Cool, Clear, Water!

Never in all my 82 summers have I suffered through so many sweltering days -- and nights! -- in a row! This muggy discomfort has sure put a damper on my desire to go outdoors. Or at least, to go out on foot.  Paddling along shady riverbanks offers a cooler option, so paddling on the Hudson River has been my outing of choice this month.  I've always preferred to amble along close to the shady shore, anyway, and if even that exertion raises too much of a sweat in this heat, I can always splash water on my back or dangle my arms up to my elbows in the cool clear water. Here are some photos from two such paddles, taken a week apart, while exploring two different sections of the catchment between the Spier Falls and Sherman Island dams.

The earlier paddle, on July 7, found me entering the Hudson where it flows behind a large island just upstream from the Sherman Island Dam. To access this section, I carry my canoe down a steep wooded bank to put in where deep green shade offers at least an illusion of coolness.

A row of rocky promontories jut into the water here, and a series of quiet coves offer mirror-still water, even if wind is whipping up whitecaps out on the open river. From the back of this cove, I can see West Mountain climbing beyond the far shore of the river.

In past summers, I have found Smaller Purple Fringed Orchids near here, and sure enough, I spied one! Still in bud, it was, but enough of its florets were open for me to confirm its species.

It won't be long before this stretch of riverbank offers a riot of color from a glorious mix of wildflowers.  The most brilliant of those wildflowers, the Cardinal Flower, has already begun to open some of its scarlet blooms.  And I can glimpse the yellow of Fringed Loosestrife and the blue of Monkey Flower sharing the space already.

Just a week or so earlier, the shoreline was rimmed with masses of yellow-flowered Pale St. John's Worts, which by now have dropped their petals and gone to seed.  But WOW!  Those vivid red seedpods are just as colorful as the yellow blooms ever were.

At the back of one of the coves, the water extends into a tussock marsh, where masses of Pickerelweed lift their deep-purple spikes. If I sat still long enough to not ripple the water, the beauty of this Pickerelweed patch became amplified in near-perfect reflection.

As I drifted near the overhanging boughs of this Buttonbush shrub, I was dismayed that my approach  frightened away several butterflies sipping nectar from the florets.

Luckily, my camera's zoom did capture an almost-clear image of one Tiger Swallowtail:

Another section of this stretch of the Hudson is remarkable for steep bedrock banks, and even here, floral beauty finds a niche to display itself. I have always been amazed by how Golden Hedge Hyssop can populate a mere crack in a riverside rock and fill it with bright-yellow bloom.

These steep bedrock banks offer some intriguing niches where I can nose my canoe in close, there to examine the ferns and mosses and lichens and liverworts that have taken up residence on the craggy boulders.

A nice fluffy patch of Bartramia pomiformus moss has crowned this lichen-crusted crack, while a species of liverwort (Scapania sp.?) looks as if it might be trying to join the moss up there.

Here's a nicely sunlit clump of that fine-leaved moss, revealing the orb-shaped spore capsules that suggested both its scientific specific and its vernacular name, Apple Moss.

As I paddled back to my put-in place, I noticed a raft of tiny critters scooting and hopping across the surface of the river.

A closer look at the critters revealed a white-spotted black species of small water striders (species unknown).  Perhaps these are nymphs and not adults, but I've read that the nymphs of water striders  tend to look like the adults, just smaller.  None of my queries have provided me any answer as to what this species might be.  And this is about the clearest photo I'm likely to get, of a wee little bug in constant and speedy and very erratic motion.

About a week later, on July 15 (another scorcher!), I returned to paddle this Hudson River section closer to the Spier Falls Dam.  Access to the water is made easy here, thanks to a well-maintained boat-launch site, so I didn't have to work up a sweat toting my boat up and down a steep hill, as I'd done the week before. I love the view from this shore, of forested mountains that fall directly to the water's edge, with no houses or docks or other visible evidence that any humans have ever passed this way. (Of course, there are hydroelectric dams both up- and downstream from here, but neither is visible from this point along the shore.)

In past years, I've found a small group of Purple Fringed Orchids along these shores, and it didn't take too many pulls of my paddle before I caught sight of some purple flowers rising above the riverbank grasses.

Oh yes!  A Smaller Purple Fringed Orchid, in gorgeous bloom!  And twice as many plants than in years past. This was an especially happy find, since this year many flowers I normally look for did not show up at all.  

I found other flowers along this stretch, too.  The most abundant were many plants of our native wildflower called Spotted St. John's Wort, most of them growing right at the water's edge.

Common Arrowhead grows right IN shallow water, and this big patch bore a number of bright-white blooms.  I rarely see an Arrowhead flower that is not hosting small black flies, and the flies were certainly evident today.

This plant with its delicate lacy blooms is nice to look at, but don't ever mistake it for parsley or carrots or any other edible member of the Parsley Family. For this is Water Hemlock, a deadly poisonous plant to consume, related to the hemlock potion that Socrates was made to consume to commit suicide. But it's not poisonous to the touch, and many insects seem to be able to dine on its pollen or nectar. And since it was nearly hidden in a thicket with no trail near, it's not likely to be encountered casually.

After prowling the banks close to the boat-launch site, I next paddled across the wide river to visit a group of small islands not far offshore.

A lovely patch of Horned Bladderwort was decorating a shallow-water area between two of the islands.

The small frothy heads of Pipewort bloomed nearby, in soil that was nearly as wet. As the water here rises and falls according to dam operations both upstream and downstream, this plant will easily tolerate temporary inundation, its flowers happily blooming away underwater.  (Same goes for the flowers of Golden Hedge Hyssop, one yellow bloom of which has made it into this photo.)

As I made my way around the largest of the three islands, my shoreline progress was interrupted by a tree that had fallen into the water.

A long vine of Virginia Creeper had crept up the tree trunk while the tree was standing, and its now-watery horizontal location allowed me an up-close view of how colorful its ripening berries were.

Of course, I did not take this photo of myself cooling off in the cool clear water of the river. A friend took this picture with my camera some years ago and near this same little island.  And she could have taken a very similar photo of me again today.  Aah, but this felt terrific!