Places that "grab you"

[yellowcanoe]

Normally I like to paddle new routes but in old age I have found places that beg me to return over and over

1. Lake Superior North and East shore
2. Everglades
3.Newfoundland
4.Green River Utah
5. Yukon River

so I think I have my bucket list. Places I want to learn more and more about. Sort of like little Acadia National Park..People say they have "done " that. I have been going for 53 years. I am not done with it yet.

We will be going back next week with an aim to learn more about night skies. Its going to be added to Dark Sky parks

And your go to places?

 

[dave0]

Not as far away as you go Kim. I don't know what it is about this place but Sunday Cove on Lake Umbagog is one of my all time favorite places always in off season.

dougd

 

[yknpdlr]

Robert service said it best for me with "The Spell of the Yukon" I've paddled there 4 times so far and have plans to return again next June to that great land and river.

"No! There’s the land. (Have you seen it?)
It’s the cussedest land that I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when He made it;
Some say it’s a fine land to shun;
Maybe; but there’s some as would trade it
For no land on earth — and I'm one."

"There’s a land where the mountains are nameless,
And the rivers all run God knows where;
There are lives that are erring and aimless,
And deaths that just hang by a hair;
There are hardships that nobody reckons;
There are valleys unpeopled and still;
There’s a land — oh, it beckons and beckons,
And I want to go back — and I will."

the last line in the stanza above is in my soul and it definitely has a hold on me. Read the whole message here:
http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/yukon01.html

My other place to return to is Australia.
While on a business working trip to the capital city of Canberra, I was invited by the coach of the Australian National Dragon Boat Team to paddle a training session with the team. Its a whole different way of paddling.

In the same part of the world, New Zealand is definitely on my list.

i recently visited Scotland and several of the Highland Lochs, including Loch Ness with my grandchildren. A Yukon paddling friend of mine from Belgium paddled the "Great Glen Canoe Race" across Scotland, from sea to sea a couple of years ago. I'd like to do that myself someday.

There are great rivers in Russsia that I will never get to paddle, I'd love to go, but its a long shot, although I have family ancestry in the region.

 

[Guest]

Normally I like to paddle new routes but in old age I have found places that beg me to return over and over

1. Lake Superior North and East shore
2. Everglades
3.Newfoundland
4.Green River Utah
5. Yukon River


And your go to places?

Green River Utah is certainly on my list of places that grab me. I will return again and again when possible.

In terms of a venue most of mine are not as far flung, usually somewhere within a half day’s drive or proximal to areas where I travel for other reasons.

Assateague Island Nation Seashore/Chincoteague Bay backcountry sites in Maryland Virginia

Hammocks Beach State Park/Bear Island on the North Carolina coast

Adirondacks. Especially the Whitney Wilderness Area, Little Tupper, Round Lake, Rock Pond, Lila.

But what really grabs me are some favorite places within places. The furthest back site at Pine Tree on Chincoteague Bay. Spacious, level, open, well spaced trees for tarp and hammock, fairly well wind protected.



Site #12 at Hammocks Beach. Not an ocean front site, but I’m not interested in the ocean. Very wind protected, nestled in a grotto live oak. Easy landing, actual hammock trees, lots of birdlife.



It is hard to pick a favorite site in the Adirondacks. #12 on Little Tupper is hard to beat. Demerits only for the take out and boat storage area, especially in the wind with higher water levels.

Sometimes it is a place within a place that grabs me. My spot.

There is a certain sandy bayside beach on Chincoteague a few miles south of Pine Tree that always calls me. A nice long peninsula for progging the water’s edge to see what has washed up, interesting tidal landscape changes, short hike to the Atlantic Beach (yawn) and great birdlife. I take a chair and make a day of it.

Also on Assateague, the head of a long, deep gut that stretches east to within 100 yards of the ocean. The gut and bay are visible facing west, the Atlantic Ocean facing east. Incredible birdlife, great tidal changes and the area overwashes during Atlantic storms, which adds some interesting topography and flotsam/jetsam finds.

