nature – Paddle With Us

A trip down memory lane…

June 21, 2026 by Maggie, posted in Uncategorized

Karen and I chose a different sort of paddle this year. Not as long as we have in the past. And in a place that is dear to me: The Chemung Valley of the Southern Tier of New York State. We enjoyed three days on the Chemung River starting in Addison, NY, and making our way to Athens, PA, where the Chemung meets the Susquehanna River. A total of about 55 miles. We paddled another five miles on the Susquehanna to the next boat access point, five miles that we had paddled a few years ago as part of our four-year journey on the Susquehanna from Cooperstown, NY, to the Chesapeake Bay. And we hit some of the same headwinds that reminded us how difficult some of the larger rivers can be to navigate! We don’t tend towards paddling the same waters more than once but the need to find a spot to get out overtook that. Too many rivers left to repeat any of them!

The weather was great during the day. It was too cold for my sleeping gear in the evenings. Lesson learned there. I will invest in new equipment and remember my long underwear next time, regardless of the weather forecast. The scenery was as beautiful as ever we find on our river trips.

The nostalgic aspect of this trip was strong. Born in 1956 in Elmira, NY, which straddles the Chemung River, memories flowed back to me as we approached the city. Bottcher’s Landing is a river access point now, and I recall back in the day it was a farm and farmstand where my mom would go for flowers and/or vegetables.

And what was that park that was accessed by trolley? Boom, the memory came back: Rorick’s Glen. It had been an amusement park and entertainment center for a couple of decades at the start of the 20th century. It was long gone when I was a child, but we still managed to get over the old wooden bridge and spook around. Nothing remains of the bridge but the abutments.

Paddling towards West Elmira where our house was, we passed under Fitch’s Bridge, one of the many bridges connecting downtown Elmira and its Southside. My mother used that bridge to “relocate” the squirrels she trapped in her yard. It was a never-ending job! Speaking of my mother, Mary, I had a chance to reunite with her Goddaughter and my friend who lived next door, Mary Marsden. By chance we were both in the area and it was fun to include her in this year’s journey.

A special highlight of our trip was meeting up with the Friends of the Chemung River Watershed. Not only did they meet us, but they brought along two TV stations who interviewed us. It was our 15 minutes of fame and a great way to help the cause of the river! Each took a different slant on our story. One (WETM) was focused on the river. The other (WENY) focused on these old women paddling our hearts out! We laughed as we listened! We were in the local Star Gazette as well.

The dam in Elmira was our only portage this year. Our new friends had cleared out the spring growth (nasty knotweed that overtakes indigenous plant) the day before so that we could pull up the gear and the canoe and get it around the dam. The dam creates a pool of water that is treated to become the drinking water for the city. The portage is very near where my parent’s first apartment was and where my sister came into this world.

Skyline of Elmira, now minus the roofline of my home church which burned to the ground in February 2025.

As we paddled out of downtown Elmira, we approached Dunn Field, forever emblazoned in my mind not for my high school graduation but for the streaker who stole the show at the end! My first of two streaker spottings in 1974

The derelict hotel and restaurant is where we would go with our grandparents. It overlooks I86.

Winding beneath the remains of the hotel that used to be on a main road, we made our way from the nostalgia of the Elmira area toward Waverly where the river dips into Pennsylvania, heading to the Susquehanna. At that point it was back to things as usual on the river: beautiful scenery, heron, osprey, eagles, turtles…and even a two-foot-long water snake which Karen spotted just as I put my feet in the water on either side of the canoe! Needless to say, I pulled my feet in quickly and never saw the snake slithering off.

Elmira is behind me now, literally and figuratively. Much of what I knew growing up is gone. It remains a river town, with all the challenges and hospitality that we have experienced on every river we have paddled.

One last bit of nostalgia: Kim, who Maggie met in elementary school 60+ years ago, was our river angel who came to fetch us at the end of our trip and take us back to Corning where our cars were. I have only seen her twice since graduating from high school at the above-mentioned Dunn Field.

