River Snorkeling...Communion With The Trout...Big Mamma And The Snapper...The Best Place On Earth...

It is now nearing Thanksgiving, and recent rains have raised the water level in Salmon River, but the drought made it very low all summer.  The drought hadn't been nearly as bad as in other parts of the country, but river snorkeling was pretty uninspiring this past summer.  Why not finally get around to the piece I've been meaning to write since the beginning?

One of the blessings of my life is the fact that I live about one minute away from the best place on Earth.  This one-sixteenth of a mile stretch of Salmon River is one of my favorite places on Earth, undoubtedly. It's been my favorite swimming spot since my teenage years.   Long ago there was a mill dam in this place, stretched across the river at the point where a natural formation of one giant continuous piece of bedrock has about a four foot step.  There must have been quite a pond above the dam, with that big flat rock comprising the bottom.  Now in place of the dam is a cascade that when running strongly is a fabulous back massager.  If you lean back even more while sitting on a rock step, you can make the water stream over you head, creating an air pocket behind the water that you can sit in and breathe underwater indefinitely.

Just below the cascades is a pool with an angled flat rock bottom, here and there pocked with potholes bored out by the endless water flow.  It's a great place to cool off effortlessly.  There are no loose rocks on the bottom like in the rest of the river, so scrapes and bruises and twisted ankles are less likely.  The bedrock then emerges above the water level to form a big open slab.  If you go there after the sun is down, even if the air is cool, you can feel the heat radiating from within the rock, stored up from the day's sun-baking.  I can lay there feeling the warmth and hearing the water, and be relaxed beyond relaxed.  This with the sound of the flowing water is way better than any relaxation tape.  Conversely during heatwaves, this place has been a Godsend.  I work outside, so the heat really depletes my energy.  Often at these times swimming cools you off, but if it's too hot the effect wears off rapidly, even if you retreat to air conditioning.  The river, on the other hand, fixes you up good.  I will go there after work and just submerge myself in the water, letting the current take away the heat, until I reach the point of self-induced hypothermia.  It makes the rest of the evening comfortable.

Just a few yards down river, after a section of rocky rapids, it opens up into a larger, deeper section that is also good for river swimming.  You can swim in parts of this area without knuckle scraping.  Here, with mask and snorkel, you can see the full spectrum of fish life found in the river, including small and largemouth bass, bluegills, sunfish, suckers, salmon parr, eels, and stocked trout--Rainbow, Brown, Brook, and Tiger Trout (a hybrid produced by fertilizing brown trout eggs with brook trout sperm with stunning patterns on its body).  It's a wide section where the water is slower-moving, but it is easy to locate where the current winds through.  I like to dive to the bottom, hold onto a rock, and just hang there in the current, feeling the awesome power of the moving water.  It's like my nervous system is plugged directly into the energy flow of the planet.  In psychophysiological terms, it's my Happy Place...

I wonder why I don't see other people snorkeling in the river.  I sometimes get self-conscious about what others might be thinking--"Who is that lunatic snorkeling in there?"  "What's there to see?"  Some people wouldn't think of snorkeling anywhere but some tropical island with crystal blue clear water and neon-colored fish, but I find it weird that more people are not interested in seeing what's under the water they're swimming in.  There's plenty to see, albeit New England drab, and it's very intersting to me.  On a practical level fishermen could really see where the good holes are, and what lives in them.

All that aside, I suppose many people just lack the kind of spiritual connection that I have with the river.  Sure, I'm aware that there are fly fishermen who are spiritual about their quest for the trout--knowing the water conditions, the feeding habits, the weather influence, Zen and such things, but I'm talking about being IN it.  Last year was the first year my wife and I felt that our sons were old enough to go there safely.  My older son Owen is old enough to be able to go snorkeling, and he likes it, and that just warms my heart.  A couple of times a few years ago I had snorkeled down sections of the river, say from the State forest down to Comstock Covered Bridge, or South of the bridge down to Leesville Dam.  One time last year we were at the river, and I figured we'd go home soon because I was getting a chill, but Ellen suggested Owen and I snorkel down to the bridge and she and  Emmet would drive down and meet us there.  Though I was cold, I jumped at the chance to spend more time in the water, making my way downstream exploring the river with my son.  Sometimes you float on the surface, letting the current propel you as you scan the underwater landscape. Other times your belly scrapes the rocks, and you have to stand up and wade a bit.  We made our way down, his hand grasping my ankle at all times.  I'd stop here and there to point out fish or various holes.  It was great to be sharing that experience with him.  A chip off the old bedrock.

One time we were there and Owen stepped on a rock that moved.  He looked down and got a look at it, then sprang out of the water.  It was a big snapping turtle.  I read on the internets that they are quite vicious on land, but underwater in their element they shy away from humans and rarely bite, unless they are provoked.  We'd see it now and then, parked on the bottom like a prehistoric gargoyle, or at times it would surface for air, and you'd see the bubbles rising all around it on the surface.   One time I was snorkeling and saw it directly in front of me at about two yards away.  I stopped and stood there looking at it, refracted sunlight mottling its bubbly face.  It stayed for a while and looked at me.  I started to move to the right, and as I moved, the turtle also moved so we both moved to the right around the same circle, all the while keeping an eye on each other.  After about 180 degrees the turtle broke from the circle and swam off.

One day I arrived home from work and Owen told me he'd been there earlier and had seen this giant fish in the swimming hole, and couldn't figure out what kind it was.  He had fife and drum corps practice that night, so after dinner I went down there myself.  Sure enough, I saw the fish.  It was about two feet long, and surely the biggest fish I'd ever seen in the river.  It swam around evasively in the pool, with me all the while trying to get a good look at it.   It had a curious-looking rounded-off tail and was very fat.   It would swim and sort of almost tip over when it took a turn, like it's fins were not strong enough to control its mass.  Finally I was able to identify it--it was a trout!  It was so hard to recognize because it was so fat, but the markings, the comparative size of the eyes and shape of the head--it had to be a monster trout.  Must have been brood stock released into the river from the stocking program.  She was probably Mother to most of the trout in the river, grown fat on easy food for years until she stopped producing eggs.  It was really funny to watch how uncoordinated she was in the natural environment of the river. She was used to swimming in a round tank for most of her life.   The varying depths and rock obstacles appeared to be foreign to her.  I named her "Big Mamma".

At times I have been there when no one else was there.  I like that because I don't get concerned about what they might think, and I can really get into the experience.  After work one day I went there and had the place to myself.  I started wading into the swimming hole, put on my mask and bent over to put my face in the water to look around.  I noticed there were a lot of trout in the hole.  They were all lined up near the bottom, hanging in the current facing upstream, letting the water stream through their gills.  There were so many of them, some nice Rainbows about sixteen inches long, Brookies and Browns ten to twelve inches, and a couple of Tiger Trout.  Big Mamma would lumber around on the outskirts of the school.  I noticed the trout really didn't seem to mind me being there if I didn't make any quick moves.  They must have recently stocked these fish--I tried to estimate how many there were, and I figured at least two hundred.  Then I noticed that behind me in the path where I had entered the pool, it had all filled in with fish--I was completely surrounded by hundreds of fish!  It was transcendental!  We were all together in this pool just meditating on the current, going with the flow...

As the summer wore on the number dwindled as they were caught, or moved to other locations in the river.   Big Mamma must have been caught by some surprised angler who took her home to eat, because she was not seen after a certain point.  Neither she nor the Snapping Turtle have been seen this past year at the swimming hole.  The river continues the relentless flow as the year wanes toward winter, and now I watch my little trout-looking Dace in my home aquarium and think of Big Mamma.