Three Days At Salmon River

This has been an atypical summer for me.  I have gone on work trips (as recounted before in this blog) to other areas to work on per diem for several weeks at a time.  In May I went to the Adirondacks for six weeks of hotel dwelling and pulling massive OT hours--and now I am living in a depressing inn in the Southern Tier of New York State Northwest of the Catskills.  The only Culture I can ascertain in this region is Amish, and, sadly, the Cult Of Trump.  It must be noted that because of the political Shitstorm our country is embroiled in thanks to President FUCKFACE, I found myself equally devastated by the deaths of Aretha Franklin, The Queen Of Soul, and of Senator John McCain, American Hero, albeit Republican, neither of whom seems to have had any influence on this region whatsoever.  I always thought of upstate New York as a progressive, cool, cultured place, but apparently my ship touched down in the Armpit.

So, my time this Summer communing with my Salmon River has been horribly foreshortened...

In the month and a half I was home this Summer, the weather was oppressively hot and humid, and often there would be heavy thunderstorms with torrential rain in the late afternoons.  Your standard Climate Change scenario...Salmon River was running very high with storm run-off, and the only way for me to cope with that steam bath kind of weather was to get my body in that river...

Emmet and I went most days after work.  We'd go cool off before I would be able to deal with the kitchen chores.  One time snorkeling we found a large breeder trout, I'd say twenty inches or so, probably a male because his face was twisted upward like how spawning salmon get, and he had a puncture wound on his back--I'm guessing from the bill of a heron.  He let us move close to him and even touch him.  I think he was near death.

When Emmet went away for a week to summer camp I continued going there every day after work.  I was trying to catch up on lost time from my first New York trip and anticipating the next.  One day I went and there were a bunch of people up in the cascade section, so I went to the lower, more open part. The water was so high that that the three big rocks usually visible were showing only three to four inches above water.  When the river is this high, it's great for hanging; you dive to the bottom, grab onto a rock and just hang in the strong current feeling the energy of the moving water.  My Happy Place.  I did that for a while, letting the river pull away the sick heat of the day, then I made three piled rock sculptures, one on each of the big boulders.  I often do this, and they are usually gone the next time I go back, but the next day I went back and they were all three resolute and lined up with the Belt of Orion.  I had the place to myself this time so I went to the cascades where you can sit back and let the water stream over your head, creating a cavity of air that you can breathe in under water. After a while three guys, probably in their third decades approached coming down the river on inner tubes.  The cascades are formed by a solid rock ledge that used to be the base for the mill dam that used to be there.  In the spot where the mill wheel once was there is an opening for a swift patch of rapids.  A certain rock takes the brunt of the flow and splashes it over, making an impossible navigational zone.  You can't not flip over here.  They came down one at a time, and one at a time they flipped over.  Competition was apparently a motivator for them and they came back several more times to see who could do it without flipping, and each time they all flipped.  When they gave up they pulled over on the small beach down below me and smoked cigarettes, then I noticed one of them throwing rocks.  Then they were all throwing rocks and I realized they were trying to knock down my stone piles from the day before!

At first I was offended, but realized it was silly and then I started rooting for them.  I liked the irony of them not knowing, and I knowing who had placed those cairns there and that I was there to see my temporary creations purposefully destroyed.  One guy was throwing lefty and I secretly rooted for him.  They were not successful for some ten minutes I'd say, but finally one of the right-handed guys hit the cairn and it all tumbled into the eddy behind the boulder.  After that, they got back into the water and continued downstream.

The next day was another miserable steam bath.  The old mill cascade area was mobbed, so I went further upstream to find a spot. Up the dirt road in the State Forest I found a nice widened area where a small rock dam had deepened it for swimming.  I snorkeled around a bit, then I  found a nice flat boulder about four inches under the surface of the water.  On it, I built a nice, almost cylindrical cairn about a foot and a half tall, looking like it was floating on the water surface.  I often wonder about some of the rocks I find in the river.  Some I have found are green or purple and have a hardness and smothness unlike local rocks.  I almost want to think they are slate, but they don't seem to be layered.  In this spot I found a boulder about the size of an air conditioner, deep black with white veins running through it.  Obviously dropped by a glacier and over time made it downstream from somewhere North of here where a stone like this would exist.  I left the cairn to the elements.  Another giant rainstorm raised the river by a foot a few days later, and that was that.

Happy Birthday, America?

This was written early in the morning on the Fourth of July in this foul year of Our Lord, 2017, without, I might add, the prodding and cajoling from my Editor who seems to have given up on me.  Maybe he's now with some bandwagon pundit on Fox News like I saw last night, a young pretty white girl-maybe all of twenty-five years old, spewing hatred of Liberals like a seasoned Media Whore.  Or maybe the other guy on the panel, a caricature of a human being, animated like some Disneyland puppet machine in hot Orlando, and goes by only a first name.  Has the sick spectacle of our political nightmare come to this, that pundits now have one-name monikers, are represented by high power agencies, have their own propaganda websites with corporate sponsorships?  Meanwhile on the other side of the schizoid coin the other news network was once again whipping up a frenzy about how close we actually are to bringing down Trump.

