At Fellsmere, Florida

More than 10 years ago I devoted two mornings searching for the red-cockaded woodpecker in ideal pine forest habitat in north Florida. I don’t recall seeing a woodpecker either time, never mind the red-cockaded, which is an endangered species now found in only 11 states mostly in the southeastern U. S. The U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates there are perhaps 14,000 of the birds, a tiny fraction of what their numbers were centuries ago and a dangerously small number for a bird species.

I decided to give the red-cockaded another try on my latest Florida visit. While many birders would love to see every species in, say, the U. S. A. and Canada – there are more than 900 – most of us know it isn’t going to happen. We may over time see 400 or 500 species, but getting to 900 requires an extraordinary commitment of time and money. I won’t come close. But seeing every North American woodpecker species? Possible. A couple of years ago I set myself that modest goal, which is manageable. Why woodpeckers? Maybe because I’ve seen quite a few of them already, and seeing the rest of them might happen in just a few years, assuming I take a vacation or two or three in the West, where there are easily a half dozen species I’ve yet to see. After the woodpeckers? Maybe all the ducks or owls or sandpipers. For now, finding the endangered red-cockaded would be a great addition to my woodpecker list.

Searching the Internet, I learned of a state park where the red-cockaded might be seen. It was not much more than an hour from where I am staying. I arrived at the Saint Sebastian River Preserve State Park in Fellsmere late morning and stopped by the park office, where I was told the odds of seeing the birds were best along the trail blazed in yellow, one of four major hiking trails in the preserve. The woman I spoke with said the birds were most often seen very early in the day.

Never mind if I was a little late on the scene, if I had driven this far I was looking for the red-cockaded. Anyway, for a birder, part of the thrill in adding another bird to one’s Life List of species seen is the pursuit. If finding a new species involves some real effort, perhaps some research into habitat and habits, too, that just makes discovery that much more satisfying. I also think, from experience, that the birds that require time and concentration leave the most indelible memories. You learn the bird. You remember exactly where and when you saw it, somehow come away with a feel for the species. Travel with a group to some distant place where a guide takes you straight to this or that otherwise hard-to-find species and the experience isn’t as rewarding. You don’t truly learn the bird; it is figuratively put before you on a platter, no further thought required. I wanted to find the red-cockaded woodpecker on my own, on what now was my third day looking for the species. It was unusually cool for a late February day in south-central Florida, and windy as well. A wore a long-sleeve shirt with a chamois shirt over it. An advantage of the cool day was that I largely had this expansive park to myself. If there were red-cockaded woodpeckers along the trail, it was unlikely some other hiker would spook them before I came along.

Much of the preserve is a forest of longleaf pines, widely spaced, the habitat the red-cockaded needs and a habitat that, like the woodpecker itself, is but a fraction of what it once was in the southeast. The trail was sandy and wide, almost like a beach in places. I took the recommended yellow trail, and a spur that passes through a section of forest where the birds are known to nest in the spring.  I walked perhaps 2 1/4 miles with no sign of the birds before turning around to retrace my steps. I had the feeling this was to be another day without seeing the red-cockaded. I told myself I should be pleased that I had seen a crested caracara. But about 90 minutes into my hike several birds flew across the trail and into the pines. They were a good distance away, but I saw the undulating flight pattern common to so many woodpeckers. Off the trail I went, raising the binoculars. The field guides point out that the red-cockaded has distinctive white cheeks with a black and white ladder pattern on the back. I got a reasonably good look at one bird. White cheeks. Ladder back. No mistaking this bird. The red-cockaded is not a particularly colorful bird despite its name. It is a black-and-white bird, though the male has a very small red “cockade” that is not often seen, according to the field guides. I saw nothing but black and white. The red-cockaded in fact is not all that different from two other mostly black and white woodpeckers of the East, the downy and the hairy. But with its ladder back and white cheeks, the red-cockaded is just different enough, never mind its very specific habitat needs. So, I was not just seeing another monochrome woodpecker, I saw a species that over many centuries evolved in a habitat once dominant in the southeast.

I saw three of the birds, and, I think, another two or three nearby though I did not get a good look at those birds. All the birds were wary and moved anytime I approached closer than 40 feet or so. But, with a 500mm telephoto lens, I even got a photo.

And a real sense of the red-cockaded.

More than 10 years ago I devoted two mornings searching for the red-cockaded woodpecker in ideal pine forest habitat in north Florida. I don’t recall seeing a woodpecker either time, never mind the red-cockaded, which is an endangered species now found in only 11 states mostly in the southeastern U. S. The U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates there are perhaps 14,000 of the birds, a tiny fraction of what their numbers were centuries ago and a dangerously small number for a bird species.

I decided to give the red-cockaded another try on my latest Florida visit. While many birders would love to see every species in, say, the U. S. A. and Canada – there are more than 900 – most of us know it isn’t going to happen. We may over time see 400 or 500 species, but getting to 900 requires an extraordinary commitment of time and money. I won’t come close. But seeing every North American woodpecker species? Possible. A couple of years ago I set myself that modest goal, which is manageable. Why woodpeckers? Maybe because I’ve seen quite a few of them already, and seeing the rest of them might happen in just a few years, assuming I take a vacation or two or three in the West, where there are easily a half dozen species I’ve yet to see. After the woodpeckers? Maybe all the ducks or owls or sandpipers. For now, finding the endangered red-cockaded would be a great addition to my woodpecker list.

Searching the Internet, I learned of a state park where the red-cockaded might be seen. It was not much more than an hour from where I am staying. I arrived at the Saint Sebastian River Preserve State Park in Fellsmere late morning and stopped by the park office, where I was told the odds of seeing the birds were best along the trail blazed in yellow, one of four major hiking trails in the preserve. The woman I spoke with said the birds were most often seen very early in the day.

Never mind if I was a little late on the scene, if I had driven this far I was looking for the red-cockaded. Anyway, for a birder, part of the thrill in adding another bird to one’s Life List of species seen is the pursuit. If finding a new species involves some real effort, perhaps some research into habitat and habits, too, that just makes discovery that much more satisfying. I also think, from experience, that the birds that require time and concentration leave the most indelible memories. You learn the bird. You remember exactly where and when you saw it, somehow come away with a feel for the species. Travel with a group to some distant place where a guide takes you straight to this or that otherwise hard-to-find species and the experience isn’t as rewarding. You don’t truly learn the bird; it is figuratively put before you on a platter, no further thought required. I wanted to find the red-cockaded woodpecker on my own, on what now was my third day looking for the species. It was unusually cool for a late February day in south-central Florida, and windy as well. A wore a long-sleeve shirt with a chamois shirt over it. An advantage of the cool day was that I largely had this expansive park to myself. If there were red-cockaded woodpeckers along the trail, it was unlikely some other hiker would spook them before I came along.

Much of the preserve is a forest of longleaf pines, widely spaced, the habitat the red-cockaded needs and a habitat that, like the woodpecker itself, is but a fraction of what it once was in the southeast. The trail was sandy and wide, almost like a beach in places. I took the recommended yellow trail, and a spur that passes through a section of forest where the birds are known to nest in the spring.  I walked perhaps 2 1/4 miles with no sign of the birds before turning around to retrace my steps. I had the feeling this was to be another day without seeing the red-cockaded. I told myself I should be pleased that I had seen a crested caracara. But about 90 minutes into my hike several birds flew across the trail and into the pines. They were a good distance away, but I saw the undulating flight pattern common to so many woodpeckers. Off the trail I went, raising the binoculars. The field guides point out that the red-cockaded has distinctive white cheeks with a black and white ladder pattern on the back. I got a reasonably good look at one bird. White cheeks. Ladder back. No mistaking this bird. The red-cockaded is not a particularly colorful bird despite its name. It is a black-and-white bird, though the male has a very small red “cockade” that is not often seen, according to the field guides. I saw nothing but black and white. The red-cockaded in fact is not all that different from two other mostly black and white woodpeckers of the East, the downy and the hairy. But with its ladder back and white cheeks, the red-cockaded is just different enough, never mind its very specific habitat needs. So, I was not just seeing another monochrome woodpecker, I saw a species that over many centuries evolved in a habitat once dominant in the southeast.

I saw three of the birds, and, I think, another two or three nearby though I did not get a good look at those birds. All the birds were wary and moved anytime I approached closer than 40 feet or so. But, with a 500mm telephoto lens, I even got a photo.

And a real sense of the red-cockaded.

At Farmington, Ct.

About a month ago, a harlequin duck appeared in the Farmington River on a stretch of water that parallels Garden Street. It is a most unusual place for the harlequin, winter or summer, and the question now is, how long will it remain?

Harlequin ducks spend summers in the far north, often well above the Arctic Circle, and prefer rushing, broken water. I’ve seen them in whitewater on the North Klondike River in the Yukon Territory. In winter, they prefer rocky coastlines, where they can be seen bobbing among the rocks even as the surf crashes around them. They are, it appears, very hardy creatures. In southern New England, one fairly reliable place to spot a harlequin is Sachuest Point in Rhode Island, where a small flock can often be seen in winter.

A sighting in Connecticut is highly unusual, and especially on an inland river in winter. Hundreds of birders have come by to get a look at this single, male harlequin, which is easily identified. Male harlequins have a most distinctive pattern, with lyrical swooshes of white plumage and white dots.

Mergansers, mallard ducks, and Canada geese are abundant along the Farmington River in winter, and this solitary harlequin sometimes is among them. We are left to wonder where in the north it spent the summer, and where it was headed before it decided to stop on the Farmington. Did it somehow get separated from a migrating flock of harlequins? One assumes so, and the harlequin of Farmington most likely is one of nature’s little dramas.

About a month ago, a harlequin duck appeared in the Farmington River on a stretch of water that parallels Garden Street. It is a most unusual place for the harlequin, winter or summer, and the question now is, how long will it remain?

Harlequin ducks spend summers in the far north, often well above the Arctic Circle, and prefer rushing, broken water. I’ve seen them in whitewater on the North Klondike River in the Yukon Territory. In winter, they prefer rocky coastlines, where they can be seen bobbing among the rocks even as the surf crashes around them. They are, it appears, very hardy creatures. In southern New England, one fairly reliable place to spot a harlequin is Sachuest Point in Rhode Island, where a small flock can often be seen in winter.

