Trashpaddler: Much Needed Water with a Pesky Wind

Sunday, October 19, 2025

Much Needed Water with a Pesky Wind

This past week brought our first nor'easter of the season, and with it came plenty of gusty winds which lingered several days past the storm's departure. The storm left me needing to find places to paddle that had enough water and, at the same time, provided some shelter from gusty north winds. On Sunday morning, in the last hours of calm before the storm, I got out on the Assabet River in Stow, MA. Post-storm on Thursday I paddled the Assabet River in Concord, MA, and my paddling week ended on Friday with a visit to South Meadow Pond in Clinton, MA. It was there that I found the most sheltered and most colorful foliage (above photo) of the week.

Sunday morning the Assabet River in Stow had adequate water depth up to the Route 62 bridge in Gleasondale where such depth disappeared...

Along the way I'd passed this riverside military tank...

...participating in a battle reenactment of some sort.

One usual sight now found to be missing was the Assabet River eagle nest...

...which as recently as this past spring had produced eaglets.

Post-storm on Thursday I paddled to the Egg Rock inscription in Concord...

...where water levels were noted to have risen from the recent rain event. There appeared to be just enough water for paddling up to West Concord. My boat and I to made it about 3 miles up to the MBTA railroad bridge in West Concord where it became too shallow...

Along the way I passed under this game camera mounted to a tree which had subsequently fallen across the river...

Also encountered this mink (or perhaps small otter)...

On Friday I went west into Worcester County where I found less windy post-storm conditions in South Meadow Pond in Clinton...

The boat launch there allows access to Mossy Pond and Coachlace Pond in addition to South Meadow Pond. Back in 1830, when this area was part of Lancaster, a map drawn by James G. Carter found on the Norman B. Leventhal Map and Education Center shows one pond, 35-acre Mossy Pond, where the three ponds are today...

The map also shows the course of the nearby Nashua River's south branch before the creation of Wachusett Reservoir. The waters of South Meadow Pond enter the Nashua River's south branch downstream of the present Wachusett Reservoir.

After launching I paddled towards the railroad culvert allowing passage into Coachlace Pond...

Arrived there just in time to see CSX RR freight-train M427 pass over the culvert I'd just passed under...

The train's 3 locomotives had 126 cars in tow and was moving right along towards Worcester.

Headed down the length of Coachlace Pond to its north end outlet...

...before returning to South Meadow Pond and then over to Mossy Pond...

Mossy also had this reminder of saltier waters...

Back on South Meadow I decided to do a short portage across South Meadow Road to experience, for the first time, the part of the pond cut-off from the rest. Two tributaries enter this section of the pond, one from the north...

...and the other from the pond's southwest corner...

Here the clear water entering from South Meadow Brook contrasted sharply with the opaque clay-colored water at this end of the pond. A long-used landfill abutting the pond's south end was capped back in the 1990s and additional work is ongoing. Barriers such as this appear to have been installed to prevent groundwater beneath the landfill from entering the pond...