Trump.  Let it sink in.  The grifter President.  The star of the most massive, all-consuming Reality TV series ever.  Period.  (Right Spicer?)  He's right, in all his boasting, he is actually right that he is the star of the show.  It's a Reality series that spans all the major networks, the internet, social media, and every minute of every day of all of real Life as well.  This is an Orwellian nightmare only hinted at by earlier Republican administrations.

Trump.  How, in the era of Google, did it slip past everybody that maybe symbolically we shouldn't elect a man whose very name means to win through deceit or by using a secret weapon?  Oh right, the earlier administrations who only hinted at this scenario have been for decades at work brainwashing and devolving the population to the point that a Trump voter base could exist.  That, and the KochBroCo propaganda machine creating the cognitive dissonance to sucker in the smart ones, and of course, the Racists.

Trump's main fuction is to distract us via Twitter while his co-stars do the damge of wiping out everything good Obama, and maybe even Bill Clinton have done.  A pathological liar and master of projection, he creates near perfect confusion if you are trying to make sense of things.  It's best if you don't, apparently.  Ever notice that everything he ever accused Obama and/or Hillary Clinton of, he is actually guilty or under suspicion of.  Every inflammatory gas expulsion he said on the campaign trail comes to pass, and every good thing he promised gets flippantly forgotten.

There's been much said lately about his war with the Press.  He's now battling Morning Joe-who practically fellated him every day during the campaign, and Mikka who dares to be a bleeding woman, and he's posting juvenile videos about superhero Trump pummeling CNN in the wrestling ring. What the fuck is up with his twisted fixation on women and blood? Very Presidential.  Bigly. 

I mentioned my editor earlier, and fuck him too.  I had to just get to the point on my own where I had a quiet Holiday morning to sit down and write, say enough is enough of allowing this pig-fucker to damage my Spirit, and do it.  I am a creative person at my core.  I feel best when I am making things, sounds, ideas.  The long, absurd spectacle of the campaign trail sucked me in like the many multitudes and put my creative output on Life-support.  Then the fucker WON!  Tailspin.  The new plot twists dominate.  Collusion with Russia?  Emoluments?  Multi-million dollar tax dollar funded Golf weekends while pissing off Kim Jong Un--a man Trump ADMIRES!  Twitter storms suggesting dementia and a complete disinterest in how our government actually works--or doesn't.  This all kills my creative motivation, the daily panic of what each new day might bring, anxiety over the planned complete destruction of everything Liberal or Progressive and perhaps inadvertently (or not) of everything wholesome as well.  War? Apocalypse?  Holy Hell!

I realized finally that my creativity is the one thing they had better not fuck with, so I think I'm back.  I have to get moving or I'm dead.  I think I have reached my Lifetime limit for Bullshit.

I wish Hunter Thompson was still here to write about this Shitstorm we're in, but Res Ipsa Loquitur...

Pokemon Apocalypse...Zombie Go...

In a World where the most terrifying Societal Trend is the Willingness of anybody, let alone any significant percentage of the population, to support "the Republican Presidential Nominee" (I was tempted to add here, in parentheses, [He Who Must Not Be Named], but I remembered that's what I call Governor Voldemort of Florida, Rick Scott) in the greatest, most elaborate and internationally critical Reality TV series we have been calling the United States Presidential Election Race, where almost a majority of TV shows, books, and movies are about vampires, werewolves, and wizards, and where after Terrorism, most American's biggest concern is the threat of a "Zombie Apocalypse", who would have thought it would actually come to pass?

They're out there walking the Earth, with outstretched arms grasping their Devices, desecrating sacred places, leaving detritus, annoying people by getting in their way, seemingly oblivious to the World around them except for their singular goal--Pokemon Ones and Zeroes...

Learner's Permit...Threading The Needle...Driving In Space

My son Owen turned sixteen and soon after got his learner's permit.  He's a smart kid, with good reflexes, probably due to playing lacrosse goalie, so he's doing well learning with no apparent trepidation, which is why I feel I need to clue him in on some of the unexpected wackiness some drivers may present to him at any moment on the roads.  In fact, this started some years earlier on a road trip in Maine.  We had been in Vermont and were making our way far into Maine to go to our backwoods Paradise, when outside of Skowhegan we got stuck in a line of cars behind a slow driver.  We were on a long, low upward grade with fields on each side; a two-lane, fairly narrow country route, and I noticed in my rear-view mirror two or three cars approaching from behind, moving fast.  I got the impression they were traveling together.  They reached the line and started weaving in and out of the line, passing cars via the oncoming left lane, making their way through the line up the low hill.  A green minivan with New Jersey plates made a move to pass the slow lead car as it neared the summit of the grade.  I said to Owen, who was in the back seat, "See that guy, what he's doing?  That guy is nuts!  He can't see if there's anything coming up over the other side."  And then sure as shit came the perfect poetic justice for this dick move...a car popped up just over the hill in the left lane, and quickly darted off to the shoulder in a cloud of dust.  It was a State Police cruiser!  The cop spun around to pursue, pulled over the wrong car--we could see the stunned look on the woman's face as we passed her and the cop--then was off again as we reached the summit.  Just after that there was a major fork and it looked like fifty-fifty if he would catch the guy or go the wrong way, but he got him!  We saw that minivan pulled over a half mile down the way on our route.  I would bet that guy spent the night in jail.  You figure, speeding, unlawful passing, reckless driving, endangering the life of a police officer, being from New Jersey...yeah, maybe more than one night.

