Stick Season is Upon Us

 

Stick season has arrived along the waters of the Assabet (above photo) and Concord rivers as of this past Sunday morning.

The Egg Rock inscription at the foot of the Assabet...

Concord River...

Brings to mind Joni Mitchell's song "Urge for Going" specifically the line "And all that's stays is dying,  and all that lives is getting out"...as perhaps this mink is thinking as he paused in riverbank patrol...

On Thursday I wheeled my boat down a bark-mulch covered path through a former industrial site to gain access to the Assabet River in West Concord, MA.  A hundred years ago it was the Boston Harness Company and it's said there were approximately 175 employees engaged in making leather harnesses, reins, and saddles.   A few concrete slabs and pieces of equipment serve as reminders...

Launched and headed upriver into a steady flow (Maynard gauge at 2.7 feet)...

A downed tree stopped my progress before reaching Pine Street so it then became a down and back up paddle passing beneath an outbound commuter train...

...before a side trip into Nashoba Brook where beavers had built a dam at the former railroad bridge, now the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail...

Managed to slide up-and-over which allowed paddling up the brook past Nashoba Bakery and almost up to the Commonwealth Ave bridge...

...where someone with a chain-saw opened a passageway recently.

The bridge at Route 2 under a cloud-filled sky...

The banks and shallows of the Assabet River are covered with these small plants...

...which release small sticky burrs to anything they make contact with.  They seem especially fond of neoprene boots like the ones I wear.  Saw a white-tailed deer in this area and wondered how their legs must get covered with the little burrs.

With this week's early feel of winter-like conditions another song comes to mind...Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald", about a Great Lakes freighter that sank 50 years ago this week (11/10/1975) with the loss of 29 men..."When the gales of November came early".

On a cheerier note the raindrops on both days held off until I was off the water.

Trash from Sunday...

Trash from Thursday included 14 "nip" bottles...