“I fought my whole life, studied, played, worked, because I wanted to hear and know the whole story, my story, our story, and understand as much of it as I could.” (Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run)

My friend for almost forty years Scott Schram came to visit. Somehow, he had snagged two tickets to the Springsteen broadway show and wanted to start the circumnavigation trip with me. Scott and I have a long history of water and music.

Back in our college days, two or three times a month we’d arm ourselves with a twelve-pack of whatever was cheapest (Stroh’s, Black Label, and every now and then the gods of sales offered up an affordable price for Pabst Blue Ribbon) and drive to one of the lesser-known parks at Lake Lewisville (yes, that’s back in Texas), set up lawn chairs, and turn on one of our car cassette players, listen and argue about music late into the night. Springsteen was most often the headliner, whether it was the word tumble of “Blinded by the Light” or the pared-down, echoed acoustic sounds of “Mansion on the Hill.” We had no idea of Freehold, life at Asbury Park, nor much of anything about the northeast, but we knew his music and lyrics were trying to do more than erase three to four minutes of late teen/early twenties struggles. For all the literal and cultural distance, we felt he spoke to us about a larger group of us, paying attention to subtleties that enriched all if we noticed. Since then, we’ve paddled rivers in Texas https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5357543 and in South Carolina and talked music along the way.

*****

A few days after the Springsteen show, we had organized the first two legs of the paddling trip: Peconic Lake Dam to Shinnecock Canal & Shinnecock Canal to Noyak Bay/Pine Neck. Both trips of around 12 miles and 7 miles respectively, nothing too demanding and to be quite honest, our “testing the waters” of kayaking in the Peconic Bay. My home is no more than a quarter of a mile from the Peconic River–Long Island’s longest river (12-15 miles according to differing definitions of a river)–and it is dammed here creating Peconic Lake (also called Forge Pond). Actually our neighborhood association is called the Peconic Lake Estates Civic Organization (PLECO). The association is an eclectic group of old and new; membership is $50 per year and the monthly gatherings at our meeting house never fail to have a fine array of cookies, sheet cake and coffee or tea. PLECO is a “neighborhood organization promoting the spirit of ‘good neighborliness'” as it says on our website. We have road clean-ups and a few events and lectures, but mostly the meetings are about keeping our little collection of homes a neighborhood.

From the Peconic Lake dam, folks can paddle and portage all the way to Riverhead and during the summer, frequently do, as the Peconic Paddler rental store in Riverhead takes folks west of here on River Road and lets them float most of the day back. The dam, though, is source of community and recreation as on virtually every nice-weather day for 10 months of the year, folks from the area are fishing from its banks. Even during our 15 minutes of putting in, one fisherman caught a bluegill and had no idea of how to unhook it.

 

The Peconic River drains mostly west to east (an oddity on Long Island) because of the glacial history of Long Island. Just to the south of the Peconic River is the Ronkonkama Morraine–the southern rise of Long Island’s glacial deposits from around 21,000 years ago. The river is mostly the result of seeps from groundwater rather than drainage from tributaries (Long & Wilhelm 9). It has been dammed and used since the late 18th-century for iron forges to cranberry bogs to ice for ice houses. The Dam Road meets Forge Road on the north side of the dam.

 

NYS Parks and Rec. created a functional boat slide and landing for paddlers to enter below the dam. The water is languorous and has a brown hue from the tannins and silt. It’s not deep but a gentle current will push you to the next dam around a half a mile down the river.

 

 

 

 

 

Scott cut a noble kayaking pose as we pulled into the Middle Country Road portage.

The small portage and parking area also announced the Peconic River Blueway Trail and its 9.5 miles of put-ins and take outs.

     

Almost immediately after we put back in we had to pull out to go around a small falls–17-foot sea kayaks are not made for such adventures. The next leg of the trip took us past The Roadhouse Brick Oven Pizza outdoor seating area. A few homes are hidden away from River Road and their backyards face the extended pond of the dammed Peconic–one favorite backyard had four metal letters facing the river L O V and E tilted on its side. Next to the letters sat a few guys drinking Tecate. Como esta’ la cosa mis amigos? Bien, bien, they laugh and raise their beers to us.

By the time we cross under Center Drive, we can see Grangabel Park and the take out for those renting from the Peconic Paddler. The take out is clear, but the park is nice walking for couples in hand-holding mood, and also now includes a fish ladder for the anadromous alewives (they live their adult lives in salt water and spawn in fresh). These small fish provide abundant fish for osprey, heron and eagles, as well as larger marine fish. The same dams we’ve been portaging today are one of the reasons for the severe decline of the alewives–they can no longer migrate upstream. In the last few years, the Peconic Estuary Program and Seatuck Environmental Association have worked with state agencies to begin creating fish ladders to assist alewife spawns.

We landed, took our kayaks to the area behind the Chase Bank where the tidal Peconic meets the last dam I’ll see until I round the north fork and arrive from the east, weeks, if not months from now. We leaned back a bit to cross under the Peconic and McDermott Ave. bridges and out where river becomes bay. Along the way, past the Long Island Aquarium, an older gentleman rowed a skull back and forth from the Cross River bridge to an area with boats docked. He pointed to his rearview mirror on his glasses and mumbled something like, “… for safety.”

Colonel’s Island is a little drop of land in the Peconic before it opens up to the bay. We head southeast after it passing around Iron Point to Goose Creek Point. I told Scott that we needed to pay homage to the Big Duck in Flanders as we paddled by. He used his middle finger to wave saying he’s “shooting the bird” to the Big Duck. ah, humor. ah, humanity.

At Red Cedar Point, we took our first real break of the day. Scott collected shells as I scouted out the increasing wind from the west. Whelks, scallops, and razor clams (much less a horseshoe crab carapace) are not typical in north-central Texas, so for him they are the exotic charms on his memory of the trip. I showed Scott where the first round of horseshoe crabs had laid their eggs by the light of the last full moon.

The last mile or so to the Shinnecock Canal was quick with the west wind whipping us forward. We hugged the beach enough to imagine we were close but were far enough out to let the wind use our paddles as sails. As we pulled into the beach, a few guys fished from the banks of the canal tossing bait into the current and letting it be carried into the canal. One caught a sea robin, cussed about its uselessness, and tossed it back into the swirling water.

Soon, Maria arrived with the car and had brought a few beers to christen the first day’s effort. It was a good day.

 (photo by Maria Brown)

*****

On the train ride to Ronkonkama after the Springsteen show, I told Scott how amazed I was Springsteen could seemingly bare himself so fully and honestly for two-and-a-half hours, five nights a week for what will be over a year by the show’s end. Was it real? Was it just a show? Is his performance doing both?  Is it possible to tell a story so raw and open, night after night, and not let it become distant and routine? I wonder about any story that way. How does one tell it over and over so that it keeps growing and changing so that it isn’t autobiography so much as community biography? Can you see your own story as big enough to reimagine yourself as just as a minor character? To make my story fit into our story? Scott says even if it was performance, it was real enough to convince him and that I should quit overthinking stuff. Have another beer and shut up, he offers and laughs. I’m still caught in my reverie. Can the horseshoe crabs and iron forges, Algonquin trails, and alewives make their way into this story? Can I tell my and their story and openly, deeply bare our common home? Have another beer and shut up David. Scott is a very dear and wise friend.

“The poets down here don’t write nothin’ at all, they just stand back and let it all be….” (Bruce Springsteen, “Jungleland”)

References:

Long, Robert P. and William and Barbara Wilhelm. Canoeing the Peconic River. Cutchogue, NY: Peconic Publishers, 1983.

Springsteen, Bruce. Born to Run. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2016.