It was a thrill to see this all play out, and lucky nobody got hurt, but it could all have been avoided.  I know, I know, slow drivers dig in and say "I'm going the speed limit!", but I believe that if you see a line of cars behind you, even though your Hall Monitor mentality tells you it's for their own good, just pull over for half a minute and let them all go by!  Let them get a ticket (they probably won't), or get to their destination on time, or whatever, or this kind of roadway clusterfuck can happen.  I bet a lot of slow drivers get rear-ended, and yes, I know it's the rear-ender that is at fault.  I just also know instinctually that speed limits should really be more of a reference guideline than a set-in-stone rule, and that if you feel safe and in control, any speed within reason should be OK.  I find it extremely difficult to drive 25 MPH even in a school zone because I feel less in control just with the distraction of making the effort to keep the speed down.  But this matters little to Officer Friendly,  revenue generator, who gave me a speeding ticket an hour later in Greenville for going 39 MPH.

Two examples of dipshit driving  happened near me on the same day, probably noticed because I was not driving my own car and was being more vigilant.  First case; I was driving through Portland on Route 66 in the left lane, when I noticed that there was a car behind me in the right lane just hanging in my blind spot.  This went on for a good distance despite my subtle speed changes, and so I decided to take action.  Keeping the car in my sight a best as I could, I switched on my right turn signal, then very quickly moved into the right lane so that I was just ahead of the dipshit, hoping that this maneuver would educate him as to what he was doing.  I guess it didn't work, because he then switched to the left lane--and hung in my blind spot!  A few hours later I was again on Route 66 but this time I was at the twin hills between East Pediddleville and Marlborough.  As you begin climbing the long steep hill leading into Marlborough, there is a rather large sign that reads: "Slower Traffic Keep Right", and there is in fact a slow lane on the right side of the road.  You guessed it, I was behind a slow driver in the LEFT lane.  The guy wasn't getting the hint with me close behind him, wishing he would move over, so I began to consider passing him on the right.  Just as I was about to go, I checked my side mirror to find a car whizzing up the right lane to pass me!  Jesus, just fucking pull over, Grandpa!

Do you leave open spaces like I do so cars can merge, coming up to highway bottlenecks?  You should.  If everyone did, the bottlenecks would not occur.  You won't do it.

As for highway driving, I tend to NOT drive much over the speed limit.  One of my secret deepest fears is high-speed highway accidents.  Once I was called for jury duty in New Haven and one of the other people waiting there for Voir Dir was a state trooper, and I overheard him say that he and his cohorts at the barracks referred to the section of I-95 between New Haven and Stamford as "The Metal Muncher" because of all the accidents.  I avoid that road if at all possible.  I frequently drive from Pediddleville to Bridgeport for my radio show, and I'll use the Merritt Parkway since it's more civilized and is also a more direct route for me.  I don't remember if this happened on the Merritt or I-95, but when it happened for the first time right in front of me on the road, I was certain I was going to die...I'm talking about DickMove #1, shown in illustration #1.

You have to be a special kind of asshole daredevil to pull this move.  You are cutting somebody off despite what could happen, just to exit the highway from the Left Lane! That it is so important for you to not miss the exit that you would endanger others is indicative of a Civilization in decline.  Unfortunately since that time, it has happened so many times that I have become blase´about it when it happens, which is troubling to say the least.  Who are these people that would do this?  Are they afraid of being late for something and don't want to use the next exit and backtrack, (which would indicate to me that less deserving things than Life are valued)?  Or are these people just adrenalin junkies or sociopaths, and get some kind of thrill out of terrifying strangers on the road?  Special distiction goes to the unknown perpetrator of DickMove #2, which occurred right in front of me on The Metal Muncher, which is a three lane divided highway, where Mr. Nadsofsteel from the third (left) lane, cut me off in the center lane, then exited the highway a split second after a car in the right lane had been there.  Threading the needle...

...and despite the impossibility of imagining myself attempting anything like this, I suppose some admiration for the Nerve might be appropriate, which doesn't disturb me as much as my taking the event that was my first witnessing of DickMove #2 as matter-of-factly as I did.

Obviously you are most safe on the highway when you have the road to yourself.  It stands to reason that the more cars you have near you, the more likely you are to have a high-speed highway accident.  In driving safety courses I have taken at work, they advocate "the Space Cushion", where you leave a four second gap using a fixed object and counting to set the distance of your space cushion. I noticed that cars on the highway,  if manipulated correctly, will tend to group together.  I tried using the space cushion technique not only in front of me, but behind.  I fix the front space cushion behind the last car in a group, and keep this up until the cars that don"t pass me form the rear group, and there I am, all by myself in the middle.  I try to keep both space cushions equidistant, and they can be maintained for surprisingly long distances through subtle speed changes and frequent use of the rear-view mirror.  The last car in the front group likes it, the lead car in the rear group likes it, and I am Golden!  The absolute best position to be in is behind a big truck--nobody wants to get in that space for very long, but at the distance of the space cushion the truck is not obstructing the view ahead.  This is easy to maintain for as long as the truck is there.  If I really actively use this technique I get to the point where I am manipulating the traffic flow to my own benefit.  In fact I obsess about it.  I also consider that in making myself safer, I am making others less safe, so there's that... King of the road, safe as can be.