A sighting in Connecticut is highly unusual, and especially on an inland river in winter. Hundreds of birders have come by to get a look at this single, male harlequin, which is easily identified. Male harlequins have a most distinctive pattern, with lyrical swooshes of white plumage and white dots.

Mergansers, mallard ducks, and Canada geese are abundant along the Farmington River in winter, and this single harlequin sometimes is among them. We are left to wonder where in the north it spent the summer, and where it was headed before it decided to stop on the Farmington. Did it somehow get separated from a migrating flock of harlequins? One assumes so, and this harlequin of Farmington most likely is one of nature’s little dramas.

Paddling my kayak on Dunning Lake in Farmington, Ct., one day late last year I passed close to shore near an apartment complex and happened upon a middle-aged man crouched at the edge of the water. He was washing a paint tray and roller. In front of him was a milky-white plume easily 15-feet by 15-feet and expanding. I was outraged, and my face showed it I’m sure. We made eye contact. I stopped paddling and stared. He turned his head away, waited a few moments as I glided by, and plunged the roller back in the lake. I caught it out of the corner of my eye.

Lake Dunning is small body of water, perhaps three-quarters-of-a-mile long, maybe a half-mile wide at most, fed by springs, rainfall and a tiny inlet brook. Water from the lake flows west to the nearby Farmington River, then on to the Connecticut River and eventually the sea.

I thought of the incident as I read another new book on the Connecticut River, “Where the Great River Rises: An Atlas of the Connecticut River Watershed in Vermont and New Hampshire,” edited by Rebecca A. Brown and published by the University Press of New England. ($35.00) Its stated purpose is to heighten understanding of the Connecticut and its watershed, to increase awareness of “the whole interrelated fabric of the region.” After all these years, after the Clean Water Act, after so many Earth Days, after so much progress, we still need books like this atlas.

People still do stupid things.

Governments and businesses do stupid things, too, though far more subtly than the guy with the paint tray. Not always – as I said, there is progress, significant progress – but rivers like the Connecticut even now are too often abused, as the Atlas documents. True, factories and municipalities no longer flush untreated wastes through a pipe directly into the Connecticut, but at the same time there is little improvement in controlling the insidious runoff pollution from the ever growing volume of paved surfaces in the watershed, which drains parts of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Not to mention the other problems, like global warming, mercury deposition, and the degradation caused by dams, 14 of them on the Connecticut still functioning, another 3 slowly crumbling.

The Atlas is a project of the Connecticut River Joint Commissions, created by the legislatures of Vermont and New Hampshire to coordinate efforts to protect the Connecticut’s upper valley. Experts at Dartmouth College assisted with the book. The upper valley is a big area, nearly 7,000 square miles, draining places like Vermont’s rugged Northeast Kingdom and the westerly slopes of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, including part of Mount Washington. There are essays on the upper valley’s geology, forests, plant and animal life, agriculture, fisheries, and recreation. Other essays trace the impact of Native Americans, explore population trends, assess water quality, document the cultural history of the valley then and now. There are graphics galore – including one showing public access points in the upper valley. Handy.

There is graceful prose in places, but mostly this atlas is a kind of Upper Valley textbook with workmanlike, explanatory writing. Nothing wrong with that. There is an enormous amount of information about the river and its watershed between these covers, and it is the kind of vetted, reliable, factual matter that is valuable and needed. Connecticut River afficionados will snatch it up and add it to their increasingly sagging shelf of Connecticut River literature. We’ve been seeing a couple of Connecticut River books a year in recent years.

That is, I think, because there is something about the Connecticut River that rings an emotional bell with some people, I’ve met dozens of people over the past few decades who feel proprietary about the river, who can’t spend too much time on it, near it, reading about it. I’ll count myself among them. What we Connecticut River groupies have to hope is that others will discover the Connecticut – or discover and fuss over the brook nearby that feeds the stream that feeds the Connecticut.

Rivers are not just moving water, they are the lyrics of the landscape, singing a song that measures our stewardship better than anything else I know. A plume of paint-stained water draining to the Connecticut is, if we keep things in perspective, an example of the work still to be done.

Paddling my kayak on Dunning Lake in Farmington, Ct., one day late last year I passed close to shore near an apartment complex and happened upon a middle-aged man crouched at the edge of the water. He was washing a paint tray and a roller brush. In front of him was a milky-white plume easily 15-feet by 15-feet and expanding. I was outraged, and my face showed it I’m sure. We made eye contact. I stopped paddling and stared. He turned his head away, waited a few moments as I glided by, and plunged the roller back in the lake. I caught it out of the corner of my eye.

Lake Dunning is small body of water, perhaps three-quarters-of-a-mile long, maybe a half-mile wide at most, fed by springs, rainfall and a tiny inlet brook. Water from the lake flows west to the nearby Farmington River, then on to the Connecticut River and eventually the sea.

I thought of the incident as I read another new book on the Connecticut River, “Where the Great River Rises: An Atlas of the Connecticut River Watershed in Vermont and New Hampshire,” edited by Rebecca A. Brown and published by the University Press of New England. ($35.00) Its stated purpose is to heighten understanding of the Connecticut and its watershed, to increase awareness of “the whole interrelated fabric of the region.” After all these years, after the Clean Water Act, after so many Earth Days, after so much progress, we still need books like this atlas.

People still do stupid things.

Governments and businesses do stupid things, too, though far more subtly than the guy with the paint tray. Not always – as I said, there is progress, significant progress – but rivers like the Connecticut even now are too often abused, as the Atlas documents. True, factories and municipalities no longer flush untreated wastes through a pipe directly into the Connecticut, but at the same time there is little improvement in controlling the insidious runoff pollution from the ever growing volume of paved surfaces in the watershed, which drains parts of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Not to mention the other problems, like global warming, mercury deposition, and the degradation caused by dams, 14 of them on the Connecticut still functioning, another 3 slowly crumbling.

The Atlas is a project of the Connecticut River Joint Commissions, created by the legislatures of Vermont and New Hampshire to coordinate efforts to protect the Connecticut’s upper valley. Experts at Dartmouth College assisted with the book. The upper valley is a big area, nearly 7,000 square miles, draining places like Vermont’s rugged Northeast Kingdom and the westerly slopes of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, including part of Mount Washington. There are essays on the upper valley’s geology, forests, plant and animal life, agriculture, fisheries, and recreation. Other essays trace the impact of Native Americans, explore population trends, assess water quality, document the cultural history of the valley then and now. Color photographs and graphics are plentiful in this large-format paperback  - including one showing public access points in the upper valley. Handy.

There is graceful prose in places, but mostly this atlas is a kind of Upper Valley textbook with workmanlike, explanatory writing. Nothing wrong with that. There is an enormous amount of information about the river and its watershed between these covers, and it is the kind of vetted, reliable, factual matter that is valuable and needed. Connecticut River afficionados will snatch it up and add it to their increasingly sagging shelf of Connecticut River literature. We’ve been seeing a couple of Connecticut River books a year in recent years.

That is, I think, because there is something about the Connecticut that rings an emotional bell with some people. I’ve met dozens of people over the past few decades who feel proprietary about the river, who can’t spend too much time on it, near it, reading about it. I’ll count myself among them. What we Connecticut River groupies have to hope is that others will discover the Connecticut – or discover and fuss over the brook nearby that feeds the stream that feeds the Connecticut.

Rivers are not just moving water, they are the lyrics of the landscape, and their songs assess our stewardship of this planet better than anything else I know. A plume of paint-stained water draining to the Connecticut is, if we keep things in perspective, a reminder of the work still to be done.

Perhaps the closest thing we have to wilderness in New England is the vast forest overspreading much of inland central and northern Maine. It is rugged, mountainous land thick with spruce and fir, laced with clear streams and rivers and dotted with deep, cold lakes. Here you will find birds like the no-longer-common common loon and the spruce grouse, along with abundant moose. Much of this forest is five or more hours driving time from metropolitan New England, so you might assume it will stay what it is: trees, water and wildlife.

Unfortunately, no. Long drive or not, the appeal of pristine waterfront property is powerful. Meanwhile, the economics of the forest products industry changed over the past two decades. As demand for weekend homes accelerated, even in these remote areas, large timber products companies discovered that the waterfront properties within their vast holdings are worth far more as residential real estate than as a platform for growing trees for pulp. So the pressure is on, and it is an issue, at least in Maine. It ought to be an issue taken far more seriously in the rest of the region. This is in effect New England’s last frontier. Must every inch of waterfront be seen through a window?

Strange then, that an announcement a few days ago from the Appalachian Mountain Club received so little attention.

The AMC bought a 29,500-acre parcel of land – a genuine missing link – that creates a 63-mile corridor of conservation land stretching from a point near Greenville, a small town at the southern end of Moosehead Lake, all the way to Baxter State Park, itself a massive holding permanently set aside as wild land that includes mile-high Mount Katahdin.

This newly acquired parcel, known as the Roach Ponds Tract, is bounded to the north by state of Maine land, and to the south by another large AMC-owned property, the Katahdin Iron Works Tract, which is 37,000 acres. Those properties, along with others owned by The Nature Conservancy and the state are within an area known as the 100-Mile-Wilderness, a recreational playground for those who cherish nature as it wants to be. The new purchase provides a 20-mile buffer of deep forest for a section of the 2,175-mile Appalachian Trail, which passes through the 100-Mile-Wilderness.

Central and northern Maine forests are regularly logged by the paper products companies, and much of the area has been working forest for the better part of two centuries. They were cutting trees in Maine’s north woods when Henry David Thoreau visited in the mid-19th Century. But even with the industrial cutting, these forests are about as close to pristine wilderness on any large scale as you will find in New England.

To give you an idea: In heavily developed southern New England, a day of heavy rain typically causes streams and rivers to rise rapidly with runoff from cultivated and paved surfaces. Streams that flow clear in dry weather are murky for days after. The Roach Ponds Tract includes the upper reaches of the West Branch of the Pleasant River, as unspoiled a stream as you can expect to find in New England. Its banks are forested, its waters clear. It holds wild, native brook trout and the native shiner, the fallfish, and that is about it. What happens after big rain? The West Branch of the Pleasant River might rise 6 inches overnight. But it won’t be raging. It will flow clear as it does every other day.  I’ve seen it. The West Branch is buffered – protected – by thousands of acres of forest, like streams were centuries ago.

