Paddling an actual Great Lake

Rough outline of trip (~75 miles total)

What: I cut my teeth lake paddling on Lake Champlain, but by Great Lake standards it just ain't the same as real lake paddling (Lake Champlain has been recognized as a Great Lake by Bill Clinton and later "unrecognized" by Leahy and congress). I went to college in Chicago, but never got to explore it by boat. With my time off I wanted to return to the Windy City and find some of the hidden wildlife popping up along the water's edge.

I drove in to Chicago Monday afternoon. Shortly after arriving I went for a jog with a couple of other reluctantly declared "former" runners, definitely not yet ready to call ourselves joggers. We ran along Lake Michigan's shore and the lake looked angry. It was one of the few times I've ever turned down a post-run swim. The wind was strong and out of the north. The length of the lake runs a little over 300 miles from north to south and, at the southern edge, a long northerly wind can build up powerful and dangerous swells, certainly nothing I'd want to paddle in. I decided to play it by ear on Wednesday - if the wind and water had calmed significantly I would give it a try, otherwise I'd look to paddle elsewhere.

The weather played in my favor and had died down significantly and the wind switched directions and was coming out of the east. The swells continuously shrank and by dusk were a pleasant roll. My primary concern was the daunting conditions around Navy Pier. The tourist boats throw up large wake and threatened to capsize my boat or flat out run me off. I hugged the break wall, where I got to hang out with impossible willows growing out of rock, nesting red-winged blackbirds, and acrobatic barn swallows.

My first stop after leaving 57th St beach was at Montrose Beach on the north shore. I ate a late lunch and rested for a couple of hours (about 15 miles of lake paddling is exhausting). I had some really wonderful conversations with curious folks; a handmade boat is a great conversation starter. People were both surprised at the length of my trip and that I was actually paddling in the lake. On my whole trip I didn't see anyone else paddling a boat they owned (I saw a few folks near the few 1/2 hour rental spots).

The evening section of my first day's paddle was surreal. Dusk swept across the sky in dramatic fashion. To the north a deep purple settled over the distant suburbs, while downtown shifted to a glowing orange from the sodium vapor lights. The waxing moon rose as the sun sank and I had the great fortune of seeing the gulls making their daily migration to roosting spots. As I followed their flight over my shoulder I heard thunder, which turned out to be a fireworks display downtown. Perhaps the ubiquity of gulls renders us blind to these amazing birds, but nobody seems to know or at least write about this daily phenomenon. I enjoyed watching the gulls, both ring-billed and herring, in their elegance diving for fish or hawking insects over the water. Poet and storyteller Martin Prechtel says that each species has its own eloquence that manifests at different times of year. Watching the gulls reminded me of that elegance that seemed so far from the domesticating scavenging I'm more familiar seeing. The hundreds (maybe thousands) of gulls seemed to be heading off in two directions, one to the south (possibly the break wall off the shore from downtown) and one to the east (possibly the water cribs in the lake). Their flight was quiet and mirrored the stillness of the lake. I was transfixed.

I continued on to Evanston and camped out at Northwestern's campus. Sometime in the middle of the night I awoke surrounded by a family of 6 raccoons. They scared what I think was a chipmunk right into me. I threw some sticks at them in my stupor and fell asleep too tired to secure up my food bag. I got lucky and woke to find all of my stuff still in place.

With a sunburn heating my skin and a sore left elbow I ate breakfast, packed up, and heading north on the lake to Lloyd Park beach in Winnetka. I took my time consolidating my gear as I knew the 2 mile portage in the heat of the day to the North Branch of the Chicago River was going to be a long one. The North Branch, in short, is majestic. It is a true refuge for wildlife and wildness in a city that can seem relentlessly urban. Amongst the chorus of catbirds, indigo buntings, and awkward grunts of great blue herons, I felt an older wildness welling up inside me. The chorus of sirens, cars, and trains faded into the background and became part of the noise of the woods. I felt my rhythms slowing. I relished my encounters stalking the young of raccoons out foraging or being graced with the presence of a young buck watching me intently from the banks.

