The springtime weather made a glorious entrance to my neck of the woods this past weekend and inspired my first night paddle of the season. Billington Sea had been a tempest all week long with raging SW winds producing waves up to 2 feet across its fetch. Things finally calmed down by Saturday evening and everything about the lake (except the cold water temperature) was more than inviting. We shoved off from the docks at sunset with Seamore’s Island in sight and a little night-time adventure in mind!
The trip across the to The Island was a little chiller than we had anticipated. Neoprene gloves would have been an excellent choice in retrospect as my hands were numbed by the breeze and basically stuck to the paddle shaft by the time we reached the island landing. It only took a few steps up the trail to realize that the island had been decimated by the tough New England winter. A few of the large pine trees had been torn from their roots and lay across the lower clearing. I’ve never really appreciated how tall these trees were until I saw them on the ground like this! Elsewhere, the island was littered with smaller limbs and debris. The Boy Scouts are going to have their work cut out for them this spring!!!
It seemed as though the only part of the island to be spared from Winters Wrath was our Lost Boys Camp! However, that’s where we discovered that we were not alone on the island. No sooner had we laid out the picnic blanket were we greeted by a clearly perturbed Father Goose. He hissed and hissed and flapped his wings and even charged in our direction until we got the hint that this was HIS island (at least for the time being)! His antics incited a riot of epic proportions as a quick inspection made me realize that the island was basically surrounded by a flock of equally perturbed geese who were probably trying to make their nests. We decided to leave them be and retire to our canoe which thankfully remained exactly where we had left it; sitting quietly at the landing in the blue twilight!
Happy “Night Canoeing”!
-Kayak Dave