 

[southcove]

Was born into a family that journeyed into the Sierra Nevada's (Yosemite, Kings Canyon, John Muir wilderness, east side, Tahoe, etc) to frequently explore...would love to do it again on an easy basis (as opposed to my once a year family visits near Yosemite) w/o all the travel drama, costs, family expectations and insults to a now 40+ year older body. So, practically anyplace in that marvelous and scenic high country, "the range of light"...it spoke to me then very powerfully...

Alaska. With the rest of my family living there, many trips over the past 35 years. Backpacking, rafting, canoeing, sea kayaking, driving, exploring...I am happy just to noodle around now at one of their cabins in the mtns or oceanside near Homer...blood pressure drops 10 pts just stepping from the airport. A good but too short trip will have me riding positive mental endorphins for months... I have just been to a small slice of the Yukon, but I could see that taking another lifetime to explore and appreciate.

Local places too, but I don't dream of them, the whispers are not really audible and when I shuttle off this mortal coil, no ashes get scattered there, unlike places 1 & 2 above.

 

[Guest]

Local places too, but I don't dream of them, the whispers are not really audible and when I shuttle off this mortal coil, no ashes get scattered there, unlike places 1 & 2 above.

That photo above, of the long Assateague gut that overwashes in Atlantic storms, is where I want my ashes dumped.

I have a dream. I have a dream that one day the oceans will rise up and create a new inlet, cutting Assateague in half.

I have dream that one day canoeists and kayakers will camp together on a section of Assateague in the spirit of brotherhood, inaccessible to idiot 4-wheelers, surf fishermen and hunters tearing up the beach.

I have a dream that one day the National Park Service will shoot every dang pony and sika deer invasive on that section of the island, an island oppressed by the world’s highest density of dog and deer ticks, transforming it into an oasis free of rickettsia and protozoa.

I have a dream that my children and grand children will one day paddle camp on an island where they will judged not by the strength of their DEET or application of their Permethrin spray, but by the contents of their coolers.

I have a dream. Dump my ashes at the end of that wash over gut. If there is anything to an afterlife I’ll steer an Atlantic hurricane to landfall and make the new inlet dream come true.

 

[lowangle al]

No Title

There is a campsite on a lake in the Kenai National Wildlife refuge that I have to go to every year to make sure all is right with the (my) world. If I only take one trip in a season thats where I'll go. It's like a second home I've never found it occupied when I show up. Sometimes years will go by without any evidense of other campers. Almost everyone who camps on the lake uses a larger campsite across the lake.

 

[forest runes]

While I love to visit faraway locations , often these places are close to home , it is more a state of mind than a location . John Burroughs alluded to this in his writings a century ago. I know a secluded location in a grove of old growth pine where all that you can hear is an adjacent waterfall , I never bring anyone to it except my faithful hound , it is our fortress of solitude. I think everyone needs one nearby to escape the noise & hubbub and compose oneself in the silent places .

 

[Guest]

Osswagochie upstream from the Inlet put in. either after doing the traverse carry or an up and back. I love to explore new and more remote places in the ADKs, but just have to go there once every year.
Turtle

 

[southcove]

If I only take one trip in a season thats where I'll go. It's like a second home ...

If you have been on the old Johnson trail outside Rainbow, McHugh Creek, Indian, 1/2 way to Girdwood...there is a spur that runs off the Crow Creek Pass trail, goes up high along the numerous and sharp edged ridgelines, gets above tree line pretty fast...stunning views of Turnagain Arm, the tidal bore...fun to watch the floatplanes returning to Lake Hood, flying BELOW you. Watching the weather transit up from Portage Glacier can be breathtaking.