The Roach Ponds Tract was purchased for $11.5 million from Plum Creek Timber Co. Inc., all from private sources, no public money involved. It is hard to imagine how this purchase will not be increasingly appreciated as the decades go on. It always seems to be that way with conservation lands. Look at the national parks.

Plum Creek, however, happens to be the same corporation behind a massive residential development project planned for the shores of Moosehead Lake, one of Maine’s biggest lakes with many miles of wild shoreline. It is a stone’s throw from the Roach Ponds Tract. Plum Creek plans three resorts and more than 2,000 residential units around Moosehead. Maine’s Land Use Regulation Commission approved that development last month. The Natural Resources Council of Maine, long a critic of the Plum Creek development, already has appealed that decision to the Maine Superior Court.

Perhaps the closest thing we have to wilderness in New England is the vast forest overspreading much of inland central and northern Maine. It is rugged, mountainous land thick with spruce and fir, laced with clear streams and rivers and dotted with deep, cold lakes. Here you will find birds like the no-longer-common common loon and the spruce grouse, along with abundant moose. Much of this forest is five or more hours driving time from metropolitan New England, so you might assume it will stay what it is: trees, water and wildlife.

Unfortunately, no. Long drive or not, the appeal of pristine waterfront property is powerful. Meanwhile, the economics of the forest products industry changed over the past two decades. As demand for weekend homes accelerated, even in these remote areas, large timber products companies discovered that the waterfront properties within their vast holdings are worth far more as residential real estate than as a platform for growing trees for pulp. So the pressure is on, and it is an issue, at least in Maine. It ought to be an issue taken far more seriously in the rest of the region. This is in effect New England’s last frontier. Must every inch of waterfront be seen through a window?

Strange then, that an announcement a few days ago from the Appalachian Mountain Club received so little attention.

The AMC bought a 29,500-acre parcel of land – a genuine missing link – that creates a 63-mile corridor of conservation land stretching from a point near Greenville, a small town at the southern end of Moosehead Lake, all the way to Baxter State Park, itself a massive holding permanently set aside as wild land that includes mile-high Mount Katahdin.

This newly acquired parcel, known as the Roach Ponds Tract, is bounded to the north by state of Maine land, and to the south by another large AMC-owned property, the Katahdin Iron Works Tract, which is 37,000 acres. Those properties, along with others owned by The Nature Conservancy and the state are within an area known as the 100-Mile-Wilderness, a recreational playground for those who cherish nature as it wants to be. The new purchase provides a 20-mile buffer of deep forest for a section of the 2,175-mile Appalachian Trail, which passes through the 100-Mile-Wilderness.

Central and northern Maine forests are regularly logged by the paper products companies, and much of the area has been working forest for the better part of two centuries. They were cutting trees in Maine’s north woods when Henry David Thoreau visited in the mid-19th Century. But even with the industrial cutting, these forests are about as close to pristine wilderness on any large scale as you will find in New England.

To give you an idea: In heavily developed southern New England, a day of heavy rain typically causes streams and rivers to rise rapidly with runoff from cultivated and paved surfaces. Streams that flow clear in dry weather are murky for days after. The Roach Ponds Tract includes the upper reaches of the West Branch of the Pleasant River, as unspoiled a stream as you can expect to find in New England. Its banks are forested, its waters clear. It holds wild, native brook trout and the native shiner, the fallfish, and that is about it. What happens after big rain? The West Branch of the Pleasant River might rise 6 inches overnight. But it won’t be raging. It will flow clear as it does every other day.  I’ve seen it. The West Branch is buffered – protected – by thousands of acres of forest, like streams were centuries ago.

The Roach Ponds Tract was purchased for $11.5 million from Plum Creek Timber Co. Inc., all from private sources, no public money involved. It is hard to imagine how this purchase will not be increasingly appreciated as the decades go on. It always seems to be that way with conservation lands. Look at the national parks.

Plum Creek, however, happens to be the same corporation behind a massive residential development project planned for the shores of Moosehead Lake, one of Maine’s biggest lakes with many miles of wild shoreline. It is a stone’s throw from the Roach Ponds Tract. Plum Creek plans three resorts and more than 2,000 residential units around Moosehead. Maine’s Land Use Regulation Commission approved that development last month. The Natural Resources Council of Maine, long a critic of the Plum Creek development, already has appealed that decision to the Maine Superior Court.

We were bouncing down the beach in a big four-wheel-drive pickup, going fishing, when Cooper Gilkes, one of the most respected guides on Martha’s Vineyard, stopped to talk to a ranger.

“You should have been here this morning,” the ranger said. “Six o’clock this morning, it was unbelievable.” That is, there were striped bass everywhere. Now, it appeared, they were somewhere else.

“Don’t tell me that,” Gilkes said. “I don’t want to hear that.” I was riding shotgun. I didn’t want to hear it either.

I had come to Martha’s Vineyard for one reason: to catch a striped bass on a fly rod.

It was early May, after a winter that wouldn’t go away. The migratory striped bass and bluefish showed up off the Vineyard more than a week late, and even now were only trickling in. Fishing was agonizingly slow, at the very time of year when anyone who even occasionally wets a line has the itch to be on the water.

Before I even arrived, Gilkes warned me that he couldn’t promise fish before late May but would do his best. I said I’d take my chances; given a choice of fishing or not fishing, you fish.

You can fish for striped bass on Martha’s Vineyard with spinning tackle and have loads of fun, of course. But I’m a fly-rodder. And over the past two decades, saltwater fly-fishing has grown like the fish in the proverbial fish story. The Vineyard, with miles of beach access and numerous salt ponds fed by the sea, is first-class fly-fishing water.

Until recently, Karen Kukolich’s 14-pound, 3-ounce striped bass was the women’s world record for a striper caught on a 12-pound-test leader. She’s fished all over the world, holds five other women’s division fly-rodding records and considers the Vineyard, where she lives, a special place to fish.

A summertime playground for movie stars, rock stars and financial tycoons, the Vineyard is, at the same time, one of the great American saltwater fly-fishing destinations. People come from throughout the U. S. and abroad just to fish, and the celebrities are often among them.

In fact, an entire fishy subculture permeates the Vineyard, a decidedly upscale resort destination with high-end restaurants, galleries and boutiques galore. Walk into PJ’s Cafe & Catering, a none-too-fancy, mostly take-out restaurant popular with the locals, and on the wall is a signed art print of a striped bass hitting a fly. Think of it as fine art and Formica, as if the striper were the whole point of Vineyard existence. There are striped bass weathervanes, striped bass boxer shorts, stripers at suppertime, stripers all the time.

I’ve fly-fished in freshwater for trout for years but had never lobbed a fly in saltwater. I couldn’t wait; in recent years, three different people on three different occasions used the same word to describe saltwater fly-fishing to me: addictive.

Small stripers run 15 to 20 inches and might weigh a few pounds. But stripers can run much larger, with fish of 10 or 15 pounds fairly common and fish to 40 or more pounds taken. I’m a guy who will happily spend a good part of a day walking up a mountain brook catching and releasing little brook trout that don’t weigh more than a breakfast sausage. Ten-pound stripers on flies? Where’s my camera?

But again, it was early in the season, and I knew I had to be content — thrilled, really — with a fish of 18 inches. The prime Vineyard fishing really takes off in late May and runs into the fall. I was a week early.

Meanwhile, a big nor’easter that caused much flooding in New England had literally torn an opening in the barrier beach that connected Edgartown and Chappaquiddick, creating tricky new currents, not to mention inconvenience for the people who used to drive to and from Chappaquiddick along the beach. Stripers already were congregating at the breach now and then, even this early in the season.

Success At Sunset

Guides often leave the fishing to their clients, but I urged Gilkes — he is known as Coop — to fish with me. We rigged up our rods and began casting, though I had the sense Coop’s fishing was all business. He was trying to find a pod of fish that he would direct me to. We fished for an hour without so much as a hit.

“Let’s go,” he said. Clearly the stripers were not there. Off we went to fish Edgartown Great Pond, a salt pond that holds stripers and other species. This, I sensed, was one of Coop’s little secrets, one of those places where even a neophyte saltwater fly-rodder had a decent chance of hooking one. We drove down a long, winding dirt road, parked in a clearing no bigger than his truck and started walking.

Reaching a narrow section of a cove, we waded in. It was 6 p.m., and the sun was dipping in the sky, but still bright. It might as well have been a ticking clock as far as I was concerned. Sure I could fish again tomorrow; I had another day on the Vineyard. But Coop was leaving for the mainland, and I’d be fishing by myself. I knew the odds of my getting a fish would drop substantially. I’ve learned over the years that a guide can make all the difference when fishing a new place.

The best fishing would come just as the sun was about to set, Coop said. Noted.

Wham. The sun hadn’t set, but he had a fish on and landed a striper of about 18 inches. Where there is one striper there often are others. I cast repeatedly nearby — Coop insisted I do so — and, son of a gun, caught and released my first striper, a fish of about 15 inches. Small, to be sure — tiny, really, as stripers go, but it was my first fish on a fly in saltwater. We took a picture. If I did not catch another fish it would be OK. I got one. I got one on a fly. Got it on a chartreuse Clouser pattern.

Gilkes caught another. I caught another, maybe 18 inches. Then it got quiet. Time to move.

We walked the shoreline of the salt pond, annoying a pair of osprey that squealed overhead, as they do. Surely a nesting pair, I thought, and a good sign. The osprey, or fish hawk, is a big-time fish-eater. This pond had to be really fishy, or they wouldn’t be there.

Around a bend and into another cove we walked. This was often a good spot, Coop said, and one where you could wade out 30 or so feet to cast. Over the next hour, we caught and released a half-dozen or more small stripers and white perch. You know the fishing is good when you aren’t sure how many you’ve caught, and I lost count.

The sky by now was a mix of horizontal stripes of salmon and deep pink, with little strips of yellow, amid dark blue, the night air cool but not cold.

I’m fussy about my fishing; to me, there can be no great fishing without great scenery, and by great scenery I mean a sense of the pristine natural world. There’s room for mankind’s creations in my fishing, but not much. I’ll leave it to others to catch big fish in the warm outflow of a nuclear power plant.

