A bikeyaking adventure through Mystic

The bikeyak at the launch site in Old Mystic

A note on doorstep adventures:

  You are about to read another entry in my Doorstep Adventure portfolio.

  The concept is simple: Start the adventure at your door; finish the adventure at your door. 

   By the way, you're not allowed to use cars, planes or any other vehicles that burn fuel. In a world threatened by climate change, I'm not content to be another “nature-lover” jetting around the planet, trailing carbon emissions in my wake.

  Doorstep adventuring is a lot harder than regular adventuring, and it ain't always fun. A doorstep adventurer may start an alpine trip with a 20-mile bike ride, skis or snowshoes strapped to the frame. Kayak voyages require even more inventiveness

In any of these cases, If you are willing to accept the demands, the reward of arriving at last is multitudes more satisfying.

   In an era when you can access virtually any place on earth in relatively short order, it’s no longer the challenge of getting there that matters. What matters is how you get there.

Pedaling

The driver in the pickup swooped in on a blind curve and mashed down on the accelerator. I glued my eyes to the edge of the pavement, gripped the bike handlebars tight. I felt a little vulnerable with a 16-foot kayak trailering behind.

I planned to pedal the four miles from home down to the nearest coastal access, paddle for a couple hours and then get back on the bike to bring it all back. 

It was the first time I had tried biking with a sea kayak (I have biked with a shorter whitewater boat.) If I made it to the launch, I would have the satisfaction of moving my boat over land while leaving my polluting car in the driveway.

But I had to get through Lantern Hill Road first.

Designed without even the fleeting comfort of a painted margin, Lantern Hill Road once served the needs of a what was a sleepy rural community in southeastern Connecticut. Now, it is a corridor between Mystic tourism, Interstate 95 and one of the world’s largest casinos. There are also a lot of asshole drivers. I can’t say that the profusion of Fireball nip bottles littering the roadside has instilled much confidence either.

The thing was, I couldn’t move all the way over. The aluminum kayak carriage provided decent tracking, inflatable tires that could take a bump, and good balance — but it also gave me a wider profile that forced me to ride closer to traffic.

If I veered too far to the right, I risked hitting rocks or brush, and flopping out on asphalt.

Another thing to consider: visibility. I have a six-foot profile riding on my bike, but my kayak was a third of that. A driver coming up a rise could miss it easily.

Measures that I’d taken to prevent my boat from becoming another roadside statistic included clipping a bright yellow dry bag to the back, and stringing yellow line over the small “mast” that I’d rigged up using half of my spare paddle. An orange fishing glove at the top stood out like a Day-Glo rooster’s comb.

This was apparently visible enough, to the truck coming up behind me, which swerved wide. I slowed down to a mile an hour to let it blow past. The driver had maybe half a second to react if there were a vehicle coming around the curve from the other direction. 

Exhale.

With the engine noise past me, I could hear spring peepers chirruping from a nearby wetland. I rode at the speed of a 5K jogger, alongside stone walls and soggy corn fields, scarcely minding the burden behind me rear wheel. That was until I heard the next engine bearing down.

Much of road riding went this way: pastoral contemplation interspersed by sphincter-clenching moments.

I’d learned to keep my momentum for the uphills, or else the rig tended to wobble, then fishtail violently and force a dismount. The busy Gold Star Highway intersection was on an uphill as it happened, but I was blessed with a rare gap in traffic. I blew through the red flashing light, climbed up to North Stonington Road and cruised the rest of the way to Old Mystic. After one more tricky intersection I rolled up to the put-in off Route 27.

The start of the Mystic River at high tide

Paddling

The Mystic River starts where the dark water of Whitford Brook burbles through stone walls to a tidal marsh. I pulled the bikeyak into a small parking lot adjoining a brick building that used to be a flag mill.

The tide was out. By that time that I had locked up the bike and unstrapped the kayak, which I had to lower almost four feet down fieldstone wall to reach the lazy-flowing water. 

This was not the typical place where I would launch a kayak in this area, as I would usually drive out to more open water in Long Island Sound. Today, I appreciated drifting languidly between the sedges. Geese and ducks meandered along the surface. Up higher, on a wooden platform, an osprey tended to its nest. Despite the tidal influence, the spring runoff from Whitford made the water taste completely fresh. Even as the river bloated out to a quarter mile wide, I could barely taste the salt intruding from the ocean.

The water had turned deeper and saltier by the time I passed beneath the I-95 bridge. A stiff south wind rose up to challenge me. I slunk away from the confrontation, slipping into unruffled water behind points of land.

