January, a Wrap

 

After last year's lower than usual water levels it was nice to see January of 2023 going out with water aplenty as indicated by the stone boathouse in Fairhaven Bay (photo above).  It's also unusual to see Fairhaven Bay pretty much ice-free at this time of year.  Sunday gave us temperatures slightly above 50 degrees F.

The wide open bay...

Headroom under the Sudbury River's stone bridges is also a little harder to find as this photo of the Elm Street Bridge shows...

The Egg Rock inscription was completely submerged...

Trash found floating about...

...included 6 more nip bottles.

A Look of March on the Assabet

 

Thanks to some rain-swollen tributaries such as the above pictured Nashoba Brook exiting Warner's Pond the Assabet River was flowing strong and wide on Thursday.  Most of the usual obstacles were submerged.  The gauge at Maynard registered 4.4 feet.  With little to no ice in sight and temperatures in the 40's F. the river had more of a March look than January.

The confluence of the Assabet and Nashoba as seen looking upstream on the river...

Worked my way upstream to the Damon Mill's old exit race which provided a respite from the current...

The many rain events of late had trash on the move...

...and included 31 nip bottles.

Winter Finally Settling In

 

Got out on the Concord River Sunday morning where things are starting to look wintry even though there's no ice along the shore.

Visited some of the usual spots:

Egg Rock

...and its inscription...

...the Old North Bridge...

Came across a floating green plastic turtle urging us all to slow the heck down...

Trash included 8 nip bottles and the aforementioned turtle...

Late Out of the Gate

 

With my boat and its power plant finally out of dry-dock I got my 2023 paddling season underway yesterday on the Assabet River in Stow, MA.  Thanks to our fairly mild winter (to this point) I found things quite peaceful out on the ice-free river. Water levels are up from when I last paddled in December. The wildlife seen were mute swans, kingfishers, Canada geese, mergansers, and this red-tailed hawk...

The eagle nest looks ready to serve its purpose which should happen in the next month or so...

A riverside council fire ring also stands at the ready...

The only ice I could find was in the far end of this shallow slough...

 First trash haul of this new year...

While stuck on land I did make a terrestrial visit to the long ago busy railroad junction of Oakdale (West Boylston, MA) where prior to the building of the Wachusett Reservoir the tracks of the Central Massachusetts Railroad and the Worcester, Nashua and Portland Division crossed at grade.  Where there was once a depot, water tank, turntable and engine house today this old signal base appears to be all that remains...

The tracks heading towards Worcester still see daily use and just recently had continuously welded rail installed...

A short distance to the right of the above pictured rails, the Quinapoxet River drops down into Wachusett Reservoir...

Across from the power generating station and along the old Central Mass railbed was this interesting structure incorporating 2 old railroad boxcars and a shipping container...

...which provided this unusual "bottoms up" view...

The odd structure seems related to a Massachusetts Water Resources Authority facility.

Can't overstate how happy I am to be back on the water!

  

A Brief Review of 2022

This past year got underway in January for me with a good hot-stove reading of A Journey Into Mohawk and Oneida Country 1634 - 1635 The Journal of Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert.  It was my favorite read of the year and, like any really good first-hand account, it transported me to another place and time and cast the die for a springtime trip there.  The trip came 3 months later and brought me to the most distant waters from my home I'd experience in 2022...paddling the Mohawk River at my westernmost turnaround point downstream of the Erie Canal's Lock 13 near Yosts, NY...

The previous day I walked the grounds where the Mohawk palisaded village Caughnawaga stood in present-day Fonda, NY, and later visited another Mohawk village TE-NO-TO-GE...

After years of reading about the Mohawks and their always contentious relationship with the Algonkian peoples of my region, I finally got to experience a bit of the Mohawk world in their namesake river valley including Cohoes Falls and the Hudson/Mohawk rivers confluence.

Forts seemed to be a theme this year with visits to several French/English forts: Fort St. Frederic/Crown Point and Fort Carillon/Fort Ticonderoga both on Lake Champlain.  Other forts paddled to included the Connecticut River's Fort Dummer and Fort Pickering at the entrance to Salem Harbor in Massachusetts.

Closer to home I paddled some new-to-me sections of the Merrimack River between Hunt's Falls in Lowell, MA...

...and the Great Stone Dam in Lawrence.

Also closer to home was my first paddle of Lost Lake in Groton, MA...visited in the shoulder season when there was less boat traffic on the water.

Otherwise it was my usual haunts which for the most part are within a 20-mile radius of my home where water levels stayed on the low side for much of the year.