Anyway, here I was, with a beautiful sky in a quiet, woodsy nook of the Vineyard, lots of those wind-stunted Cape Cod oaks and pines surrounding the pond and not much else to intrude. Yes, this met with my approval.

We’d agreed to quit about 8, and it was close to 8. I cast again, by this time getting used to the saltwater fly rod — these salt rods have a lot more heft than my trout rods. I was getting a little more distance with the fly.

Another hit, and a strong one, bent my rod like a rainbow. The fish took off on a run, stripping line from the reel. Another run. Then another. “This is a decent fish,” I said. Coop watched, ready. In all, there were at least five runs until, after something close to 10 minutes, the fish tired, and Coop was able to grab it.

“A keeper,” he said before it was even out of the water. He lifted it and weighed it on the spot. It was 11 pounds, 29 inches long, and the biggest fish I’d ever caught on a fly.

The sun had just set, and it was getting dark.

By Steve Grant

EDGARTOWN, Ma. – We were bouncing down the beach in a big four-wheel-drive pickup, going fishing, when Cooper Gilkes, one of the most respected guides on Martha’s Vineyard, stopped to talk to a ranger.

“You should have been here this morning,” the ranger said. “Six o’clock this morning, it was unbelievable.” That is, there were striped bass everywhere. Now, it appeared, they were somewhere else.

“Don’t tell me that,” Gilkes said. “I don’t want to hear that.” I was riding shotgun. I didn’t want to hear it either.

I had come to Martha’s Vineyard for one reason: to catch a striped bass on a fly rod.

It was early May, after a winter that wouldn’t go away. The migratory striped bass and bluefish showed up off the Vineyard more than a week late, and even now were only trickling in. Fishing was agonizingly slow, at the very time of year when anyone who even occasionally wets a line has the itch to be on the water.

Before I even arrived, Gilkes warned me that he couldn’t promise fish before late May but would do his best. I said I’d take my chances; given a choice of fishing or not fishing, you fish.

You can fish for striped bass on Martha’s Vineyard with spinning tackle and have loads of fun, of course. But I’m a fly-rodder. And over the past two decades, saltwater fly-fishing has grown like the fish in the proverbial fish story. The Vineyard, with miles of beach access and numerous salt ponds fed by the sea, is first-class fly-fishing water.

Until recently, Karen Kukolich’s 14-pound, 3-ounce striped bass was the women’s world record for a striper caught on a 12-pound-test leader. She’s fished all over the world, holds five other women’s division fly-rodding records and considers the Vineyard, where she lives, a special place to fish.

A summertime playground for movie stars, rock stars and financial tycoons, the Vineyard is, at the same time, one of the great American saltwater fly-fishing destinations. People come from throughout the U. S. and abroad just to fish, and the celebrities are often among them.

In fact, an entire fishy subculture permeates the Vineyard, a decidedly upscale resort destination with high-end restaurants, galleries and boutiques galore. Walk into PJ’s Cafe & Catering, a none-too-fancy, mostly take-out restaurant popular with the locals, and on the wall is a signed art print of a striped bass hitting a fly. Think of it as fine art and Formica, as if the striper were the whole point of Vineyard existence. There are striped bass weathervanes, striped bass boxer shorts, stripers at suppertime, stripers all the time.

I’ve fly-fished in freshwater for trout for years but had never lobbed a fly in saltwater. I couldn’t wait; in recent years, three different people on three different occasions used the same word to describe saltwater fly-fishing to me: addictive.

Small stripers run 15 to 20 inches and might weigh a few pounds. But stripers can run much larger, with fish of 10 or 15 pounds fairly common and fish to 40 or more pounds taken. I’m a guy who will happily spend a good part of a day walking up a mountain brook catching and releasing little brook trout that don’t weigh more than a breakfast sausage. Ten-pound stripers on flies? Where’s my camera?

But again, it was early in the season, and I knew I had to be content — thrilled, really — with a fish of 18 inches. The prime Vineyard fishing really takes off in late May and runs into the fall. I was a week early.

Meanwhile, a big nor’easter that caused much flooding in New England had literally torn an opening in the barrier beach that connected Edgartown and Chappaquiddick, creating tricky new currents, not to mention inconvenience for the people who used to drive to and from Chappaquiddick along the beach. Stripers already were congregating at the breach now and then, even this early in the season.

Success At Sunset

Guides often leave the fishing to their clients, but I urged Gilkes — he is known as Coop — to fish with me. We rigged up our rods and began casting, though I had the sense Coop’s fishing was all business. He was trying to find a pod of fish that he would direct me to. We fished for an hour without so much as a hit.

“Let’s go,” he said. Clearly the stripers were not there. Off we went to fish Edgartown Great Pond, a salt pond that holds stripers and other species. This, I sensed, was one of Coop’s little secrets, one of those places where even a neophyte saltwater fly-rodder had a decent chance of hooking one. We drove down a long, winding dirt road, parked in a clearing no bigger than his truck and started walking.

Reaching a narrow section of a cove, we waded in. It was 6 p.m., and the sun was dipping in the sky, but still bright. It might as well have been a ticking clock as far as I was concerned. Sure I could fish again tomorrow; I had another day on the Vineyard. But Coop was leaving for the mainland, and I’d be fishing by myself. I knew the odds of my getting a fish would drop substantially. I’ve learned over the years that a guide can make all the difference when fishing a new place.

The best fishing would come just as the sun was about to set, Coop said. Noted.

Wham. The sun hadn’t set, but he had a fish on and landed a striper of about 18 inches. Where there is one striper there often are others. I cast repeatedly nearby — Coop insisted I do so — and, son of a gun, caught and released my first striper, a fish of about 15 inches. Small, to be sure — tiny, really, as stripers go, but it was my first fish on a fly in saltwater. We took a picture. If I did not catch another fish it would be OK. I got one. I got one on a fly. Got it on a chartreuse Clouser pattern.

Gilkes caught another. I caught another, maybe 18 inches. Then it got quiet. Time to move.

We walked the shoreline of the salt pond, annoying a pair of osprey that squealed overhead, as they do. Surely a nesting pair, I thought, and a good sign. The osprey, or fish hawk, is a big-time fish-eater. This pond had to be really fishy, or they wouldn’t be there.

Around a bend and into another cove we walked. This was often a good spot, Coop said, and one where you could wade out 30 or so feet to cast. Over the next hour, we caught and released a half-dozen or more small stripers and white perch. You know the fishing is good when you aren’t sure how many you’ve caught, and I lost count.

The sky by now was a mix of horizontal stripes of salmon and deep pink, with little strips of yellow, amid dark blue, the night air cool but not cold.

I’m fussy about my fishing; to me, there can be no great fishing without great scenery, and by great scenery I mean a sense of the pristine natural world. There’s room for mankind’s creations in my fishing, but not much. I’ll leave it to others to catch big fish in the warm outflow of a nuclear power plant.

Anyway, here I was, with a beautiful sky in a quiet, woodsy nook of the Vineyard, lots of those wind-stunted Cape Cod oaks and pines surrounding the pond and not much else to intrude. Yes, this met with my approval.

We’d agreed to quit about 8, and it was close to 8. I cast again, by this time getting used to the saltwater fly rod — these salt rods have a lot more heft than my trout rods. I was getting a little more distance with the fly.

Another hit, and a strong one, bent my rod like a rainbow. The fish took off on a run, stripping line from the reel. Another run. Then another. “This is a decent fish,” I said. Coop watched, ready. In all, there were at least five runs until, after something close to 10 minutes, the fish tired, and Coop was able to grab it.

“A keeper,” he said before it was even out of the water. He lifted it and weighed it on the spot. It was 11 pounds, 29 inches long, and the biggest fish I’d ever caught on a fly.

The sun had just set, and it was getting dark.

