The great green islands of the marsh slipped smoothly by: high, flat, raised grasslands whose creeks and configurations were completely hidden from my angle of view. Their smooth fringed bank suggested the shore of unknown, untouched coasts above the grass.
The white breasts, necks and heads of gulls appeared, looking at me with the passive curiosity of natives. Once, when I picked up the paddle to push my canoe off a peat bank, they all took off and dispersed in total silence, except for a great rustling of wings. As the curved coast of the Porchy Marsh slipped by, I watched out for the mouth of Broad Creek, the largest creek in this marsh system, winding into the marsh’s interior like a miniature Amazon in this miniature marsh continent. But when I entered it, I found the outflowing current so strong that, even with the most strenuous bottom poling, I could make my way only a few rods up the creek.
Exhausted, I wedged the canoe between the peat banks and stood carefully up to survey the marsh surface. Far to the west several white snowy egrets and a pair of tall great blue herons dotted the marsh, preening or standing motionless over some hidden creek or pool.
There were no other people on the marsh, except for a few fishermen in small commercial skiffs and lobster boats. Whether behind a wheel or at a tiller, all of them stood up in their boats as they powered out toward the Inlet in that classic pose of the fisherman, a position that looks somewhat precarious, but which I suspect allows them to spot bars and rips in the dangerous inlet shoals.
I had now drifted and padded down to the lower third of Nauset Marsh. After stopping for lunch on the outside barrier beach, I had planned to return on the flooding tide, following the inner shore of the marsh back to Hemenway Landing. The tide, however, was still going out and I resigned myself to a long, hard paddle back. I set off anyway, hoping the flood would soon catch me.
As it turned out, I had nothing to worry about. The wind had come round nearly full circle, so that it was south-southwest, eight to ten knots, and I soon discovered that a canoe, sitting so high in the water, is more subject to wind than current, if the two are reasonably equal. Thus I had the curious sensation of being carried, without paddling, upstream against the current a good part of the way back.
Hugging the inner shore, I passed the Tonset peninsula with its collection of monuments to modern architecture; then up through the deep but narrow channel to Fort Hill and its blessed sweep of undisturbed hillside meadow, where the anomalous songs of song sparrows and prairie warblers drifted out over the salt waters; then beneath a ridge of dark cedars; around Skiff Hill past the interpretive shelter; and finally back to Hemenway Landing.
All in all I had been paddling some four hours. There were thick clouds of gnats everywhere, going into my eyes, ears and mouth. I dragged the heavy canoe over a hundred feet of tidal flat and wrestled it back into the car. I was exhausted - hot, sweaty, grungy, and hungry - but strangely exhilarated. I felt as one feels returning from another country, glad to be home but eager to tell stories of the voyage.
This is part 2 of a 2-part essay. Part 1 aired last week. You can hear it here.
