Time Travel and Land Acknowledgment

I was thinking about time travel the other day, and specifically wondering who or what period I would visit if Time Safari, Inc. had a shingle hanging on King Street.

No doubt I would get a ticket to this place. 1400 CE? 

It would be incredible to see what this landscape looked like. Maybe not so different in some places, in others, unrecognizable. 

A view of place would be secondary, however, to the opportunity to talk to a fellow river nerd. What do they see? What cool things have they experienced? Given some leisure, where’s the hang out spot? 

I can’t pretend to understand what the Susquehannocks and others felt about the river; or the natural world for that matter. I know what I have read. I know what I have heard, but I won’t go on for fear of romanticizing something I know nothing about. Beyond that, even if I knew what an indigenous person in 1400 thought about place and space, I wouldn’t really understand since it’s outside my cultural experience. 

What I can assume, I think, is that people throughout time have enjoyed the beauty of the world’s natural spaces and the power of sharing these spaces with people they love. That’s what I want to know about. What about the river and all that happens on it do they think is beautiful and worthy of wonder? Have they heard the sound of a wake tinning against the ice pocket on the bank? Or do they know sounds I have never heard? 

I guess this is all, really, just a roundabout way to acknowledge thousands of years of native presence on the Conestoga River and its surrounds. Spaces that through displacement and murder they can no longer enjoy as their ancestral lands.

It's the best

Winter Paddling, Y'all

We’ve hit that time of the year where if you don’t go out after sunset, you pretty much don’t go. Well… that is if you work regular hours and try to hit the river more than just the weekend. Even with the weekend, it can be tough sometimes to leave the water by sunset at 4:47 pm. Not that I wanted to know this, but it looks like we have a nine-day run of 4:39 pm sunsets in early December. 

Summer anyone?

Clearly, complaining about sunset times isn’t where anyone wants to be, so how about looking at the awesomeness that is winter paddling. (Wait! Didn’t a previous post say paddling’s winter season didn’t start until I started to really bundle up? Sort of seems like we’re there, but, anyway.) 

At the risk of sounding like I’m all over the place, one awesome thing about winter is the darkness. So many things to mention about nighttime paddling, but I’ll leave the waxing for another day. It’ll be here.

A leaf mention happened in an earlier post, but winter is awesome for the lack of tree coverage. Sure, this means that a few house lights make it out on the water, but for seeing what lies beyond the banks, the absence of leaves is a must. 

It isn’t all cold around here in the winter; we get some warmer days, too. And when we do, the bugs come out. I love me mayfly burst and drift when the sun comes out. Blue-winged olives?

I think you get the point, even without mention of the ice, clear(er) water, snowfall, snow blowing off trees in the sun, and on and on.

No doubt you will see them here again.

Winter has ice

Geesepeople

A Report From A Night Paddle...

I’m out by Lake Lancaster, a huge hangout for geese. I swear at one point last winter I popped by head over the spillway and there were thousands of ‘em just doing their thing. A lot of them were trying to be heard over the other lot who were doing the same. 

On this particular evening there were two geese out there chatting it up. They would both go at it for a while then everybody would chime in. All would go quiet for a bit and then one of the first pair would honk away. Then the other would join and the whole thing would repeat itself. 

Something like this - 

G1:You ingrate!

G2: You’re the ingrate!

G1: I know you are, but what am I?

G2: You’re the worst!

All Geese: Noise. Noise. Noise. Noise. Noise.

Silence

G1: Hey, garbagehead! You still there?

And so on, and so on, and so on.

Geesepeople.

Lake Lancaster: Where the geese hang out