June 4, 2010

Like just about everything else in the plant world this spring, the mountain laurel is blooming early, perhaps a week early. The delicate, cup-like blooms, white or pink, are just emerging and won’t peak for days, but the shrubs already are showy enough to grab your attention. I know this because I bushwhacked my way through a large colony of laurel Wednesday in the hills of northwestern Connecticut.

Laurel can be dense, and you don’t want to work your way through it any more than necessary. I wasn’t following a trail, and I wasn’t lost, but I made my way through much more laurel than I wanted to. Much more.

Dan Kupiec fishing a mountain brook in Connecticut for brook trout, a species native to the eastern U. S.

But I should start at the beginning.

Dan Kupiec, my neighbor and fishing buddy, called about noon. Did I want to fish for brook trout in the Litchfield Hills? A half-hour later we were traveling west on Route 44. Less than an hour after that we parked on a little roadside pull-over, put on our waders and headed up a mountain, following a brook.

It is not everybody’s cup of tea, but I discovered long ago that one of the great pleasures of fly-fishing is to ascend a mountain brook, flicking a fly into tiny pools, seeking native, wild brook trout. Brook trout in these streams are mostly small – sometimes but a few inches, often only 6- or 7-inches long – and consequently of little interest to many anglers. But they are beautiful fish, with fiery orange bellies and white at the tips of their lower fins. Among yellow and chartreuse dots on their sides are red dots surrounded by powder blue halos. Why evolution settled upon that exact pattern I can not be certain, but in the water they all but disappear and that likely is what it is all about. In any event, they are beautiful. To my mind brook trout are among the handsomest creatures in the animal kingdom. That they are found in mountain brooks only makes them more appealing; a beautiful creature in a beautiful setting. Winslow Homer painted scenes like this.

What is more beautiful - a brook trout or the mountain streams they inhabit?

Dan and I fished and we fished, climbing steeply up the mountain toward a cascade with a big pool where we knew the fish might be bigger. But by the time we approached the pool, it was getting late. Worse, if we were to fish this pool we faced a tricky descent of about 200 feet down an extremely steep bank, then back up. Meanwhile, the trail had become indistinct. We decided to fish that pool another day. I was sure there was a better trail just south of us, so we decided to take that back to the car. It would be an easy downhill trek. We cut through the woods. But there was no trail where mister-know-it-all thought there was.

As I said, we were never lost. All we had to do was return to the brook and follow it back to the car, but that would be slow. Still, even if not lost, we were not, uhh, where I thought we would be either. We headed east, toward the car, blazing our own way, which, we discovered minutes later, was thick with laurel. What might have been a 15-minute walk became a half hour event pushing our way through thick shrubbery.

But we arrived at the car somehow unscratched, our water bottles empty. Dan had plenty of water in the car. Our laurel adventure notwithstanding, it had been a beautiful afternoon communing with the brook and its brook trout. We toasted the outing appropriately, sending mini-cascades of water tumbling down our throats.

May 14, 2010

The leaves are full and fresh, temperatures are ideal, and the songbirds have arrived in Connecticut. This is a great time for picnicking, especially if you can find one of those special, quiet spots where the picnic tables are spread out and the scenery is special. Find an isolated table, bring lunch or dinner, and keep your binoculars ready. The sight of a scarlet tanager alone would make the outing worthwhile.

My outdoors column called Walkabout appears May 29 on the cover of The Hartford Courant Living section. In it I talk about four very special picnic sites around the state, each with privacy and a view. Let’s hope for beautiful weather.

The birthplace of Gen. Nathaniel Lyon, the first Union general killed in the Civil War, is today a little-known and little-visited picnic site within the Natchaug State Forest in Eastford, Ct. The stone chimney is all that remains of the Lyon homestead, and serves as a centerpiece for the picnic area, with four picnic tables, grills and a water pump.

In addition to those mentioned in the column, here are a couple of other very nice picnic spots:

In Bigelow Hollow State Park in Union, take a left off the entrance road to the boat ramp on Bigelow Pond. To the left of the ramp on a rise are a couple of tables with nice views of this quiet pond. In June, mountain laurel blooms profusely along the shore of the pond. Very nice.

In the Housatonic Meadows State Park picnic area in Sharon, stay to the right when you enter and follow the road to a small parking area next to the Housatonic River. You’ll see the table.  Fly-fishers and kayakers are part of the scenery here.

May 9, 2010

My stories on bicycle trips in the Connecticut River valley from the Canadian border to the sea are the cover of today’s Living section in The Hartford Courant, with photos by Mark Mirko and Rich Messina. They can be seen on-line at: http://www.courant.com/features/travel/

The Columbia Bridge spans the Connecticut River between Columbia, N. H. and Lemington, Vt.

The 410-mile-long Connecticut River is New England’s longest river, beginning in spruce forest in northern New Hampshire, where the river is narrow and intimate. It is still bordered by scenic farms in Vermont and New Hampshire and parts of Massachusetts and Connecticut. By the time it reaches the sea at Old Saybrook and Old Lyme it is a mile-wide and heavily tidal. Along the river are covered bridges, lighthouses, historic homes and farms. In fact, it is a river so rich in history, so varied in its landscapes that it captures the essence of New England in one ribbon of water.

The Connecticut is one of only 14 federally designated American Heritage Rivers. The marshes at its mouth are designated as internationally significant under the Ramsar Convention, an international treaty intended to protect especially valuable wetlands. The Connecticut has a long cultural history and rich flora, fauna and scenery that has appealed to artists for centuries.