I glided past wooden ships at Mystic Seaport with apprentices in the rigging, past winterized yachts still under tarps and beneath the drawbridge that connects Downtown Mystic. I had plenty of winter rust to shake from my paddle rhythm. My focus was less on the scenery, more on getting my body synched up properly as I scooted past all the familiar landmarks.

Mason’s Island at the river mouth gave me the choice of heading east or west. I chose east and was soon glad for it. First, I saw another osprey landing near its nest. I think it was feeding chicks.

Passing Dodges Island, I got a real treat when I flashed on a large, shiny object sitting on a rock.

Hey, isn’t that a —

Too late. The seal splashed into the water.

About a minute later, however, I saw about a dozen of the harbor seals, gurgling and growling at each other on a cluster of nearby boulders. I kept my distance this time, so they wouldn’t take to the water. They were just a group of sausage forms in my field of vision, but the satisfaction of the find was immense. I had seen seals many times before out on Fishers Island, just south of the border of the New York State border, but it was the first time I’d seen more than one seal in Connecticut waters.

Now that I was out on open water, the hazy shore of Fishers was in reach if I wanted to push myself. Even farther, to the east, lay Napatree Point in Rhode Island, where I might have wrangled a surf spot out of the open ocean exposure.

Yet, my bike was still in Old Mystic and I was already burning the afternoon. Maybe I shouldn’t get too cocky. I skipped the long crossing to Fishers and paddled east instead, following the Stonington shoreline for a couple miles until I managed to wrangle a weird little surf spot in front of somebody’s multi-million dollar mansion. 

The waves in Fishers Island Sound rose only six-inches or so, but there was a thin stone ledge that refracted them into each other and boosted their height—similar to how a magnifying glass turns up the heat of the sun. In that narrow zone, the waves built to a couple feet high, then curled over into a small but fun break.

I angled in from the left, caught a quick diagonal down the face of a wave and squirted out the other side before it could crash me into the rocks on shore. 

The second time I set up, there was a larger wave approaching the magnifying glass. I accelerated as the wave grew, pushed me sideways and then crashed over the boat up to my armpits. I braced my paddle into the whitewater, then spun out of the carnage. A gallon or so of water had slopped onto my shirt from beneath my raincoat. Hadn’t seen that one coming. 

I briefly regretted leaving my drysuit at home, but the air was warm enough that the chill passed quickly. It was about time to head back.

I poked into a couple of coves, then rode the flooding tide and tailwind back to Old Mystic. The high tide gave me license to paddle up Whitford Brook a short ways before I started hitting rocks. It also allowed me to get out of my boat much more easily than I had gotten in, as the water was now much closer to the top of the stone wall.

It took another half hour to move from kayak cockpit to bicycle seat, re-rigging the trailer and changing my clothes. The lowering sun inspired me to also turn my headlamp backwards and set it on blinker.

The ride home was a smooth one and by the time I’d finished, I still had enough energy left in the can. I suppose I could have paddled out to Fishers after all, but no matter. I’d proved that I could do it.

Moving a sea kayak overland has always felt like the moon-shot of my doorstep adventuring. I’ve usually conceded, reluctantly, that it really is so much easier to throw the boat on the roof and let the car do the work, you know, the way everyone else does it.

Yet here I had taken on that challenge and still managed to get a quality outing with surf and seals. I had grossed about 16-miles of kayaking all together. Biking the kayak was more work than it would have been to drive, but it wasn’t so onerous that it defined the experience. The paddling did that.

Foam from Whitford Brook gathers at the start of the Mystic River

The backyard ski run and other micro-adventures in the Connecticut winter

Video: A backyard ski run in Connecticut

Skis
    Let’s be clear: to many people, there is something a little sad about a full-grown adult trying to recreate childhood memories by hauling trash barrels full of snow from the porch into the woods to get the right coverage on a tiny backyard ski run.

    There is also something sad when winter in Connecticut is all gray skies and wet leaves, when a sickly veneer of snow on the ground is the only chance to relive the sweet effortlessness of gliding between the maples and birches. 

    I worked diligently with the shovel, scooping the inch-thick layer of snow off the duff around the trail, hurling scoopfuls of it onto bare moss. Here and there, I stopped to remove clumps of dirt and leaves from the smooth surface I wanted to build.

   Yes, I could have just driven north to miles of skiing in New Hampshire that would have been worlds better than anything I’d hope to build in Ledyard. That wasn’t the point.

    It was the principle of the thing, dammit. Our town had been cheated out of the snow it deserved. Going north to borrow somebody else’s snow did not rectify the injustice, nor did it supply the satisfaction of skiing on the home turf.

    If Connecticut was only getting an inch, well, then I’d rise to the challenge.

    Yet, the snow gods deserved more credit than I’d given them the first time.