Trash was fairly typical with plastic bottles, balloons, and nip bottles being about the same as last year.  There did seem to be less Styrofoam cups perhaps thanks to Dunkin Donuts switch to a more environmentally friendly material for their coffee cups.

The trash hotspot of the year was once again the stretch of the Nashua River between Route 117 in Lancaster and Ice House Dam in Ayer, MA.  A total of 1,019 nip bottles were gathered up from this stretch of river compared with only 413 from all other waterways combined.  Here's a typical haul from this perennial hotspot...

 

Some of the more unusual flotsam I came across in 2022 were 5 USPS mail crates full of mail found in a half-mile stretch of the Concord River.  Each crate had been placed into a plastic trash bag before being tossed into the river...

Other oddities included a Disco Ball in the Merrimack River, and a Smoker's Outpost butt disposal receptacle in the Assabet River.

The drought of 2022 resulted in the recovery of some fairly old glass bottles from local rivers.  These five bottles are contenders for oldest find of the year: a Clicquot Club of Millis crown-top soda bottle (Concord R.),  a Ginter Co. Importers of Boston whiskey bottle (Concord R.), a Thatchers Mfg. Co. pint milk bottle (Sudbury R.), a C.I. Hood Sarsaparilla of Lowell bottle (Concord R.) and a J.M. McManus of Hopkinton blob-top soda/beer bottle (Sudbury R.).  All of them quite likely date to the early 1900's or possibly late 1800's.  I'm guessing the Sarsaparilla bottle is the oldest and likely dates to 1890...

The most unusual wildlife encounter came when I dipped my arms into the salty waters between Danvers and Salem harbors...and felt little objects bouncing off my skin.  These transparent little organisms seen on my spray deck below turned out to be Salps...

...a creature I'd neither seen nor heard of to this point in my life.  According to Wikipedia they're a barrel-shaped, "plantic tunicates" and their life cycle is complex.

Another first-ever wildlife encounter was the Star-nosed Mole seen swimming close to shore at Concord River's Fordway Bar.  Other wildlife encounters were a northern water snake on the Assabet and a lone river otter on the Sudbury.  Also, speaking of wildlife, it was great to witness another pair of eaglets successfully fledge from the Assabet River's eagle nest.

According to Google analytics the most viewed Trashpaddler post in 2022 was The Sunken Fort Below Wantastiquet.   

Happy Holidays to all fellow trash paddlers and other waterway travelers and best wishes for a great 2023! 

Last Paddle for Awhile

 

The Nashua River had a lot of pines leaning in this past Monday on what I suspect will be my last paddle of 2022.  My boat's power plant needs some work and will be mothballed for the rest of this year.

Knowing this I decided to launch at Petapawag in Groton, MA and head up the Nashua.  The day was pleasant for December with not too much wind and temperatures in the mid to upper forties.

Reached the confluence of the Nashua and Squannacook with enough time to push on a little further...

Then the race was on to get back to Petapawag before sunset...and it was close...

...seeing the Rt. 111/119 bridge just after taking the above photo...

...and closing out my paddling year.

My last trash haul of 2022...

...which included 42 nip bottles.

Dwindling Hours of Daylight

 

Dwindling hours of daylight were the theme this past week. On Tuesday, I'd waited until noon for temperatures to warmup before getting out on the Sudbury River in Wayland, MA.  Only a few hours later at around 3pm it seemed to me the sun began rapidly falling towards the horizon and some giddy-up paddling was required to reach the takeout before dark.    

A beaver family just beyond the Greenways has built a long-running dam helping to ensure their lodge stays surrounded by water...

Somebody's vintage kitchen chair ended up being riverside...

One unusual thing I came upon between the Pelham Island Bridge and the Greenways was a cluster of 17 bright red and yellow spent shotgun shells.  Many of them were floating in the river.  I believe most responsible hunters would've picked up their spent shells.

On Friday I got out on the Nashua River heading downriver from the Oxbow NWR at Still River in Harvard, MA...

...and later encountered the same situation with the sun seemingly racing for the door.

With the leaves now gone from the shrubbery, deer having eyes upon me are revealed...

One of the Nashua's more serene spots on Friday afternoon...

...was the above slough with a thin layer of ice away from the river's flow.

The week's trash:

Tuesday's which included 14 nip bottles and an empty bottle of Guarana Antarctica Soda...

Friday's trash included 81 nip bottles and a dozen plastic cigarette lighters...

Driving away from the Nashua River valley I took a last look at Wachusett from Prospect Hill...

...and found myself hoping the winter solstice gets here asap so we can start adding minutes rather than subtracting them.