While it feels old, I know it's young. This wildness is enclosed by a relatively immature forest akin to Vermont's riparian corridors and floodplains (e.g. boxelder, silver maples, cottonwoods, black willow). The river bends and winds in what feels like a natural meander. Walking a short distance from the banks in parts reveals old meander scars and tiny oxbow "lakes", though much of the even wilder stretches are heavily channelized and reinforced with rip rap, and I know that the story of how the river got its shape is a long and complicated one, the intersection of glacial geology, massive industrialization at its zenith, and human health concerns.

Because Chicago gets its drinking water from the lake, the Chicago River, which in its native form drained into the river, carried all of our urban effluent into our drinking water supply. In reaction to outbreaks of disease, namely cholear, in 1885, Chicago undertook a massive effort to reverse the flow of the river through a series of locks and dams. The city was then able to send its waste water to the Mississippi River rather than the lake; it's always worse downstream. There are a few tiny dams and a couple larger ones on the North Branch that, along with sections that were reinforced and deepened, increase flow of this section to more efficiently move water out of Chicago. These dams were a minor annoyance on the paddle as though only a foot or so drop required me to get all my stuff out and "portage" across the gap.

Next to the gulls, my favorite part was dusk on the second night. Around the time I reached Addison the green herons and great blue herons started packing it in for the night and heading to bed as the black-crowned night herons came out in droves. There were dozens of them, their eloquence on display. They're as graceful as great blue herons in all the ways GBHs are, and graceful in all the ways they are not. I loved the few encounters I had where they flew right over my boat as if to say hello.I couldn't help but be concerned for all these birds (great blue herons average life expectancy in the wild is about 15 years) eating fish out of these polluted waters.

The sun set lazily and, wearing just shorts, the warm wind was my blanket. My arms and body totally fatigued from the 30 miles of paddling and the 2 mile portage, I dreamily paddled from Belmont to downtown. I felt alone - though not lonely - like a voyeur looking in on a city's dirty secrets. Signs lined the river warning me not to let my skin come in contact with it, the Morton salt plant had left a crystalline patina on the surface of the water, and a weird foam oozed in great swirling patterns somewhere else along the way. Perhaps fear is why people only enjoy the water from the comfort of a brief stop on an overpass. Condos line the water's edge, the windows open to the river, giving glimpses at private worlds, someone on an exercise bike, quite conversations on balconies, the Miami Heat winning the championships. And while so much of me intellectually understood the gravity of the waterway's impaired health, I couldn't help but feel past this and see this totally wild, totally beautiful ecosystem thriving in this big forgotten expanse cutting through the heart of the city

I finished my paddle at Navy Pier sometime around 1am, greeted by the US Coast Guard trolling around asking where my life jacket was. I backtracked a bit and found a boat landing where tour boats park along the channelized edges (the concrete banks are about 10' high in places). I pulled my canoe up next to me as a visual block and camped out for the night, the lights from Navy Pier casting shadows across the water. I felt so safe down in my tiny hideaway. After all, I'd been almost completely undetected for about 30 miles and people rarely deviate from the beaten path so I felt confident I wouldn't be detected. Plus, I planned on getting up with the sun.

Sunset greeted me in full splendor. I ate a hasty breakfast and then portaged my boat 3/4 of a mile south to the Chicago Yacht Club (the lake is blocked by a dam, again to control flow of the Chicago River so it doesn't drain directly into the lake). It was actually frustrated trying to find a publicly accessible boat launch here. All the retention walls are super high and the closest beach was a mile north and out of the way.

The last 7 miles or so of my trip were easily the longest. The warming weather must have come in on a warm front from the south. The winds were stiff and the lake had become choppy. I was totally drained and had to continuously paddle to avoid getting blown backwards. I chose the less wise path of cutting the tangent from Shedd Aquarium rather than hugging the coast to save on distance and risk capsizing. It worked out, but had I tipped I would have been in big trouble. Progress was slow and the winds continuously strengthened to maybe 20 mile an hour perfect headwinds. I pulled into shore exactly where I had started about 48 hours earlier, having traveled a little over 70 miles by water and 4 miles by land. I was totally spent, sunburned, and in a complete state of bliss.


Birding wasn't my primary focus so I probably missed quite a few, but I did keep an informal bird list while out on the trip. With the canopy fully closed now it's hard to identify most species visually so I wish I were a better birder by ear. With the exception of a couple, all of the birds below were identified visually.