    A second helping of snowfall the next day gave me just enough  coverage to cruise further out onto some of the trails in the backwoods, hitting twigs, scraping over rocks, revisiting an old hill further down the path that put a rock through my knee a decade ago.

    I even managed to visit some maple taps to collect sap from the buckets.

    After I got my fill of this, I got back to work. I knew that if I was going to ski for more than a couple days the course would require more human intervention. I added what I could from the leaves and skied back and forth over it to pack it all down, into a fast and narrow run, with a tiny jump made from a rock I’d buried in the middle of the trail.

    When I had the temerity to go down the slope in my skinny track skis, I caught a glorious slice of air at the bump, then fell on my ass trying to make the curve. This was when several people were watching, of course.

    Snow melting and re-freezing eventually turned the slope into an icy death chute. The stone walls on either side left no room to kill momentum with a snowplow. It was just point ‘em and pray, hope for the best at the end. Afternoon sun eventually broke the ice into corn mush, that was still fast but mercifully had enough give so I could sink ski edges in and take control.

    I got to spend a couple weeks with my miniature course as the cold lingered over weeks, running it many times. I even cleared a secondary route through brush to make the course into  a lollypop-shaped loop. I went back to weak spots and piled more snow where necessary. I began to become aware of intricacies of the run, like a minute gap in the wall where I could throw out a quick snowplow if I needed to kill speed.
    I loved the course all the more for all the work I put in. 

    Watching snow melt is like saying goodbye to an old friend. I hope it wasn’t for the last time.

Axes

    The bitterest weeks of cold froze Long Pond thick enough to walk over, even froze the waterfall above Bush Pond.

    One afternoon, I decided to shuffle over to the frozen wall with ice axes and crampons with the intent of scaling the beast for the first time.

    It was about a 12-foot falls, with water still flowing beneath the ice. If the ice broke away, it would dump me onto the broken rock below, but I weighed the risk against the fact that I might never again have a chance to climb those falls.

    First, I went up the easiest route, which followed the main watercourse. I’d gone this way barefoot in the summertime, with axes and crampons it was no problem. But that wasn’t really the kind of climbing I had come out for.

    I went around back to the base and took a vertical route on thinner ice. This time the axe bounced back once or twice, and I had to spend uncomfortable minutes standing on my crampon points whacking the axe into different spots until I found a hold that I could pull myself on. I topped out by jabbing the an axe shaft through the thin ice above the pool of water at the top. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to hold a bit of weight while I got a knee up, then bent myself over the edge to safety.

    The third ascent, I chose the route with the thinnest ice. Here, it was shellacked to granite in hard, white nodules the far right of the falls. Once again, I found myself hitting the ice again and again in different places, until finally, I could pull the axe down with enough confidence to trust my weight on it. I teetered at the top, feeling the bite of my crampons weakening as I slammed the axe point into one place and then another, only to have it bounce right out. 

    Crap. What was I going to do now? Finally, I got a tiny bite on the axe, that gave me cover enough to make the final movement and stand at the top of the ice.

    Three ascents were good enough for me. My fingers were going numb. I walked back home over the frozen lake as wind clashed the branches of the trees together and the sun setting over Cider Hill lit the troubled sky into clots of gray and orange. 

Skates

    I finally found some ice skates I could borrow, just in time for the lake ice to remelt a little and then re-freeze into a perfect black sheen. I love how ice changes the meaning of Long Pond and it is suddenly possible to waltz right over to North Stonington, or cruise past the coves at speeds that would be unthinkable in a kayak. My dad and I got out a few times to enjoy the new perspective.

     A friend and I even tried holding a tarp between us as the wind blew for a fast ride going north. Mostly, I skated under my own power — skated sloppily at that — but enjoyed the quest to find the rhythm, and think about nothing else but how to move with grace, maximum economy.

    There was one small, hacking problem: a nasty cold, or maybe I can call it an upper respiratory infection given that it stuck with me for a month. I stopped here and there throughout these excursions to double over into coughing fits, marveling at the pain that I felt at the back of my ribs. But who could know when Long Pond will freeze up like this again? I had to be out there.

    At night, the expanding and contracting ice would make those haunting chunking noises, skittering and cracking, filling the night air with reverberations from the lake bottom.

    It is a sound that most of us in Connecticut don’t get to hear often, certainly not as often as we should. The voice of the ice strokes a wild part in the listener’s soul, reminds us that there was a time when wolves ran in the hillsides here, leaving footprints in the snow. 

    Those lucky enough will hear the echoes of the ice come up through the windows of their homes. They will cherish the wild that is left for us here — then turn back to their screens, turn up the volume and turn up the heat.