Adirondack Bass, Part II
An excerpt from an essay on a long kayak fishing journey deep into the Adirondack wilderness.
Note: The following is an excerpt from an essay I’ve been revising this week to include in my forthcoming book, Two Thirds Water.
…Soon I’m poring over paddling maps, zooming into weedy bays on Google Earth, amazed that such a large body of water can be there, miles and miles from a paved road. I locate my little lake, the bay of my own cabin far to the east of it, realizing that if I had to, I could bushwhack the dozens of miles through dense forest to it from there by foot, which for some reason makes it seem all the more remote and magical.
Not long after, I’m settling into a fully loaded kayak above a large dam, paddling cautiously forward, the kayak more weighted down than it has ever been, the gunwales of the cockpit just a few inches above the surface. I glide through the cool dark of a small canyon, the rocky land rising steeply on both sides of me, enormous boulders jutting up out of the black, smooth, slow-moving flow of the river. I paddle into larger back-flows and ponds, lily pad choked passages with barely any water showing at all, small, brown beetles scurrying away in awkward flight as I try to find water in the seams between the pads with my paddle blades. I paddle beneath an abandoned railroad, the air suddenly so cool and moist and smelling of the creosote-caked ties laid here over a century ago. I paddle out into broad ponds where I have to guess at what direction will keep me moving deeper in, hit dead ends, the water suddenly too shallow to move through, and push pole my way back out to deeper water to find the main course of the flowage.
Finally, I come to a long beach at the base of a large pond surrounded by rocky-peaked hills. This will be my one portage. I am ready. I’ve strapped some carry wheels astern I’ve only ever used a handful of times, and I lift the boat, slide the wheels beneath, wrap and tighten the belly line around it, lift the bow and haul my too-heavy kayak with its dry bags of food, tent, sleeping bag, fishing gear, clothing…all shoved into every corner, strapped tight to the bow (seeing more clearly now why a canoe is the preferred craft for such journeys). I wheel the thing behind me up a steep but passable trail, on past the ruins of the house of Abbot Augustus Low, then on to the top of one of his dams, one of the first hydroelectric dams of its kind. Second only to Thomas Edison in the number of patents he filed, Low was an inventor and entrepreneur, and in the late 1800s he bought all the surrounding land I have been paddling through and set out to build a small empire of his own. He logged extensively, bottled spring water to sell in New York city (the first to use returnable bottles), collected untold gallons of maple sap, boiled it down, and sold as maple syrup. Two large fires sparked by the railroad he had built to carry his goods wiped it all out a few decades after it began, but it strikes me that all the water I am paddling and will soon fish are the result of his extensive inventions and ventures—that this far-away, now difficult-to-access wilderness was at one time so accessible and tamed.
I cross the dam, strap my wheels back astern and continue on. I paddle through intermittent narrows and large open areas, come to the famous floating bog that has wedged itself mid-stream, leaving only the narrowest of passageways along one side. Not wanting to step out into the tangle of low, dense vegetation of the bog, I scootch along over a muddy slick where other paddlers have clearly gone. It is hard work, and I almost give in and hop out into the muck and bramble, but finally I’m in open water again, and soon the distance I am from everything, the complete solitude of this place settles down upon me. Miles and miles fall away behind me with still miles and miles of water to go.
I stop to fish occasionally, catch a few small bass, but I want to get there before seriously settling in to more determined fishing. Campsites are first-come, first-served, so I have no idea how many extra miles might be required once I reach the big lake, or if I might even be forced to re-trace my route back to one of the many sites I have paddled past. My ideal site would be the one I’ve read about and seen in a few YouTube videos, at the near end of the lake on a point of land on a large island with its own stretch of white sand beach. When I finally round that last bend, the vast lake appearing ahead of me and stretching far into the distance, my heart sinks as I spy a hammock tent strung between hemlocks, wisps of smoke lifting from the fire ring of the sand beach site. But across a shallow, stump-filled bay, on a small peninsula, my second-choice site is free.
There is something about stepping out of your boat after a long day of paddling, reaching a leg over the gunwale and setting your foot down into the clear, cool, tannin-stained water, then stepping onto steady land, sliding the boat up into the sandy slot between trees and rocks others have used before you and walking into a remote, well-tended campsite. The sound of the wind in the high pines, the tinkling of the small waves colliding with shore, seeing that the former occupant has left a neat pile of firewood and even swept smooth the hard-tamped ground with pine boughs, that someone has turned a large log on end, fastened a slab of wood there as a makeshift fish cleaning station; and in the forest, ferns are everywhere, bursting green from the browns of the surrounding forest floor, to be gathered and layered beneath your tent. Down a small path, well away from the site proper, I’m delighted to find a toilet seat set onto a small wooden frame above a pit, even a roll of TP in a Ziploc bag hanging from a rusted nail. The ritual of choosing the perfect place for my tent, unloading gear, finding a good spot nestled in the twisted roots of a paper birch to wedge the bear canister. Filtering water into the big bladder hooked from another big nail growing deep into a pine. I’m Nick Adams in Hemingway’s “A Big Two-Hearted River” setting up a “good place,” a home of my own here far away from everything.
Finally, after eating the last of my PBJs, I settle back into the kayak, so much lighter now with just my fishing bag, fly rod, and me as cargo, and journey forth.
I’m exhausted, and the sun is sinking fast, but I’m determined to do some real fishing, and it doesn’t take long before I flick a sideways cast of my big popper, and it slip-slides back into the shadows of overhanging vegetation of a nearby floating bog. A split-second after touching down, a tremendous boil appears, the fly vanishes, the line goes straight and my rod is bent, arcing forward, “pumping alive” as Nick describes it in “Big Two-Hearted River.”
These aren’t trout but feckless Adirondack bass, residing here so deep in the wilderness on this vast, never more than 10-foot-deep lake Low created when he came here to harvest so many riches from the land…. (to be continued)
If you’ve been enjoying my writing, please consider doing any/all of the following:
Help me grow my audience by Sharing this post or my main site with a few people you think might enjoy it as well.
Upgrade your subscription to paid. For only $.14/day, you can help me continue to devote the many hours I do each week to writing, editing and promoting this page.
JourneyCasts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
You can also help a lot by making a one-time contribution at any time by “buying me a coffee” (or two). And certainly a good amount of real coffee has gone into the making of JourneyCasts.
As always, I encourage you to leave a comment.
Be sure to check out my podcast, “Hemingway, Word for Word.”
What an adventure! I’m thinking where I would have to go to do this kind of adventure and I guess it would have to be Scotland. Look forward to reading the next part.