Make The Americas Great Again

Pre-addendum:  Today I saw CNN broadcasting an interview with Cory Lewandowski, Trump's attack dog former campaign manager.  I didn't hear anything he said because the sound was low on the TV in the diner, but fuck him.  What really got me was the headline CNN was showing in the crawl:  "Trump praises Supreme Court for blocking Obama immigration plan"  Really, CNN?  Are you that shitty of a news organization that you would characterize it that way?  The Supreme Court voted, and came to an impasse, a tie, because the asshole party won't confirm or even allow for a vote on Obama's nomination.  That's not in any way the Supreme Court blocking anything.  Because of the tie, the lower court's ruling stands.  This is just protocol since there is an even number of justices who came to a tie vote.  And so CNN gives The fucking Donald a headline for this?

Now another attempt at clarification:  Lately Donald Trump's comments about Mexicans have been called "racist".  Though it pains me to defend him on this topic, he is not technically being racist.  A dickhead, yes, but not racist.  It is true that he has said racist things about African Americans, which is abhorrent, disgustingly misogynist things about women, downright cruel things about disabled people, very insensitive things about people he would characterize as "losers", and the things he's said about Mexicans are insulting and bigoted, but not technically racist.

Mexicans are not a Race.  They are citizens or residents of the country of Mexico.  Let's school Trump and his willfully ignorant followers on a little Geography.  The Western Hemisphere is known collectively as "The Americas".  There is NO SUCH COUNTRY AS AMERICA.  The Americas are made up of a group of countries on the continent of South America; places like Argentina, Peru, and Brazil, the thinnish strip of land comprising Central America; places like Panama and Nicaragua, and the three countries that comprise the continent of North America, which are Canada, The United States of America, and Mexico.  Yes that's right, Mexico is considered part of North America, no matter how icky it makes Skeeter and Bubba feel.  Therefore, everyone who lives in the Western Hemisphere is American.

Yes, Donald Trump, you asshole, Mexicans are every bit as "American" as you are.

Yes, Donald Trump, you fucking douchebag, it is time to make The Americas great again.

Yes, Donald Trump, it is time to build a fucking wall--around YOU.

Excursions Aboard The U.S.S. Pediddleville...Kayak Bucket List...Funeral Procession For A Dead Swan...

Editor's Note:  I've just about given up on the author of this blog, avalonjeff.  He goes months at a time between even logging on to this blog, and usually does very little except start new entries that he never works on (for instance the long-anticipated one about Race, one about "deli etiquette", one about a cure for Athlete's Foot, and no doubt a few more bouncing off the skull in some kind of consciousness limbo), does not answer the phone (maybe he dropped his phone in The Water?), and if I drive by his house in Pediddleville there is no sign of him, just the sound of bagpipes and roosters.  So it was with some surprise that I found this entry in a forwarded email from some shady record producer's invalid email address, with the heading, "Hey Dipshit".  Somehow it bounced back to me and I figured I'd publish it.

 
The U.S.S. Pediddleville is my Old Town Heron model kayak, a gift from my family, Christmas 2013.  I had been wanting to explore many of the waterways in the Pediddleville area for some time, and had compiled a bucket list of them.  Summer of 2014 turned out not to be very active on that front because of my extended trips to Michigan and Ohio that season, and I kicked myself for not finding a way to bring it with me and go out on Lake Huron, or even the Muskingum River, but I did hit a few targets that year.  The 2015 season, now probably over, saw many of the targets hit.  I would sometimes go out twice in a weekend, or after work on the long days till Sunset.  I got many great pictures--though some of the best have been lost to The Water, and had a lot of life-affirming Solitude.

   
In 2014 I only got to the upper and lower Moodus Reservoirs, Babcock Pond, and the lower portion of Salmon Cove from the boat launch in view of the East Haddam swing bridge over the Connecticut River.  Went up the Blackhall River in Old Lyme with X-Ray Man.  I brought the kayak on vacation to Maine and hit the First and Second West Branch Ponds. I've been to Babcock Pond several times because it's close by and easy to get to if I just want to go out for the exercise or the sunset.  Same with the reservoirs, which are much less clogged with lily pads.  I think that was about it, just enough to get The Bug and compile the bucket list.