CUTLER, Me. – As I was about to pull the car into a small dirt parking lot, a yearling moose appeared at roadside, ambled into the deep spruce forest in front of us and disappeared. 
   This was going to be good. 
   My daughter, Allison, and I parked, strapped on our packs and, within a half-hour on a cool, windy morning in late spring, began hiking the Bold Coast Trail, a trail that is about as northeast as you can get in the Northeastern United States. 
   If the quintessential knock-your-wool-socks-off scenic trail is supposed to be a mountain path in the Rockies or Appalachians, the Bold Coast Trail, we quickly discovered, is doing its part to displace that image with one of seacoast and spruce. 
   There are no big mountains in Cutler, only some hills, but there are thousands of acres of shaggy spruce and fir forest, like a gargantuan Christmas tree farm gone native, and miles of coastal cliffs that drop dramatically to the frothy sea below. 
   Within a 12,000-acre state-owned preserve that abuts the sea — known as the Cutler Coast Unit — the Bold Coast Trail hugs those cliff edges for nearly 5 miles, tracing every cove, every promontory, before wending another 5-plus miles inland through a forest spiced with brooks, wetlands and ponds. 
   It is one of the wildest remaining pieces of coastline in the Eastern United States, so unspoiled you can see moose in the woods and whales in the water but hike for hours without seeing a building. 
   The trail, which opened to the public only in 1994, is the happy ending to what might have been a shame. The land, owned by a forest-products company, went on the market and was to be carved up for development. Alarmed, the community launched a move to preserve the land, and eventually the state acquired it. 
   It was immediately obvious that this tract would be a great place for a trail, and the resulting layout is dramatic enough to deserve status as a destination hike. 
   You can make a long weekend out of a visit to the preserve, combining it with other coastal trails nearby and a visit to Cutler, as authentic a fishing village as you are likely to encounter anywhere in New England. There is the blue water of the harbor, the old wooden docks and the colorful lobster boats, with nary a tourism amenity to intrude. 
   This is the Bold Coast area of Maine, in Downeast Maine, which means it is serious lobster and blueberry country. Good lobster is not hard to find, and as for the blueberries, which grow in vast heath-like colonies, there is not only blueberry cobbler, but blueberry everything for sale. 
   The Bold Coast Trail gives hikers choices. From the parking area, it is only 1.5 miles to the cliffs, where, if you just want a quick look at this wild coast, you can scan the seascape and go back to the car; a great photo op for a hike of 3 miles. 
    Or you can hike to the sea and follow the coastal cliffs another 1.5 miles to the Black Pond Brook Cutoff, making a 5.8-mile loop. This is a perfect day hike for many people and will provide plenty of coastal views and a real feel for the forest. There is a map of the layout at the trailhead. 
    Or you can hike the entire 9.8-mile loop trail, which is, again, a mix of coast and forest hiking. At the farthest point from the parking lot, about 5 miles away, there are three widely spaced campsites tucked into the forest edge at cliffside and accessible only by the trail. Each has a view of the sea and the sunrise, your reward for lugging that backpack. 
    Allison and I wanted to hike the entire trail. The question was whether to camp or not, hiking 5 miles one day, 5 the next. With rain in the forecast, and the black flies bountiful (they’re at their worst in late May and early June but not much of a problem after that), we decided at the last minute not to camp. We would hike the whole thing in one day. 
    With spring in our step, we soon found ourselves at the edge of the sea, Grand Manan Island, Canada, in front of us, and to our right the coastline that we would follow for the next 3.8 miles. For the most part, the trail follows the cliff edge closely — so closely, there are places you need to be most careful. This is meant to be a natural area, and there are no railings. There is cliff, and then there is the water and rocks below. If you were to bring a child, you will hold hands here. 
    We could see for miles, and lobster pot buoys in the water below were the only sign of civilization. Out of sight, but only miles away, was Cutler Harbor and the fishermen who tend the pots. We saw only one small boat in more than two hours along the cliffs. 
    In places, the trail dipped down to water’s edge, over stones smoothed by years of crashing waves. A raft of eiders bobbed in the water — which is astonishingly clear — next to some exposed offshore rocks. Gulls flew by. From early summer to early fall, humpback, northern right, finback and minke whales can sometimes be seen from the trail. We missed the whales. 
    Up and down we went, from one cliffside outlook to the next on a trail marked mostly in blue blazes but sometimes with cairns, little pyramids of stones. This was not a mountain hike, but the elevation changes were continuous and burned up plenty of energy. At the 5-mile point, we stopped beside one of the campsites — thinking how nice it would have been to camp for the night — and had our lunch. We could see in the distance the lighthouse near Cutler Harbor. A flock of waxwings was busy in the trees behind us. 
    The coastal section of the trail easily ranks as one of the most dramatically scenic in the East, but the section through the forest is a pleasure in its own right. 
    The trees alone are enough to hold interest. At one point a boardwalk crosses a white cedar swamp, a habitat increasingly uncommon. In places, birches are abundant, or tamaracks, with delicate needles that are shed each fall. Wildlife is plentiful. 
    As we came down a small hill, a tiny mass of brilliant yellow feathers flitted from limb to limb, in sharp contrast to the deep green of a spruce bough not 10 feet off the ground. It was a magnolia warbler, one of the most colorful of warblers, with black streaks on its bright yellow breast. It is a species that spends its summers in spruces. 
    Stopping for every interesting bird — we also saw a three-toed woodpecker, a bird of the far North and a real find — and wanting to etch every vantage into our memories, we took nearly all day making the 9.8-mile loop. 
    Because the trail was more up and down than we expected, we were very tired and hungry when we finished. A lobster or fish dinner is never hard to find in Downeast Maine, nor is a good chowder, which was the first thing I ordered when we reached town. That’s how you toast a coastal hike. 
    
    If you plan to hike the Bold Coast Trail: 
    Directions: From Bangor, Maine, take Route 1A to Ellsworth, Route 1 to Machias. Turn right on Route 191, and continue 16.9 miles, through the village of Cutler to the trail parking area on the right. There is an entrance sign.

By Steve Grant

CUTLER, Me. – As I was about to pull the car into a small dirt parking lot, a yearling moose appeared at roadside, ambled into the deep spruce forest in front of us and disappeared.

This was going to be good.

My daughter, Allison, and I parked, strapped on our packs and, within a half-hour on a cool, windy morning in late spring, began hiking the Bold Coast Trail, a trail that is about as northeast as you can get in the Northeastern United States. 
   If the quintessential knock-your-wool-socks-off scenic trail is supposed to be a mountain path in the Rockies or Appalachians, the Bold Coast Trail, we quickly discovered, is doing its part to displace that image with one of seacoast and spruce.

There are no big mountains in Cutler, only some hills, but there are thousands of acres of shaggy spruce and fir forest, like a gargantuan Christmas tree farm gone native, and miles of coastal cliffs that drop dramatically to the frothy sea below.

Within a 12,000-acre state-owned preserve that abuts the sea — known as the Cutler Coast Unit — the Bold Coast Trail hugs those cliff edges for nearly 5 miles, tracing every cove, every promontory, before wending another 5-plus miles inland through a forest spiced with brooks, wetlands and ponds.

It is one of the wildest remaining pieces of coastline in the Eastern United States, so unspoiled you can see moose in the woods and whales in the water but hike for hours without seeing a building.

The trail, which opened to the public only in 1994, is the happy ending to what might have been a shame. The land, owned by a forest-products company, went on the market and was to be carved up for development. Alarmed, the community launched a move to preserve the land, and eventually the state acquired it.

It was immediately obvious that this tract would be a great place for a trail, and the resulting layout is dramatic enough to deserve status as a destination hike.

You can make a long weekend out of a visit to the preserve, combining it with other coastal trails nearby and a visit to Cutler, as authentic a fishing village as you are likely to encounter anywhere in New England. There is the blue water of the harbor, the old wooden docks and the colorful lobster boats, with nary a tourism amenity to intrude.

This is the Bold Coast area of Maine, in Downeast Maine, which means it is serious lobster and blueberry country. Good lobster is not hard to find, and as for the blueberries, which grow in vast heath-like colonies, there is not only blueberry cobbler, but blueberry everything for sale.

The Bold Coast Trail gives hikers choices. From the parking area, it is only 1.5 miles to the cliffs, where, if you just want a quick look at this wild coast, you can scan the seascape and go back to the car; a great photo op for a hike of 3 miles.

Or you can hike to the sea and follow the coastal cliffs another 1.5 miles to the Black Pond Brook Cutoff, making a 5.8-mile loop. This is a perfect day hike for many people and will provide plenty of coastal views and a real feel for the forest. There is a map of the layout at the trailhead.

Or you can hike the entire 9.8-mile loop trail, which is, again, a mix of coast and forest hiking. At the farthest point from the parking lot, about 5 miles away, there are three widely spaced campsites tucked into the forest edge at cliffside and accessible only by the trail. Each has a view of the sea and the sunrise, your reward for lugging that backpack.

Allison and I wanted to hike the entire trail. The question was whether to camp or not, hiking 5 miles one day, 5 the next. With rain in the forecast, and the black flies bountiful (they’re at their worst in late May and early June but not much of a problem after that), we decided at the last minute not to camp. We would hike the whole thing in one day.

With spring in our step, we soon found ourselves at the edge of the sea, Grand Manan Island, Canada, in front of us, and to our right the coastline that we would follow for the next 3.8 miles. For the most part, the trail follows the cliff edge closely — so closely, there are places you need to be most careful. This is meant to be a natural area, and there are no railings. There is cliff, and then there is the water and rocks below. If you were to bring a child, you will hold hands here.

We could see for miles, and lobster pot buoys in the water below were the only sign of civilization. Out of sight, but only miles away, was Cutler Harbor and the fishermen who tend the pots. We saw only one small boat in more than two hours along the cliffs.

In places, the trail dipped down to water’s edge, over stones smoothed by years of crashing waves. A raft of eiders bobbed in the water — which is astonishingly clear — next to some exposed offshore rocks. Gulls flew by. From early summer to early fall, humpback, northern right, finback and minke whales can sometimes be seen from the trail. We missed the whales.

Up and down we went, from one cliffside outlook to the next on a trail marked mostly in blue blazes but sometimes with cairns, little pyramids of stones. This was not a mountain hike, but the elevation changes were continuous and burned up plenty of energy. At the 5-mile point, we stopped beside one of the campsites — thinking how nice it would have been to camp for the night — and had our lunch. We could see in the distance the lighthouse near Cutler Harbor. A flock of waxwings was busy in the trees behind us.

The coastal section of the trail easily ranks as one of the most dramatically scenic in the East, but the section through the forest is a pleasure in its own right. 
    The trees alone are enough to hold interest. At one point a boardwalk crosses a white cedar swamp, a habitat increasingly uncommon. In places, birches are abundant, or tamaracks, with delicate needles that are shed each fall. Wildlife is plentiful.

As we came down a small hill, a tiny mass of brilliant yellow feathers flitted from limb to limb, in sharp contrast to the deep green of a spruce bough not 10 feet off the ground. It was a magnolia warbler, one of the most colorful of warblers, with black streaks on its bright yellow breast. It is a species that spends its summers in spruces.

Stopping for every interesting bird — we also saw a three-toed woodpecker, a bird of the far North and a real find — and wanting to etch every vantage into our memories, we took nearly all day making the 9.8-mile loop.

Because the trail was more up and down than we expected, we were very tired and hungry when we finished. A lobster or fish dinner is never hard to find in Downeast Maine, nor is a good chowder, which was the first thing I ordered when we reached town. That’s how you toast a coastal hike.

If you plan to hike the Bold Coast Trail: 
    Directions: From Bangor, Maine, take Route 1A to Ellsworth, Route 1 to Machias. Turn right on Route 191, and continue 16.9 miles, through the village of Cutler to the trail parking area on the right. There is an entrance sign.

It was late morning on a hot August day in northern New Hampshire as we paddled our way in kayaks between the spruces, birches and silver maples overhanging the upper Saco River.

We bounced through two easy rapids, and gathered in the pool below the second. Even now, 15 years later, the day is vivid. Allison, who was 12, remembers that Scott, already a hockey player at age 8, wore a cap with the Dallas Stars logo. Why the Dallas Stars? Who knows? He dipped it in the river and splashed water over his head.

We had been on the water perhaps a half hour in what would be an 8-mile run along a section of the Saco that is sprightly in places, placid in others, but always cold, clear, and moving. This is a river on its way out of the White Mountains.

Let’s go swimming, the kids said.

We stopped a short distance downriver at a beach, of which there are many on the upper Saco. These are natural beaches; the sand is the product of centuries of water crashing its way down rocky mountainsides. It comes to rest in places where the river takes a rest. We would take a rest. In we went.