Bird List:

1. black-crowned night heron
2. green heron
3. great blue heron
4. turkey vulture
5. ring-billed gull
6. herring gull
7. common tern
8. Caspian tern
9. chimney swift
10. barn swallow
11. cliff swallow
12. tree swallow
13. eastern wood pewee
14. eastern phoebe
15. mute swan
16. Canada goose
17. mallard
18. wood ducks galore!! So many fledglings everywhere
19. pigeon
20. mourning dove
21. American crow
22. blue jay
23. northern cardinal
24. downy woodpecker
25. hairy woodpecker
26. yellow-shafted flicker
27. red-bellied woodpecker
28. European starling
29. common grackle
30. red-winged blackbird
31. catbird
32. American robin
33. house sparrow
34. house finch
35. killdeer
36. belted kingfisher
37. indigo bunting
38. eastern kingbird
39. great-crested flycatcher
40. song sparrow
41. Cooper's hawk
42. red-tailed hawk 
43. red-breasted nuthatch
44. blue-gray gnatcatcher
45. cedar waxwing
46. Baltimore oriole

The Clouds and the Lake

What: I've now paddled the Salmon Hole to downtown Burlington loop about 7 times, this last time with my sister, Meryl, and our friend Carlos. It's amazing that I can walk my boat three quarters of a mile, paddle, 16 miles, and then walk 2 miles home. With all the rain we had the other night the river level was considerably higher and I had a blast running the rapids at Salmon Hole. The wind was also much stronger. The following day (Wednesday) we had fair weather, with a nice blanket of cumulus clouds settled over Vermont and New York. With a different perspective of being on the lake I was struck by the noticeable absence of clouds over the water.

Panorama showing absence of clouds over Lake Champlain

Ecological notes: My theory is that we had lots of rain on Monday, followed by warm temperatures. Already when the rain was falling it was evaporating and there was a beautiful mist carpeting the understory of Centennial Woods. As the warm moist air rises it reaches cooler air. When enough water vapor cools enough degrees (the birds and bees of making a cloud) it can reach what's called the dew point. Dew point is the point just beyond 100% relative humidity where water vapor condenses out onto a solid substrate, like dust or grass or your tent. An easy example is a cold glass of water on a warm humid day. As the air comes in contact with the glass it cools rapidly. Cold air can "hold" less water vapor, so the air in contact with the glass reaches the dew point and little water droplets form on the glass (but not on your much warmer skin). 

In the atmosphere, as that warm air rises, the water vapor can condense and will appear to us as a cloud. So the greater the difference in temperature between the ground and the sky, the lower the elevation at which clouds should form, because they'll reach that dew point much sooner.

We started paddling on the lake around 9:45am and I guessed the clouds were around 3000'. Once we rounded Apple Tree Point we had a great view of Camel's Hump and a little more than the summit (4081') was covered, so the clouds were probably closer to about 3500'. About an hour later it was considerably warmer outside, and more warm air had already risen into the atmosphere, thus, the air around Camel's Hump had warmed as well. This should have raised the dew point and the elevation at which clouds were forming. Sure enough, by about 11:15am, the top of Camel's Hump was exposed, indicating that the clouds were at about 4100'.

So why no clouds over the widest parts of the lake? The temperature of the lake is more stable and cooler, so the temperature gradient between water and air is far less. Because there is a lower temperature gradient, the air rises at a much slower rate, allowing for water vapor to reach equilibrium rather than condensing out.

Where: Lake Champlain & the mighty Winooski River

Other notes: The sunlight on Tuesday was stunning - those soft sunset golds. The winds were kicking up the leaves of the silver maples that line the Winooski River. I could never understand why they were called silver maples until I saw this a few years ago. The undersides have a much paler color and when the winds dance them around exposing their bellies the whole tree takes on this ethereal silvery sheen. Someone must have named it in the sunset after a good summer storm.

Storm + Winooski River Paddle Revisited

Bonus post: Just wanted to post a quick video I put together from that epic thunderstorm last night. For a better synopsis of conditions leading up to and during the storm, check out The Weather Rapport.