A new year 2026

May 31, 2026June 9, 2026 by Maggie, posted in Uncategorized

A year has passed since we paddled the bulk of the Connecticut River in 8 days. The river froze over this winter more that I had seen in our 11 years in Vermont. In many places it was flat ice that could be skated or walked on, unlike the choppy chunks I usually see due to freezing and thawing multiple times. This past winter in New England was mostly freezing! In fact, summer is having a hard time arriving. We still have temps in the 40’s.

But now the river is thawed and, crossing it many times a week to travel to Claremont, NH, I think fondly back to last year…even the night we thought we might freeze to death! I have actually paddled on it a couple of times this spring. Yes, I finally bought a used LL Bean kayak! I resisted getting a kayak for many years and for many unreasonable reasons. But the river and ponds of New England call to me and I want to get out more than once a year. And I treated myself in honor of entering my eighth decade of living as of my 70th birthday in April.

Now it is time to plan a new trip in a few weeks. However, I realized I never summarized last year in this blog! So, please click here to read some of the high points and low points of those two weeks!

Meanwhile we turn our paddles to a much smaller river though it is very significant. I grew up in Elmira, NY, which straddles the Chemung River, a short but stately little river that provided livelihood to Elmira for a few hundred years. Our family dates back to around 1800. But for all our history in that place, I have NEVER paddled the Chemung River. I find this fascinating and have pondered why. The best answer I can come up with is that in the mid to late 20th century, many of our rivers remained industrial. They were ugly and polluted. They were not seen as a place for recreation.

Fortunately, things have changed. People are studying the nation’s rivers and learning about them. Karen has become a volunteer with the PennState Extension Master Watershed Steward Program in Western PA…the watershed that fed our first 1234 miles of paddling. I have recently joined the Connecticut River Conversancy volunteers and have also learned about the Vermont Center for Ecostudies Loon Conservation Project. We do these things because we now have some time in our retirements and because we have learned how important our rivers are. So many people before us had to fight to clean up the rivers and create recreational opportunities. It feels good to help sustain some of that work.

So, on June 15th, we will meet at the headwaters of the Chemung River, somewhere near Hornell, NY. We will paddle the short 45 miles down to Athens, PA. Depending on our timing perhaps we will paddle of few miles on the Susquehanna River that takes the waters of the Chemung and deposits them eventually in the Chesapeake Bay.

Hopefully I will report that trip sooner than I did last year’s. Thanks for paddling along with us.

Source to (not quite) Sea: The Connecticut River

May 16, 2025May 29, 2026 by Maggie, posted in Uncategorized

I am so rusty with my blog posting that I cannot even find where I posted the intro to our 2025 paddle down the length of the Connecticut River, so vital to the communities that have lived along it for millennia!

On Monday, May 19th, Karen and will put in at Canaan, VT. Preparing for this trip has been different for a few reasons. For one, we have never paddled a river that one of us has lived near at the time. I once lived near the Susquehanna which we travelled a few years ago but at the time had no interest in the river. Now I cross the Connecticut between Windsor, VT, and Claremont, NH, several times a week. I see it in all seasons and water levels. This year, John and I were even able to do some reconnaissance around some of the bigger dams to determine whether Karen and I would portage ourselves or ask for help. It will be a little of both, it turns out. We had a great afternoon last weekend exploring the Moore Dam, Comerford Dam, McIndoes Dam, and Wells River Dam. We will take our canoe dolly this year to pull the canoe around some of these dams.

I have also studied up maps and some great books about the river more than I usually do. I guess I am more interested because we have lived here for a while.

But the big difference in planning is that we are going out for two weeks to cover the whole river from below the Connecticut River Lakes in Northern NH to the Long Island Sound! Two years ago, we paddled the Connecticut River Lakes but the stream to Canaan, VT, is not navigable in our canoe so we will put in below the dam at Canaan. This is a week more than we have ever paddled. So, let’s see how young our bodies are after sleeping on the ground that long. The night temps are looking to be in the 40s as well. Good news is that since we are close to our home, we will spend at least one night in West Windsor, VT, with guaranteed hot showers and flushing toilets!