The river bottom was sand and small smooth stones, the ones that don’t hurt your feet. In four feet of water, every pebble was visible, as if they were part of some museum diorama. Earlier, an otter streaked downriver just off the bottom. The water had to have been eight feet deep, but the otter seemed an arm’s length away we saw it so well, right down to the wavy patterns the water made in its fur.

As we waded we found a spot where the current was just right; strong enough to carry us along, but not so strong that we couldn’t plant our feet and stop when we wanted. We pushed off the bottom with our toes, let the river take us where it would, and set our feet again. We were like astronauts in space, in a state that was Earth’s equivalent of gravity-free. Bounce off the bottom, slide downriver, set your feet. Swim back. Repeat. We jumped and splashed. We dove and swam under water with our eyes open. We were otters.

A big mistake, one we repeatedly chose to make, was to venture into deeper, swifter water. It was about five feet deep at the edge of the main channel, where the current was all business. Whoosh, there went our footing and under we went. We righted ourselves, stepped back a foot or two, and were back in equilibrium with the river, grinning.

It was summer, sand, sunshine, spruce, the Saco and us. Shrink a summer to a second and it was this one.

There were no lifeguards, no concession stand, of course. In fact, in a day of many dips, we saw comparatively few people. And isn’t that part of the romance of an outing in the outdoors, the pleasing sense of remoteness, an intimacy with a healthy river, a reassurance, however illusory, that our world – our nest – is not fouled?

I don’t want to be Martha Stewart fussy about this – well, sure I do – but there are components to a great swim that are every bit as important as the right stenciling for the hallway or the perfect petit four. More important.

How you get to your swimming hole matters, for one thing.

You can whisk yourself in a motorboat to the beach at the other end of the lake. But you won’t earn your swim, and can’t really appreciate it even if, at some level, you enjoy it. There is humdrum wine and there is noble wine and you can’t know the one until you’ve tasted the other.

Arrive by canoe at a little pool on the Saco and it is high adventure. This is your river, your trip; you are explorers, not passengers. You counted every spotted sandpiper along the way, worked your way around every fallen birch, saw the cardinal flowers. That three miles paddling was muscle warming exercise, not five noisy minutes. The state road may only be a half mile away, but now it feels like 10. With nothing more than a paddle, you realize, you transported your soul from one emotional time zone to another.

Where you swim matters, too. No water parks, please. No, no gimmicks, and no machines to pump and filter water time and again. The water that makes for a grand swim is filtered through a forest, where it emerges refreshing as the scent of just-cut birch, soft as the first emerging leaves of spring.

And who you swim with matters. A swim should be intimate, not a mob scene. I remember best the swims with just a few friends, or with family, or with the family and a few friends. Put Allison, Scott and I together and we can go on and on telling stories of swimming in remote lakes and rivers, places where we tossed the paddles in the boats and jumped in the water for the joy of it. A common denominator of all of these stories is the arrival by canoe or kayak – and the realization that a good swim is among life’s underappreciated joys.

Allison recalls that on the Saco I announced at mid-afternoon that if we stopped at one more sand bar, one more beach, one more rope hanging over a deep shady pool, we’d never get to the take out in time for supper.

“Who cares?” They didn’t.

Perhaps better than I, they knew not to hurry a swim for the ages.

This essay first appeared in Canoe Journal.

By Steve Grant

It was late morning on a hot August day in northern New Hampshire as we paddled our way in kayaks between the spruces, birches and silver maples overhanging the upper Saco River.

We bounced through two easy rapids, and gathered in the pool below the second. Even now, 15 years later, the day is vivid. Allison, who was 12, remembers that Scott, already a hockey player at age 8, wore a cap with the Dallas Stars logo. Why the Dallas Stars? Who knows? He dipped it in the river and splashed water over his head.

We had been on the water perhaps a half hour in what would be an 8-mile run along a section of the Saco that is sprightly in places, placid in others, but always cold, clear, and moving. This is a river on its way out of the White Mountains.

Let’s go swimming, the kids said.

We stopped a short distance downriver at a beach, of which there are many on the upper Saco. These are natural beaches; the sand is the product of centuries of water crashing its way down rocky mountainsides. It comes to rest in places where the river takes a rest. We would take a rest. In we went.

The river bottom was sand and small smooth stones, the ones that don’t hurt your feet. In four feet of water, every pebble was visible, as if they were part of some museum diorama. Earlier, an otter streaked downriver just off the bottom. The water had to have been eight feet deep, but the otter seemed an arm’s length away we saw it so well, right down to the wavy patterns the water made in its fur.

As we waded we found a spot where the current was just right; strong enough to carry us along, but not so strong that we couldn’t plant our feet and stop when we wanted. We pushed off the bottom with our toes, let the river take us where it would, and set our feet again. We were like astronauts in space, in a state that was Earth’s equivalent of gravity-free. Bounce off the bottom, slide downriver, set your feet. Swim back. Repeat. We jumped and splashed. We dove and swam under water with our eyes open. We were otters.

A big mistake, one we repeatedly chose to make, was to venture into deeper, swifter water. It was about five feet deep at the edge of the main channel, where the current was all business. Whoosh, there went our footing and under we went. We righted ourselves, stepped back a foot or two, and were back in equilibrium with the river, grinning.

It was summer, sand, sunshine, spruce, the Saco and us. Shrink a summer to a second and it was this one.

There were no lifeguards, no concession stand, of course. In fact, in a day of many dips, we saw comparatively few people. And isn’t that part of the romance of an outing in the outdoors, the pleasing sense of remoteness, an intimacy with a healthy river, a reassurance, however illusory, that our world – our nest – is not fouled?

I don’t want to be Martha Stewart fussy about this – well, sure I do – but there are components to a great swim that are every bit as important as the right stenciling for the hallway or the perfect petit four. More important.

How you get to your swimming hole matters, for one thing.

You can whisk yourself in a motorboat to the beach at the other end of the lake. But you won’t earn your swim, and can’t really appreciate it even if, at some level, you enjoy it. There is humdrum wine and there is noble wine and you can’t know the one until you’ve tasted the other.

Arrive by canoe at a little pool on the Saco and it is high adventure. This is your river, your trip; you are explorers, not passengers. You counted every spotted sandpiper along the way, worked your way around every fallen birch, saw the cardinal flowers. That three miles paddling was muscle warming exercise, not five noisy minutes. The state road may only be a half mile away, but now it feels like 10. With nothing more than a paddle, you realize, you transported your soul from one emotional time zone to another.

Where you swim matters, too. No water parks, please. No, no gimmicks, and no machines to pump and filter water time and again. The water that makes for a grand swim is filtered through a forest, where it emerges refreshing as the scent of just-cut birch, soft as the first emerging leaves of spring.

And who you swim with matters. A swim should be intimate, not a mob scene. I remember best the swims with just a few friends, or with family, or with the family and a few friends. Put Allison, Scott and I together and we can go on and on telling stories of swimming in remote lakes and rivers, places where we tossed the paddles in the boats and jumped in the water for the joy of it. A common denominator of all of these stories is the arrival by canoe or kayak – and the realization that a good swim is among life’s underappreciated joys.

Allison recalls that on the Saco I announced at mid-afternoon that if we stopped at one more sand bar, one more beach, one more rope hanging over a deep shady pool, we’d never get to the take out in time for supper.

“Who cares?” They didn’t.

Perhaps better than I, they knew not to hurry a swim for the ages.

I’ve had many pleasant hours in boats with motors. I water-skied behind big motors as a boy. I’ve fished from powerboats. I’ve been whisked across lakes at high speed, thumping over the wakes of other powerboats with wind and spray in my face. I’ve even rented power boats of my own free will. But there is something about the speed that ultimately leaves me unsatisfied: I don’t recall having seen anything. Moreover, boat engines are noisy, but don’t get me started.

Canoes, I learned long ago, go just the right speed.

Back in the 70s, before children, when it seemed we had all the time in the world, my wife and I paddled with friends on the Saco River in Maine. The image remains to this day. I remember vivid blues and dark greens splashed with light, a Winslow Homer-like scene that is soothing to summon and excuse enough to jump into a canoe again. We toasted the glory of the Saco with a six-pack that day, though, in all honesty, we toasted every river with a six-pack in those days.

We dawdled, paddling maybe two miles an hour, talking much of the while, taking in the scenery. We stopped and swam off a sand beach. But we were in a hurry in another way in those days, starting our careers, already working long hours. Little did we know. Suddenly, the river that was our lives quickened like that tongue of water dropping into a rapid. Into the maelstrom we went. Children came. The canoe sat idle for months at a time.

But each spring I’d get the itch and find a way to get out, if only for a half day now and then. I’d pore over my maps, pick a river not too far away, and set off. I returned wet, tired and grinning. My notes – I have to write everything down – bring back sights and random thoughts from those outings: Osprey dropped from sky and snatched trout smack in front of me; Hemlocks along Shepaug magnificent today; Wow, New Milford has changed – is sprawl containable?; Time for kids’ dental checkup?

One summer in the 90s, my son, Scott and I were canoeing the West Branch of the Penobscot River in northern Maine during the precious, too-brief interlude between his summer hockey, baseball and soccer camps and the start of his fall hockey, baseball and soccer games.

The West Branch is a fairly wild river in the North Maine Woods, and you don’t see many people even in summer. We camped alone on an island one night, made breakfast of bacon and eggs when we awoke, and began paddling on a late-summer, nippy morning. We came upon a cow moose at the edge of the river, water dripping from her mouth, with a calf at her side. I reached for my camera, fumbled with its waterproof bag and watched as both of them lumbered away before I ever got the lens cap off. We paddled mostly in silence for another hour, taking in the quiet, the scenery and the stillness, while the exercise warmed us.

There is a pattern when two people paddle a canoe alone for long distances. The day begins with conversation, the continuation of all the talk that goes into loading the canoe and departing – “Watch that rock.” “Did you douse the fire?” Then, after an hour or so on the water, conversation trails off, minds wander.

This is the Zen of canoeing, when all the preparation is behind you, when all the cares and stresses – that would include the drive up on Interstate 95 – recede with the tail water. Now it is the boat, the scenery and your mind. It can take hours to reach this Jello-like state, or it can take days. When it happens, you realize that part of the appeal of a canoe, in addition to its consummately graceful-but-utilitarian form, is that it is a reasonably comfortable platform from which to let the mind’s eye roam. You can get a little spacey in a canoe and it’s OK.