Early in the season of 2015 I got going on the quest.  I had gotten a four day work week with Fridays off, and it made it easy to find the time to go out kayaking.  One Friday I went out twice in one day.  I got going early in the morning.  I wanted to find a pond near me that I had seen on Google Earth.  It was off a road near Babcock Pond.  The road became gravel as it entered the deep woods, and I kept looking to my left for some way to get to my destination, Pine Meadows Park Pond, but wasn't  seeing it.  I was driving a Nissan Altima, not exactly a four-wheeler, and after a while started to wonder if this was a good idea.  The road got "less-travelled" the further I went until it came to a T intersection.  I tried a left, but the road soon got dicey, and with no way to turn around, I backed it up back to the intersection.  Well, I had come this far, so it was worth at least trying the other direction, and I could see a watery area to the left as I went in.  It looked very swampy rather than pond, but worth checking out.  Soon I found a sign on the right that said "Standish Pond". Well, here we go!  This pond was identified as state property on a sign I saw as I portaged the Pediddleville down to the pond.  It had a little observation hut and a wooden footbridge (in disrepair) over a narrow part of the pond, and a big open field on the other side of the bridge.  Clearly this pond is not visited often these days, and it was just what I was looking for!  There was no boat access to speak of, but I found a way near a fallen tree.  The pond had an abundance of lily pads and millfoil. There were really only a few open water areas, probably kept clear by the beavers, so the paddling was slow-going.  There were several herons around the pond and a beaver lodge.  The beavers were not used to any boat traffic, and made several loud splashes to send me the message that I was not welcome.  But I WAS welcome in my own way!  There was nobody to be seen this whole excursion--I've come to regard not seeing any human beings as a bonus on each trip.  I realized when I was away out in Michigan by myself that Solitude is my Friend.  Solitude feels most natural to me.  Connecticut is densely populated, even out in the East, and finding seclusion like this near my home is a blessing.  No sign of people, and The Silence!

I went out again that day, to Great Hill Pond, where I used to swim a lot when I was younger.  The pond is loomed over by the small mountain my friends and I used to hike up, and party and camp out on the rocks, and bearing a resemblance to Glastonbury Tor in England, became part of our band mythology--another story for another time, except to say that when I was in Glastonbury I was overtaken by that Mystical feeling I have been getting  lately from The Silence. Other trips this season were to Pickerel Lake right near me in Pediddleville, Mono Pond in Columbia, Williams Lake in Lebanon,  Beseck Lake in Middlefield,  Salmon River upstream from the cove to the Route 151 overpass, Salmon River above Leesville Dam as far as I could go (not very far), and Moodus River from the cove as far upstream as I could go.

We went to Maine again on vacation, and I went to Jordan Pond and Long Pond in the Acadia National Park area, and also went on my first salt-water venture out into Seal Cove and Mt. Desert narrows and explored Moose Island.  Again I was alone for most of this.  I was perturbed because the Pediddleville was at home in Connecticut, and I was using my sister-in-law's Pelican kayak, which was very tippy compared to mine.  I'm surprised I risked it on my first excursion into the freezing cold Atlantic in this kayak, but I was determined.  It was a very overcast, misty day and I got across the narrows to the island without incident.  I had to constantly use my legs as a counter to the tipping in the rough water, living and learning.   The island was beautiful.  The spruce forest was thick, except for a storm-damaged swampy grove I walked through on the path that circuited the island.  Sphagnum moss everywhere.  The path went into the woods and emerged on the coast, then continued along it, looping back to where I had parked the kayak on a spit of sea stones at the narrows.   I was looking for blueberries, which were not near ready yet, when I looked down at my feet and saw, smack-dab in the middle of the path, a tiny blueberry bush with one ripe blueberry at its top. How unlikely!  It was a gift, and I ate it right there.  As I walked along I suddenly panicked that maybe the tide had come in and that I had not pulled the kayak far enough away from shore.  I started running, imagining seeing the kayak floating away and stranding me there.  It was still safely there when I got to it, and it was time to go.  It rained heavily as I got near where my car was parked--getting drenched was another first.

The upper part of Salmon Cove became a go-to spot for me this past season.  This is a wide open area of water at the base of Mt. Tom, Machimoodus State Park, the supposed source of the famed "Moodus Noises", where the Salmon and Moodus rivers merge.  There is a road off Johnsonville Road that leads down to a small parking area near the water access.  At this point the Connecticut River and these tributaries are tidal.  At low tide water access is sometimes iffy, and not wanting to drag the kayak through thirty feet of muck, I would go somewhere else if need be.  At high tide it's no problem.  My first, much anticipated trip up Salmon River from here took place after a couple of tide-thwarted attempts.  I went in the late afternoon one day, got into the water, and headed upstream.  Soon I found that there is no cell signal there, which I find thrilling, though potentially disastrous.  I get into losing myself and not being found.  There were multiple small islands on the river, which at some point I will explore on foot.  The water is deep enough here to warrant a rope swing and jump-off spot off a big rock face soon after rounding a bend out of the cove.  The trick here is finding a landing spot, and I'll jump sometime next season.  As I went upstream I began to see the houses of the river-dwellers and wondered what it must be like living along the waterway.  Do people travel by boat to each other's houses for parties?  Or are these people the type that keep to themselves by their river Shangri-Las?  Probably a mixture of both.  I continued on past the old resort I used to work at, now torn down and made into a state park.   Maybe some of those stories will pop up on this blog at some point.  On the opposite side of the river the dwellings were up on a steep incline with steps down to the river, and were tucked into the trees almost invisible from the foliage.  I got a creepy feeling that with a private road access, these were really private dwellings where I imagined the possibility that very secret things could occur...When I got to the overpass of Route 151 I stopped and enjoyed seeing the area from the new angle I was getting, and turned around to head back.

