two day visit had brought me to the area where the conflict known as King Philip's war began and ultimately came to an end...costly in so many ways for both sides.  Did it have to play out the way it did? 

 
Sunday's trash from the Sudbury River...

Tuesday's trash from the Assonet and Taunton rivers...

Wednesday's trash from Mount Hope Bay, mostly found at the stony beach near Montaup...


 


Sunday, October 20, 2024

Rivers Still Scratchy

 

On Monday I returned to a section of the Assabet River in Concord, MA in hopes of finding deeper water.  However, despite some recent rain events, the river was still too low for my liking.  Therefore, a few days later on Thursday, I ventured to Lake Wampanoag in Gardner and Ashburnham, MA where depth was less of a concern...

The lake occupies 224 acres and is at an elevation of 1079'.  It has a half dozen or so islands, some big, some small...


Its outlet is to the Whitman River which, in turn, flows into the Nashua River's north branch,  On Thursday the spillway was dry...

While surrounded by mostly evergreens there were a few deciduous trees that provided a bit of color...

The Boston and Maine Railroad's abandoned Cheshire Line lays dormant on the lake's northeast side.  Looking towards South Ashburnham and the line's junction with the B and M's Fitchburg Line..
 
Looking northwest toward Winchendon...

  

The line ran to North Walpole, NH where it connected with the other lines at Bellows Falls, VT.
  
At the northern tip an earthen dike divides the Nashua and the Millers River watersheds.  A look into the wetland on the Millers River side of the dike...


Monday's trash from the Assabet River...


Thursday's trash from Lake Wampanoag...



Monday, October 14, 2024

Forge Pond and Finding Counterpane

 

Explored several ponds this past week:  Forge Pond in Westford/Littleton MA on Tuesday, and the South Meadow Ponds complex in Clinton MA on Thursday and Sunday. (Above photo Coachlace Pond)

While I'd paddled Forge Pond before, I hadn't yet seen the recently rebuilt boat launch on Beaver Brook Road which was well done...


Beaver Brook offers paddlers a mile or so of a winding course through tall cattails going upstream...
...or a short trip down the brook brings one out into Forge Pond (aka Lake Matawanakee), a 203 acre Massachusetts "great pond"...

Beaver Brook and Gilson Brook are tributaries, whereas the pond's outlet is Stony Brook where a dam remains from the 1800s...

To the dam's right is a gate structure...
...which is used to lower the pond's level in late fall.  The drawdown helps to control invasive plants.

With it being a weekday the pond was very quiet...that is until I stopped for a lunch break alongside the railroad tracks on the pond's west side.  My break coincided with the passage of a long westbound freight train heading from Maine to Selkirk, NY...
Train was CSXT M427 and pulled by 4 locomotives (474, 486, 7029, 775).

After the train left the area things got quiet again much to this heron's liking...



On Thursday I made my first visit to a group of ponds sometimes referred to as the South Meadow Ponds Complex.  I'd seen the ponds on maps and couldn't tell if they were connected by navigable culverts.  Came across mention of them on the Massachusetts Paddler website where it was stated that the culverts were navigable.  Launched from South Meadow Rd. in Clinton...

Paddled from South Meadow Pond over to Mossy Pond and its Blueberry Island...
Then back to South Meadow and over to the culvert connecting South Meadow and Coachlace ponds...

View of the culvert's narrow confines (4.5' wide)...

The railroad above the culvert is the CSXT which is the same line which the freight seen 2 days earlier on Forge Pond would have passed over...



Once into Coachlace Pond I looked northward to the mills of Clinton...


At the pond's northwest corner are the remains of Gate House A built in 1881...

...which once diverted the pond's water from Counterpane Brook via culverts to the mill.

While exploring Coachlace Pond I never saw or heard any water exiting the pond.  Thus, yesterday, after studying a 1978 Army Corps of Engineers report, I returned to the pond in hopes of finding the outlet and spillway for Counterpane Brook.  The likely spot was overgrown with tall and impenetrable grasses.  However, going ashore near Gate House A allowed me to see where water exits the pond (view is looking upstream towards the pond)...

A short distance downstream and behind Gate House A is the spillway with its overhead arch...

A closer look reveals one of the splash boards still being in place (right side of spillway)...
Water is presently leaking through the wall beneath the spillway

While there I took a closer look at Gate House A and noted the opening being boarded-up...

Counterpane Brook disappears into a culvert of its own a short distance downstream of the spillway and doesn't re-emerge into daylight for nearly half a mile at the Prescott Mill on Water Street...

  
Google Maps doesn't show Counterpane Brook.  However, this Metropolitan District Commission map (from The Central Mass Railroad) shows the outlets to Counterpane Brook (red arrow) and Coachlace Pond (blue arrow) fairly well...
The map also shows the pond's proximity to the large Wachusett Reservoir created about 1900.

The only map I could find showing the area before it was altered was this 1831 map found on the Norman B. Leventhal Map and Education Center's website.  Note it's incorrectly labeled as 1851.  The actual date on the map is 1831 when Clinton was still part of Lancaster.  It shows only a 35-acre Mossy Pond and no Coachlace Pond.  Counterpane Brook was then shown as South Meadow Brook flowing through present-day Coachlace Pond all the way to the Nashua River.


The mill that once used the water from Coachlace Pond...

According to the Army Corps of Engineers 1978 report  the Coachlace Dam was built in 1846 and the outlet structures (Gate Houses and spillway) were added in 1881.  The mill was owned by the Clinton Company which manufactured coachlace used for carriages, and counterpanes for bedspreads, as well as carpets.  The Clinton Company later became the Bigelow Carpet Company and was owned by the Bigelow brothers, Erastus and Horatio.  According to The Bigelow Society's website they named their company for their favorite New York hotel, The Dewitt Clinton Hotel.  In 1850 the mill village separated from Lancaster and adopted the name Clinton.  



 Tuesday's trash from Forge Pond...



Thursday's trash from the South Meadow/Mossy/Coachlace ponds complex...

Sunday's trash from Coachlace Pond...