We had been quiet some time when Scott, age 10 at the time, asked, “How do rivers begin?” I explained, best I could. That led to a discussion of oceans, where the rivers end up, which led to a conversation about the sky and the clouds and the universe. Scott was sure space was not infinite. “It has to stop. It can’t go on forever,” he said. We kicked that around for a mile or two, which is how you measure time in a canoe. Scott occasionally flipped a lure from the bow in search of trout. Eventually, the conversation veered to a discussion about God, heaven and, finally, should we pull over for lunch?

Would we ever have spent the morning pondering those questions if we weren’t paddling 12 miles over the course of a day on a river in Maine, often in silence, under an expansive blue sky, not having seen anyone else since the night before? It wouldn’t happen driving to soccer practice, I don’t think.

The speed of a canoe is pretty much whatever speed you want it to be at a given moment – up to full throttle of say, 4 or 5 miles an hour if you want to make something aerobic of it. Need to blow off steam? Well, go ahead. Want to chill? Sure. But paddle long enough and your speed will become the one that makes you one with the river. Rhythmic paddling, the melodious drip of water off blade. Now you are connected.

I don’t want to suggest that you have to spend days in the wilderness far from humanity to appreciate canoe travel, however. Unlike other means of transportation, most notably those high-speed power boats, in which your entire relationship to other boaters is a jerk of the wheel to avoid hitting them, a canoe practically guarantees a civil exchange with others.

In fact, I like to say that the canoe is the only civilized form of transportation. I’ve been saying that for so many years that my wife and friends now let it whistle by without comment. While allowing that some may find it a tad hyperbolic and uninclusive, I stand by it.

Spend a day on a river or a lake, and there’s a good chance you’ll come upon another party who will wave and exchange a greeting. To see a canoe in the distance does not bring a grimace, but the prospect of a conversation. “Are you on a trip?” “Catch anything?” “Did you see the otters playing?”

I can’t think of a better example of this than another day on the Penobscot a couple of days after our metaphysical flight, when Scott and I paddled away from a sandy campsite on Chesuncook Lake, also part of the West Branch river system. Almost immediately we happened upon a family of three, also from Connecticut. We talked as we paddled, side by side, as the sun rose higher and higher. By late morning, we reached Mauser Island, still together, and decided it was time for a swim. The five of us found a perfect spot in a cove on the back side of the island. Mount Katahdin loomed in the distance. A gently sloping, mossy ledge rose six feet above the water and ended many feet below the surface. Splashed with water it became a chute. We swam together for a half hour, the five of us, new friends.

I see it clearly today – vivid blues and dark greens, splashed with light.

This essay first appeared in Northeast Magazine.

By Steve Grant

I’ve had many pleasant hours in boats with motors. I water-skied behind big motors as a boy. I’ve fished from powerboats. I’ve been whisked across lakes at high speed, thumping over the wakes of other powerboats with wind and spray in my face. I’ve even rented power boats of my own free will. But there is something about the speed that ultimately leaves me unsatisfied: I don’t recall having seen anything. Moreover, boat engines are noisy, but don’t get me started.

Canoes, I learned long ago, go just the right speed.

Back in the 70s, before children, when it seemed we had all the time in the world, my wife and I paddled with friends on the Saco River in Maine. The image remains to this day. I remember vivid blues and dark greens splashed with light, a Winslow Homer-like scene that is soothing to summon and excuse enough to jump into a canoe again. We toasted the glory of the Saco with a six-pack that day, though, in all honesty, we toasted every river with a six-pack in those days.

We dawdled, paddling maybe two miles an hour, talking much of the while, taking in the scenery. We stopped and swam off a sand beach. But we were in a hurry in another way in those days, starting our careers, already working long hours. Little did we know. Suddenly, the river that was our lives quickened like that tongue of water dropping into a rapid. Into the maelstrom we went. Children came. The canoe sat idle for months at a time.

But each spring I’d get the itch and find a way to get out, if only for a half day now and then. I’d pore over my maps, pick a river not too far away, and set off. I returned wet, tired and grinning. My notes – I have to write everything down – bring back sights and random thoughts from those outings: Osprey dropped from sky and snatched trout smack in front of me; Hemlocks along Shepaug magnificent today; Wow, New Milford has changed – is sprawl containable?; Time for kids’ dental checkup?

One summer in the 90s, my son, Scott and I were canoeing the West Branch of the Penobscot River in northern Maine during the precious, too-brief interlude between his summer hockey, baseball and soccer camps and the start of his fall hockey, baseball and soccer games.

The West Branch is a fairly wild river in the North Maine Woods, and you don’t see many people even in summer. We camped alone on an island one night, made breakfast of bacon and eggs when we awoke, and began paddling on a late-summer, nippy morning. We came upon a cow moose at the edge of the river, water dripping from her mouth, with a calf at her side. I reached for my camera, fumbled with its waterproof bag and watched as both of them lumbered away before I ever got the lens cap off. We paddled mostly in silence for another hour, taking in the quiet, the scenery and the stillness, while the exercise warmed us.

There is a pattern when two people paddle a canoe alone for long distances. The day begins with conversation, the continuation of all the talk that goes into loading the canoe and departing – “Watch that rock.” “Did you douse the fire?” Then, after an hour or so on the water, conversation trails off, minds wander.

This is the Zen of canoeing, when all the preparation is behind you, when all the cares and stresses – that would include the drive up on Interstate 95 – recede with the tail water. Now it is the boat, the scenery and your mind. It can take hours to reach this Jello-like state, or it can take days. When it happens, you realize that part of the appeal of a canoe, in addition to its consummately graceful-but-utilitarian form, is that it is a reasonably comfortable platform from which to let the mind’s eye roam. You can get a little spacey in a canoe and it’s OK.

We had been quiet some time when Scott, age 10 at the time, asked, “How do rivers begin?” I explained, best I could. That led to a discussion of oceans, where the rivers end up, which led to a conversation about the sky and the clouds and the universe. Scott was sure space was not infinite. “It has to stop. It can’t go on forever,” he said. We kicked that around for a mile or two, which is how you measure time in a canoe. Scott occasionally flipped a lure from the bow in search of trout. Eventually, the conversation veered to a discussion about God, heaven and, finally, should we pull over for lunch?

Would we ever have spent the morning pondering those questions if we weren’t paddling 12 miles over the course of a day on a river in Maine, often in silence, under an expansive blue sky, not having seen anyone else since the night before? It wouldn’t happen driving to soccer practice, I don’t think.

The speed of a canoe is pretty much whatever speed you want it to be at a given moment – up to full throttle of say, 4 or 5 miles an hour if you want to make something aerobic of it. Need to blow off steam? Well, go ahead. Want to chill? Sure. But paddle long enough and your speed will become the one that makes you one with the river. Rhythmic paddling, the melodious drip of water off blade. Now you are connected.

I don’t want to suggest that you have to spend days in the wilderness far from humanity to appreciate canoe travel, however. Unlike other means of transportation, most notably those high-speed power boats, in which your entire relationship to other boaters is a jerk of the wheel to avoid hitting them, a canoe practically guarantees a civil exchange with others.

In fact, I like to say that the canoe is the only civilized form of transportation. I’ve been saying that for so many years that my wife and friends now let it whistle by without comment. While allowing that some may find it a tad hyperbolic and uninclusive, I stand by it.

Spend a day on a river or a lake, and there’s a good chance you’ll come upon another party who will wave and exchange a greeting. To see a canoe in the distance does not bring a grimace, but the prospect of a conversation. “Are you on a trip?” “Catch anything?” “Did you see the otters playing?”

I can’t think of a better example of this than another day on the Penobscot a couple of days after our metaphysical flight, when Scott and I paddled away from a sandy campsite on Chesuncook Lake, also part of the West Branch river system. Almost immediately we happened upon a family of three, also from Connecticut. We talked as we paddled, side by side, as the sun rose higher and higher. By late morning, we reached Mauser Island, still together, and decided it was time for a swim. The five of us found a perfect spot in a cove on the back side of the island. Mount Katahdin loomed in the distance. A gently sloping, mossy ledge rose six feet above the water and ended many feet below the surface. Splashed with water it became a chute. We swam together for a half hour, the five of us, new friends.

I see it clearly today – vivid blues and dark greens, splashed with light.

How has this quote escaped attention all these years?

It is to the point, universal, inspirational and succinct. It amounts to a mission statement for humanity. It could change the world.

“Would it not be well for us to consider if our deed will warrant the expense of nature?”

Not dramatic enough for a manifesto? Give it another look. It is a powerful and radical thought presented in disarmingly graceful, understated and non-confrontational prose. It ought to be plastered all over those posters the kids make for Earth Day. But it won’t be, I can almost guarantee. I’ve never seen it quoted anywhere.

Henry David Thoreau worked that sentence into the middle of his journal entry for Feb. 17, 1841, an entry that otherwise was not likely to stir the modern soul. The preceding sentence, a not atypical Thoreau commentary on society, if a rather ho-hum one, reads: “The mechanic works no longer than his labor will pay for lights — fuel — and shop rent.”

Still, Thoreau’s journal is widely read today and always in print, something that can be said of but a comparative handful of journals, like those of Lewis and Clark or Anne Frank. Yet somehow Thoreau’s sound bite for society has lain there on the page undiscovered or, at a minimum, unheralded and unused for generations.

That is a shame, because it says in one sentence what the environmental movement has been trying to say for more than four decades, implicitly or explicitly, not always successfully: In everything we do, consider carefully what its impact on the environment will be and act accordingly.

Imagine if people took Thoreau’s question into consideration as they went about their personal and professional lives. It would affect how big our houses are, how we heat and cool them and at what temperature. It would affect what kinds of vehicles we choose to drive, how often we drive, and how far we drive. It would affect our choices in clothing, food, career, family size and leisure activities. There would be far less consumption, and far less waste. Do I need four pairs of hiking boots?

Pay the question heed and it will bite the ankles of corporate America every moment of every day.

Actually, were business to pay it heed, were Thoreau’s words ever truly to become part of corporate decision-making, we’d have a revolution. Would GE have dumped PCBs in the Housatonic and Hudson rivers 40 years ago if its workplace ethic was permeated by Thoreauvian philosophy? No.