The cove is also the mouth of the Moodus River, a smaller river that flows out of the Johnsonville millpond.  As far as you can go up this river there are no houses, few signs of human activity but for one observation hut and a few bird nesting houses.  The water is calm and very reflective and surrounded by wilderness at the base of Mt. Tom and further in.  Some fallen trees have been cut to allow passage, though one big one that is not cut makes passage under it difficult at high tide.  This is a magical excursion, winding its way through woods with no sign of people.  Kingfishers, herons, and interesting water-side plants everywhere, and there is a little side gulley leading to a beaver pond near the river.  My first trip up Moodus River made a great impression on me, that this existed so near my home, and my second was accompanied by experiencing the tide coming in, which pushed my kayak effortlessly upstream for a time before rounding a bend.  Here's another spot I will return to many times when the bucket list is less important than easy access and guaranteed splendor.

Nearing the end of the season, I felt a need to go up Salmon River again, this time the goal being as far up as possible below Leesville Dam.  It was a really nice day, and I figured I had better not miss perhaps the last opportunity of the season.  I got into the cove and noticed a number of swans floating around.  They were ahead of my course upstream, and a few took off in flight as I approached.  After a short while I noticed something floating on the water.  Nearing it, I saw that it was a dead swan, its arrestingly long neck sticking straight out from its body floating on the surface.  Part of its torso along the spine was torn open.  It is rare to be able to see a swan up this close, and really perceive the great size of the bird.  I got the vague sense that I might be attacked by the other swans if I lingered too long, so I moved on upstream.  Change of plans as I noticed a small tributary river to my left and decided to explore the waterway-less-travelled.  This stream wound its way through tall reeds and  into the woods.  I saw only one house along the way up a steep bank tucked into the forest and from there it was wilderness.  I don't know the name of this river, may find it out later, but it turned out to be a key trip that may be my last for the season, and though there may be a few more days left before it gets too cold, it may be fitting to stop for the season.  I got to the end of the line for this river as a deposit of small stones across the flow made it impassable.  I got out of the kayak here to pee and look around.  It was a nice setting for an end-of-the-line, end-of-the-season picture of the U.S.S. Pediddleville.  I had my phone in a plastic zip-lock bag and had stupidly placed it on top of the kayak as I took the photo with my camera--I usually snap redundant photos with the camera and with the phone.  When I went to get back in the kayak I moved it toward the water and then saw the bag with the phone in the water.  I grabbed it quickly and shook the water out of it as best as I could, but the bag had not been sealed, and the phone was swamped.  This phone was a trooper--it had fallen into a toilet at a Starbuck's in Michigan, and also the Lower Moodus Reservoir, and though it was still working at this point, it soon would not take a charge and I found out that charging it was the worst thing I could do, and I lost all of my photos on that phone!

So with consternation about the phone I headed back down stream, and back into Salmon River.  The tide was coming in and I had to paddle against the waves of the flood tide coming up from the cove.  I looked for the dead swan and didn't see it at first.  There were still lots of swans around, a bit further down stream exiting the cove.  I would guess there were about thirty of them, and I noticed that they seemed to be lined up, just drifting down stream in a line that I followed to my right, and then I found the dead swan, maybe an eighth of a mile downstream from where I saw it last, still floating and bringing up the rear of this swan flotilla.  Were these swans in mourning for the dead one?  Swans are known to mate for life, maybe they also grieve their dead. Was this a funeral procession?  I wondered how far down the river they would accompany the dead one--till it sinks, or gets snagged in a tree limb or washes ashore?  Would they go all the way down to Long Island Sound?

I sat for a while and pondered all of this.  Yes, it was a good thing I didn't miss this opportunity to go kayaking one last time, and had the chance to see this most rarified of scenes, a near Mystical experience.  I looked up the symbolism of seeing a dead swan--I could only find the meaning of seeing a dead swan in a dream--and since I enter a dream-like state on these excursions, took that as the true template.  A dead swan signifies frustration towards a person or situation, and it just so happens that that was another reason I went out that day!  It's good for me to get out into the Solitude, the Silence, yes even the head music stops sometimes when I'm out there.

Silence tells a real good story
Perfect Silence-never boring
It's like Music-all around
Silence is my favorite sound---Sylvia Platypus

Ghost Towns And Dead Zones...Truncated And Dispersed In Ohio...Rolling Coal And The One-Hundered-And-Thirty Year Fire...

EDITOR'S NOTE:  Little did I know that not only do I edit this blog, but I also have to be the author's babysitter.  The post now finally published here dates back to events that happened in August of 2014 when the author, avalonjeff, seems to have gone AWOL.  It was known he had gone to Ohio, but there was no evidence of his return.  Finally he was found under a pile of boxes, vinyl records, and musical instruments in his house in Pediddleville, quite unaware how long it had been since his last post.  A bit of not-so gentle persuasion had to be employed...

