Jarvis Coffin: Off the Highway – Quiet time

Jarvis Coffin

Jarvis Coffin COURTESY PHOTO

Published: 09-06-2024 2:02 PM

I finally went to the trouble of getting a canoe onto Carpenter’s Marsh in Hancock, which is a broad expanse of Moose Brook, between Willard and Norway Pond. Getting there requires four-wheel drive and something to port the canoe, a trailer for instance, or a rack, or, since this is New Hampshire, a pickup with a bed that can accommodate a 10-foot canoe, six feet of which is going to hang off the back.

My brother is an avid outdoors person, and he has the whole package – four-wheel drive vehicle, trailer and a beautiful, refurbished canvas canoe. But it was my idea. I had to call him to propose it, and set the time, and give directions. This is what I mean by saying I finally went to the trouble. Plus, I helped unload the canoe and get it in and out of the water.

Anyway, it was a beautiful morning and even though we were probably as long picking our way down the access road as on the water, we felt put down in a place without access roads, remote, unspoiled, characterized by a scarcity of people.

A bald eagle soaring overhead kept us company for half the journey. We idled for a while to cast a fly line in the water once or twice (because you never know). I asked my brother what fly he was using. “A white one,” he answered, which described the seriousness of the adventure. We were not there as hunters, or prospectors. We were drifters, passing through, with no claim on the place.

When the bottom of the marsh came up to meet the bottom of the canoe, we sat still again, keeping track of the eagle until it banked toward bigger waters and bolted from view. That is when my brother said we would need to return to the spot in spring, when the birds were back.

Birds? Back? Well, yes, I suddenly realized, since he chose to mention it, that no sound except the breeze competed for our attention when we stopped talking. There was the eagle, we flushed a few mallards; but the only animal movement as we slowly paddled back was a turtle, which kept an eye on us until we were a canoe length away, and – blip –disappeared below the surface without a ripple or noise to tell where it had been.

Moments ago, a couple of mourning doves were pecking a few feet from me on the gravel driveway. In the background, two loons are calling back and forth. A few chickadees or nuthatches, not sure which, are chattering. Otherwise, the air over the field in front of me belongs to the dragonflies, a few hardworking bumblebees enjoying a late-season burst of red clover, moths, butterflies and flying grasshoppers.  By some arrangement, they have rights to the place now, like the adult groups that take over the summer camps after the kids have gone home.

Between now and the end of October, the Pack Monadnock Raptor Observatory (harriscenter.org/conservation-research/wildlife-research/birds/pack-monadnock-raptor-observatory/about-the-hawk-watch) will be open as Harris Center naturalists and volunteers monitor the migration of the eagles and thousands of hawks heading to Central and South America.

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Afterward, it will be down to us year-rounders, which means smaller lines at the feeders, no waiting for a table, once again knowing everyone in town.

And quiet time.

Jarvis Coffin writes fiction and essays on rural life. He is a retired media and advertising sales executive, and former chef/owner, with his wife, of New Hampshire’s oldest inn, the Hancock Inn. Reach him at huntspond@icloud.com, and keep up with all his musings at jarviscoffin.com.