True, GE is getting green these days, and so are many other companies, but we are a long, long way from considering whether “our deed will warrant the expense of nature.”

I showed this quote to a trusted friend of impeccable environmental sensibility, a person who treads very lightly on the Earth. His one reservation was that people might need to read it twice before the meaning washed over their consciousness.

I don’t think that is necessarily bad, and I don’t think Thoreau’s thought is any less accessible than “Think globally, act locally,” one of the reigning environmental maxims.

There are other quotes that could be called into service, but they either are not quite as succinct, or slightly off-point.

Aldo Leopold, author of the classic “A Sand County Almanac,” penned a nice one-liner a half-century ago: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.” A little too textbookish, alas.

Wendell Berry, an elegant essayist and contemporary, wrote, “This is the justice we are learning from the ecologists; you cannot damage what you are dependent upon without damaging yourself.” A neat observation, but not quite workable as the catchphrase for an environmentally refined civilization.

John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club and one of the great early figures in preservation work, wrote, “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” This is a great and graceful synthesis of ecology, but a tad too abstract to serve as the philosophical I-beam for sustainable lifestyles.

Thoreau’s maxim works. It ought to be put on refrigerator magnets and computer screens, in boardrooms and on billboards. 
    “Would it not be well for us to consider if our deed will warrant the expense of nature?”

Second thought, forget the billboards.

By Steve Grant

How has this quote escaped attention all these years?

It is to the point, universal, inspirational and succinct. It amounts to a mission statement for humanity. It could change the world.

“Would it not be well for us to consider if our deed will warrant the expense of nature?”

Not dramatic enough for a manifesto? Give it another look. It is a powerful and radical thought presented in disarmingly graceful, understated and non-confrontational prose. It ought to be plastered all over those posters the kids make for Earth Day. But it won’t be, I can almost guarantee. I’ve never seen it quoted anywhere.

Henry David Thoreau worked that sentence into the middle of his journal entry for Feb. 17, 1841, an entry that otherwise was not likely to stir the modern soul. The preceding sentence, a not atypical Thoreau commentary on society, if a rather ho-hum one, reads: “The mechanic works no longer than his labor will pay for lights — fuel — and shop rent.”

Still, Thoreau’s journal is widely read today and always in print, something that can be said of but a comparative handful of journals, like those of Lewis and Clark or Anne Frank. Yet somehow Thoreau’s sound bite for society has lain there on the page undiscovered or, at a minimum, unheralded and unused for generations.

That is a shame, because it says in one sentence what the environmental movement has been trying to say for more than four decades, implicitly or explicitly, not always successfully: In everything we do, consider carefully what its impact on the environment will be and act accordingly.

Imagine if people took Thoreau’s question into consideration as they went about their personal and professional lives. It would affect how big our houses are, how we heat and cool them and at what temperature. It would affect what kinds of vehicles we choose to drive, how often we drive, and how far we drive. It would affect our choices in clothing, food, career, family size and leisure activities. There would be far less consumption, and far less waste. Do I need four pairs of hiking boots?

Pay the question heed and it will bite the ankles of corporate America every moment of every day.

Actually, were business to pay it heed, were Thoreau’s words ever truly to become part of corporate decision-making, we’d have a revolution. Would GE have dumped PCBs in the Housatonic and Hudson rivers 40 years ago if its workplace ethic was permeated by Thoreauvian philosophy? No.

True, GE is getting green these days, and so are many other companies, but we are a long, long way from considering whether “our deed will warrant the expense of nature.”

I showed this quote to a trusted friend of impeccable environmental sensibility, a person who treads very lightly on the Earth. His one reservation was that people might need to read it twice before the meaning washed over their consciousness.

I don’t think that is necessarily bad, and I don’t think Thoreau’s thought is any less accessible than “Think globally, act locally,” one of the reigning environmental maxims.

There are other quotes that could be called into service, but they either are not quite as succinct, or slightly off-point.

Aldo Leopold, author of the classic “A Sand County Almanac,” penned a nice one-liner a half-century ago: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.” A little too textbookish, alas.

Wendell Berry, an elegant essayist and contemporary, wrote, “This is the justice we are learning from the ecologists; you cannot damage what you are dependent upon without damaging yourself.” A neat observation, but not quite workable as the catchphrase for an environmentally refined civilization.

John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club and one of the great early figures in preservation work, wrote, “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” This is a great and graceful synthesis of ecology, but a tad too abstract to serve as the philosophical I-beam for sustainable lifestyles.

Thoreau’s maxim works. It ought to be put on refrigerator magnets and computer screens, in boardrooms and on billboards. 
    “Would it not be well for us to consider if our deed will warrant the expense of nature?”

Second thought, forget the billboards.

There is the beautiful Connecticut, picturesque, spanned by covered bridges, framed by mountains, rich with cultural history, with large and luxuriant marshes at its mouth.

There is, too, the Connecticut that is choked by 17 dams, still fouled at times by poorly treated sewage, its forested banks increasingly pocked with commercial and residential development.

Call it the contradiction of the Connecticut. Two new books illustrate this dichotomy nicely.

“Two Coots in a Canoe: An Unusual Story of Friendship,” by David E. Morine, (Glove Pequot Press, $22.95) is a sprightly and revealing account of a canoe trip Morine and his old college buddy, Ramsay Peard, took on the Connecticut in 2003 when they were 59 and 61 respectively.

“The Connecticut River: A Photographic Journey Through the Heart of New England,” (Wesleyan University Press, $35.00) is a visual tour of the river in 136 full-page color photos taken by Al Braden.

The Braden book is for the most part a celebration of the river, one that mostly gives us the scenic Connecticut, the one we all cherish. It does not, however, ignore the other Connecticut – Braden’s captions address thermal and sewage pollution head on, and an afterward by Chelsea Reiff Gwyther, executive director of the Connecticut River Watershed Council, an environmental group devoted to the protection of the Connecticut, is a plea to address the problems facing the river.

Having said that, if you want the Connecticut in all its sparkling glory, grab the Braden book. You’ll understand why people like Peard and Morine wanted to paddle the whole river. Whatever the issues, much of the Connecticut is still easy on the eyes.

Two Coots gets to the nitty-gritty of the Connecticut in an account that is at times funny, at times angry, at times poignant. When Peard called Morine and suggested they canoe the Connecticut, Morine agreed with one condition. No camping. They would rely on strangers along the river to welcome them into their homes. They would mooch their way down the river.

They pulled it off. The Watershed Council put out a news release and e-mailed its membership. Morine and Peard were inundated with offers of lodging for a night. Those nights with strangers along the 410-mile length of the Connecticut are literal and figurative windows into life along the river, and enrich Morine’s book.

For two decades Morine was the head of land acquistion for The Nature Conservancy, and he well knows the harm that dams do. “There are seventeen dams on the Connecticut River. All the dams are degrading, but the one at Holyoke is the worst by far: dirty and disgusting, like a ball of hair clogging up a drain.”

As for the marginal water quality in some sections of the Connecticut and many other American rivers, Morine says: “One of the great fears of Homeland Security is that terrorists will contaminate our water supply. If clean, potable water is so important to our homeland security, why aren’t we aggressively cleaning up our rivers?”

But Two Coots is no jeremiad. It is an honest, enjoyable, playful and ultimately insightful account of their trip, one in which the highs and lows of each day – and a long river trip will have many highs and lows – leave us with a real feel for the river – both rivers.

It is as if there are two Connecticut Rivers.

There is the beautiful Connecticut, picturesque, spanned by covered bridges, framed by mountains, rich with cultural history, with large and luxuriant marshes at its mouth.

There is, too, the Connecticut that is choked by 17 dams, still fouled at times by poorly treated sewage, its forested banks increasingly pocked with commercial and residential development.

Call it the contradiction of the Connecticut. Two new books illustrate this dichotomy nicely.

“Two Coots in a Canoe: An Unusual Story of Friendship,” by David E. Morine, (Globe Pequot Press, $22.95) is a sprightly and revealing account of a canoe trip Morine and his old college buddy, Ramsay Peard, took on the Connecticut in 2003 when they were 59 and 61 respectively.

“The Connecticut River: A Photographic Journey Through the Heart of New England,” (Wesleyan University Press, $35.00) is a visual tour of the river in 136 full-page color photos taken by Al Braden.

The Braden book is for the most part a celebration of the river, one that mostly gives us the scenic Connecticut, the one we all cherish. It does not, however, ignore the other Connecticut – Braden’s captions address thermal and sewage pollution head on, and an afterward by Chelsea Reiff Gwyther, executive director of the Connecticut River Watershed Council, an environmental group devoted to the protection of the Connecticut, is a plea to address the problems facing the river.

Having said that, if you want the Connecticut in all its sparkling glory, grab the Braden book. You’ll understand why people like Peard and Morine wanted to paddle the whole river. Whatever the issues, much of the Connecticut is still easy on the eyes.

Two Coots gets to the nitty-gritty of the Connecticut in an account that is at times funny, at times angry, at times poignant. When Peard called Morine and suggested they canoe the Connecticut, Morine agreed with one condition. No camping. They would rely on strangers along the river to welcome them into their homes. They would mooch their way down the river.

They pulled it off. The Watershed Council put out a news release and e-mailed its membership. Morine and Peard were inundated with offers of lodging for a night. Those nights with strangers along the 410-mile length of the Connecticut are literal and figurative windows into life along the river, and enrich Morine’s book.

For two decades Morine was the head of land acquistion for The Nature Conservancy, and he well knows the harm that dams do. “There are seventeen dams on the Connecticut River. All the dams are degrading, but the one at Holyoke is the worst by far: dirty and disgusting, like a ball of hair clogging up a drain.”

As for the marginal water quality in some sections of the Connecticut and many other American rivers, Morine says: “One of the great fears of Homeland Security is that terrorists will contaminate our water supply. If clean, potable water is so important to our homeland security, why aren’t we aggressively cleaning up our rivers?”

But Two Coots is no jeremiad. It is an honest, enjoyable, playful and ultimately insightful account of their trip, one in which the highs and lows of each day – and a long river trip will have many highs and lows – leave us with a real feel for the river. Both rivers.