I volunteered, once again, to go away from Pediddleville for yet another three week stint to work as a relief/ mercenary field technician, this time in rural Southeastern Ohio.  The fucked-up Corporate politics that soured my last trip to Michigan popped right up at the outset of this trip.  First, it was scheduled for three weeks, and I was told that I had made the cut and would be going.  Next thing I heard was that the trip was shortened to only a week, and was asked if I still wanted to go.  At first I thought I wouldn't, that it would be a waste of time--I was still not caught up with myself from my first trip back in March-- but then I thought better of it.  Any reason to have an adventure, I thought, was good. I admit I am bored out of my fucking mind in this job and just being somewhere else makes it more bearable, I have found.  Plus I still haven't clambered completely out of the Hole of Pediddleville, so the opportunity to make more money working tons of Overtime, eased by the Novelty of being away, made my decision for me.  But then my boss told me that I now was NOT going to be able to go, since they changed the time frame and re-canvassed everybody.  The last email I had gotten had said that it was the FINAL LIST, arrived at by seniority, and there I was the last candidate on the list, confirmed.  I sent off an email to the administrator who was coordinating the trip.  In it, I demanded an explanation as to why I had been on the finalized list, and then was not, and I added that I wanted an HONEST explanation. I think the word "honest" gave them the Heebie-Jeebies, and soon my phone rang with a call from my boss saying I had been given premature information, and that I was going. It was Adventure Time again...

Nineteen of us from different parts of Connecticut left, a day later than the original start date, for the Southeastern part of Ohio known as " Outstate". It was a long drive to be making in one day, a long time to muse on the screwy situation and anticipate the next week's adventure.  Somewhere in Southwest Pennsylvania, near dusk, when the final fingers of gravitational pull from Home let go, I saw an inspiring sight that brought me back to my first trip to the Thumb of Michigan:  up on the tops of twin flat-topped mountains, dozens of wind turbines, spinning serenely. They stood there on the mountaintops like two armies of giants, two armies of Hope for the Future, resolute, yet breezy...

What I found in Ohio was a land that Time forgot, a shadow of what it once was back in the black old coal mining days.  It had been a depressed area for quite some time.  You rarely see a house or building that has even been painted in decades.  Abandoned houses and buildings are not torn down, they're just left there to collapse and get grown over with vines.  Often a mobile home is moved onto the property and placed next to the old house while it stands decaying. There are many small oil rigs seen on properties where the people have sold the mineral rights to their land.

Driving from my hotel in Zanesville, through Crooksville and Roseville, every day nearly an hour South to Nelsonville, New Straitsville, and others, the cell signal vanished.  I use an iPad for dispatching my jobs, testing lines, chatting with support people, all things needing cell signal.  It was very difficult working like this.  Sometimes I'd have to drive ten miles out to get signal, do everything I could possibly need to do on the iPad, then drive all the way back to do the physical part of the job.  There were few places to get lunch in some of the towns I was in.  I kept noticing all the decay, the vacant buildings left to collapse, often covered with thick mats of vines.  It wasn't fun like being in Michigan.  It was pretty in the rural parts, very hilly, and most of the people I met were all very nice, but a weird thing I noticed that was a little disconcerting, like getting used to the grid over in Michigan had been for me, was that the area was so hilly, just gentle rolling hills and valleys, that you could never really see any kind of horizon. Pretty and rural, but claustrophobic.

Claustrophobic, yeah, maybe the kind of locale that could foster a scene like the Redneck Conference I witnessed with my own two eyes.  I was up a telephone pole looking at a property with a big flat lawn and a mobile home at the back end.  There were at least ten young men, what I would call Rednecks, and a few young women, all hanging out in this yard, blasting Country Radio, whooping it up, drinking Bud Light (exclusively).  They were loud and boisterous and they yelled up to me on the pole asking if I'd like a beer.  I declined because I was working, and because it was Bud Light.  "It's too late to be working on a Friday." one of them said to me.  They didn't know I would probably end up working until at least ten PM that night. At some point I heard one guy say "Hey, lets get a picture of us and our babies for Facebook!" It didn't register with me, but I would have expected to see some of the guys and their girlfriends line up for the photo, but what actually happened next I could not have predicted.  They all got into their pickup trucks and revved them up.  Black smoke suddenly filled the yard and drifted my way.  One-by-one they lined the trucks up next to each other, all ten of them across the left side of the yard facing the girl with the cell phone.  Then all ten guys sat on the hoods of their "babies", held aloft their Bud Lights, and posed for the picture!