What: Last Wednesday and Thursday I paddled the Winooski River from Bolton Dam down to Salmon Hole in Burlington (about 30 miles or so). There are a couple of great paddling guides online (1) (2) that give a sense of what to expect from the conditions on the river, but do little to describe the sheer joy of getting lost in the meandering freedom of the Winooski's bends and folds. Only occasionally did the old span bridge or rumble of a semi's engine break remind me of the thin border of silver maples separating me from the faster pace of asphalt and clocks.

Ecological notes: I was particularly fascinated with the enormity and odd grace of the committee of turkey vultures that seemed to defy my cultural expectations of what a vulture should be (on Friday I'll post more about collective nouns, like committee, for animals). Wednesday evening I came to a fork in the river where it split around an island. I saw a turkey vulture circling low on the south stretch of the island and so I set down that direction. As I slowly approached, another turkey vulture landed on a gravel spit about a quarter mile down from me, followed shortly by three more. I tied up my boat and crept slowly along the shore line to get a better view. As I rounded the bend I was treated with a spectacular view of about 25 turkey vultures either sunning themselves on the rocks or perched up in the trees preening themselves.

In that late afternoon heat I wanted nothing more than to spread my own arms out and sun myself on the rocks with them. I couldn't help but wonder if that was the ultimate motivation for the turkey vultures' behavior. When I got back, Callan and I came up with a pretty short list of reason why we thought the vultures (and other birds) might do sun themselves. Here's what we came up with:

1. Kill bacteria by drying them out (they're detritivores, an animal that eats dead stuff, which is probably a source of all kinds of nasty bugs)
2. Kill other parasites, like taking a dust bath
3. Produce Vitamin D
4. Warm themselves up before going to bed
5. Warm themselves up to increase metabolic rate, digest food faster
6. Visual display of power to other turkey vultures
7. Dry off

I've also seen cormorants do this (see photo above), pelicans, and green herons. Some quick research shows that many birds do this, but their posture is different from the vultures and cormorants shown above. Indeed only a few others, like anhingas, storks, and other herons, do this standing up with wings spread. The ring-billed gull colony I encountered the following afternoon had about 300 individuals (plus a small handful of mergansers) all standing facing the sun, but with wings closely tucked in).

Some patterns in the list of birds that sun themselves standing up with wings out emerge: many are aquatic, they tend to be darker, they're carnivores, they're very large birds, they live longer than most birds, and most are in the stork order, Ciconiiformes. After writing this I looked up the order of pelicans (Pelicaniformes) to see if it used to be included in Ciconiiformes, and sure enough Pelicaniformes is often proposed as part of Ciconiiformes. What's even cooler and more surprising is that new world vultures (as opposed to buzzards and their old world kin) are close cousins of the storks. So if this behavior of standing up and sunbathing is monophyletic (occuring only in one evolutionary branch of birds), then it might be reasonable to assume it originated in a single ancestor of new world vultures, herons, storks, cormorants, and pelicans. The behavior might then serve a unique purpose among these birds.

I didn't find anything conclusive, but it looks like birds will sunbath for all the reasons that Callan and I came up with. A 1957 paper on the topic indicates that birds might also sunbathe socially; if one starts sunbathing then others will join her/him. I'm not sure what the primary purpose of sunbathing is for these birds, but I'll bet spending lots of time in/near stagnant water (for cormorants, herons) and eating carcasses (vultures) makes these birds susceptible to parasites so having a way to kill them would be good (maybe the black of a vulture heats their feathers up to a higher more lethal temperature).

Additionally, vitamin D deficiency can pose skeletal problems, making large body size a critical reason to sunbathe. Ciconiiformes and vultures don't migrate far, so in the winter they're not getting as much vitamin D as say migratory song birds might. Vitamin D deficiency prevents an animal from absorbing calcium from food. Prolonged deficiency (as with people in northern latitudes) can result in weakened bones that bend and curve under the body's weight (like the stereotypical bow-legged Eskimo). Sunning would be an effective way of producing vitamin D.

Another source says that warming up feathers "resets" their curvature, bringing them back to their most efficient shape, an obvious advantage for a turkey vulture, which spends most of its time soaring looking for food. But I couldn't verify this with any reputable sources. 

Where: Winooski River, about 2 miles upstream from Richmond.