It gets even better.  I continued working, soon moving my ladder across the street to the side of the house I was servicing.  I don't know if maybe they noticed the Connecticut license plate on my truck, and wanted to put on a show for the Yankee, or for whatever reason they had, but the scene I witnessed will stand with the short list of most awesome experiences of my life. I may have subconsciously noted the hubbub as I climbed my ladder to attach the wire to the house, but soon enough there were multiple blasts of loud truck engines, and that thick black death smog erupted all over the yard across the street.  Revving the trucks and hooting, the rednecks filed out the driveway, took a right onto the street, then a left onto the street where I was set up near the corner, almost all of them blowing their horns, hooting, and blasting thick clouds of that evil black smoke in a convoy right next to me and up the steep hill that was there.  I could hear them nearing the top of the hill, then driving the loop that was up there, then they all came back down the hill, still making a big commotion.  Satisfied probably that they had put on a heck of a show for the stranger from Liberal Connecticut, they went by me, turned right, and continued past the mobile home out to the main road and drove off towards New Straitsville.  Normally I would not condone such brazen destructive attitudes, but this was one of the funniest things I'd ever seen in Real Life, and I suppose not something most people would ever see.  Fucking hilarious! Adventure Time...

What they were doing with the black smoke out their exhaust pipes is called "Rolling Coal".  It happens because of a deliberate modification that is done to the diesel engine to produce the smoke, and it's done as a middle finger to Liberals and Environmentalists generally, and to President Obama specifically.  Rolling Coal has nothing to do with actual coal, but I will relate to you the story of real coal burning that turned some of these towns into ghost towns.  Really a little bit of misplaced anger round these parts...

New Straitsville was established as a coal mining company town, complete with all the misery that goes along with such a place, which in the 1880's saw the forming of the first coal miner's Union in the country.  Inevitably a strike took place, and getting frustrated with how things were going, some of the striking miners loaded up a bunch of logs on a cart, doused them with kerosene and lit them on fire, then pushed the cart down the mineshaft.  The coal in the mine caught fire and it still burns today after one hundred and thirty years!  The fire has traveled along the coal veins all these years and sometimes smoke will rise from the ground in Wayne National Forest.  Presumably this will continue indefinitely and nothing can be done about it.  It certainly ended the strike,  with the unintended results of the mine being closed down, the miners all losing their jobs, and the local economy collapsing.

I met some nice people in New Straitsville, the Thompsons, when I went to their house to do a job for them.  They sat me down at the kitchen table while I was on hold for a long while for company support people, gave me a glass of iced tea, and chatted with me about my job and why I was there from Connecticut.  They gave me a bag of excellent ripe tomatoes from their garden, which I kept in my truck and ate along with some almonds and apples when I couldn't find somewhere to have lunch.   The Thompson's issue could not be resolved that day because they hadn't received shipment of a modem, so I moved on, but I dispatched on it again the next day.  Doubting the modem would be there, I went anyway, and found Mr. Thompson in the front yard.  We sat down on the front porch for another chat.  Soon Mrs. Thompson appeared with a glass of iced tea for me.  Nice people.  Mr. Thompson was on the town council and I asked about the town being "the Mooshine capital of the world".  He didn't mention the coal fire--I found out about that later on the internet--but he told me about a local beverage recipe made with Moonshine and apples called "Apple Pie" that he enjoyed.  There is a legal Moonshine distillery/ museum in the town right on Main Street, but there remain many illegal bootleggers all over the place here.  The town puts on an annual Moonshine Festival, but I didn't ask how the bootleggers participate in a sanctioned function such as that.  Dipshit that I am, I never sampled anything from the area because I really do prefer IPA's to any hard liquor, but this is how New Straitsville pulled itself out, to an extent, of the economic collapse.  Other towns in the area, Shawnee and Corning, for example, did not fare as well.  Nelsonville was propped up for a long time by the Nelsonville Block Company and other brick manufacturers, and Roseville and Crooksville had the famous pottery and china companies, but the competition from foreign manufacturers did it's inevitable damage.  The whole area is pretty run-down.  The town of Shawnee, in particular, has what was once a beautiful Main Street downtown area that is now basically a ghost town.  There are big brick row buildings with store fronts and restaurant spaces and apartments upstairs all empty, boarded up and collapsing under the vines.

Somehow it seemed like more than ten days that I was away.  I was able to see a lot in those few days before they split us up and sent two thirds of our group to other locations.  Ryan and a few others got sent further west to Xenia, and Welby and others got sent further South to Marietta.  Those of us who were working South of Zanesville ended up finishing out the tour in the Zanesville area.  Zanesville is a relatively uninteresting town except for the Y Bridge over the brown water of the Muskingum River and some interesting Church and Municipal architecture.  They have a brewpub, which I never got to try.  Working in Zanesville was easier because there was cell signal, but the plant was just as beat-up as in the rural areas.  I don't know what they think we'd get accomplished in only a week in the first place, then they went and dispersed us further.  At any rate it was another adventure in a new place, I made a bit more money than I normally would, and I was spared the boredom of the home turf.  A sense of Weirdness was creeping in, though.  My room had a mildewy funk to it that I should have complained about. The Michael Brown shooting and subsequent riots and protests took place while I was in Ohio, and Robin Williams committed suicide.  There were Halliburton work crews staying at my hotel.   The Xenia crew got to leave a day early because they ended up with a two-day drive.  There was a sense of finality with this trip.  Even though there was one more trip (which I did not put in for) to Detroit after this one, we all knew there would be no more of this since the outfit we worked for was going to be sold off in a matter of months to a new company that did not have such a large range of coverage.  I know I am stuck where I am now for good.