My brother showed it to me on my first backpacking trip up there...but going back a year later I realized and found my 'own spot' of beauty, solitude and personal zen... I couldn't make it up the last trip w an overnight pack, so now that ever so special spot is on a bucket list to share w the son who also greatly appreciated my spot high above Tutka Bay looking down at the sweep of ocean outside Homer Spit...

It has been my experience that we all need to find that one or several special spots (even if they speak gently only to us) and not be much disappointed if the wonderful karma we feel escapes those who we are attempting to share it with...

I have one of those high in the Sierra Nat'l forest, outside of Northfork CA at about 8500' overseeing one of the numerous granite domes there, but last visit was quite unfulfilling and I think it was the missing presence of my just recently passed father...things were just out of whack and unsettling.

 

[Odyssey]

We had just finished a day hike on the Lake Superior coast with our kids. It had been several hours of forest fun culminating in a peak picnic with a gorgeous view. Back at the water's edge I stepped into Superior to cool my tired feet and was rewarded for my foolishness with stabbing pain. There'd be no swimming that day! But further up the beach we came upon a stream damming up behind a beachhead and trickling through a small pool before it overflowed into Superior. This clear pool measured about 5 feet by 8 feet and 3 feet deep. My wife and kids ambled along the coast exploring while I stood and drank in the view. I pondered the Anishinaabe and their myths and culture; is it cultural appropriation to adopt their unearthly beautiful territory as our own recreational paradise? Is it disrespectful to call it my own vacation playground? Would Old Woman Nokomis be angry? I think I was tapping into my overactive and furtive imagination, and setting myself up for a freak-out, which is exactly what happened. I remember thinking "I'll just kick off my shoes and take a short dip to cool off. No harm done." The water was cool and soothing; floating on my back I gazed at the deep blue Superior beyond the golden sands, surrounded by tall granite cliffs edged by deep green forests. It was pure outdoorsy heaven, and I felt wonderful and at peace. I rolled over and gazed down into my small private pool and admired the patterns of small shadows flitting across the sandy bottom. And then the creepiest thing happened. The shadows grew larger and blacker. They no longer mirrored the light reflecting off the sun kissed surface. I kept gulping breaths of air and looking back down to see more. The shadows grew larger and larger, and loomed threatening below me. I feared reaching down to touch them. And then the water quickly became icy cold, as though a surge of malevolent spirits swam with me, warning me to flee. I braced myself for the cold, and reasoned that I was just imagining all this. I'm in a small pool of water under a clear blue sky; there's nothing else to it. Get a hold of yourself and stop the funny stuff. But a few more swirling shadows reaching for my face convinced me I'd had enough. Standing at the water's edge drying in the sun I could still see those menacing shapes shifting under the surface, and they didn't match the tiny dimples on the surface. I forced myself to laugh, and looked around to see nothing around me had really changed, had it?
Some places just grab you. State of mind. Location. Or sometimes both.

 

[forest runes]

Odyssey, I've read some lenape legends that say if you are quite & listen closely to moving water you will hear the voices of the ancestors. Perhaps that's what You were experiencing.

 

[Will Derness]

Green River Utah is certainly on my list of places that grab me. I will return again and again when possible.

Stillwater and Labyrinth Canyons on the Green River in Utah have grabbed me. Those 100+ miles down to the confluence with the Colorado are a good book that slowly reveals itself as you gradually descend from ranch lands into Canyonlands. 3 times it has called me and I expect another call to me one day.

However, this year it called to me in another way - an opportunity to "bookend" the Green River. Having paddled the last 100 miles of it, I had one bookend. The other bookend was the opportunity to paddle the headwaters of the Green at its source in Wyoming. Its source is a lake in the Wind River Range. Starts out as a calm lake paddle which turns into Class III WW after about 5 miles.

Photo from my canoe.

 

[sweeper]

Killarney PP Ont.

I need to spend some quality time there.

 

[Dagger]

No Title

Nothing far away from home as of yet, have not had the vacation time needed. Northern California is not the greatest when it comes to multiple day canoe tripping, but there are some nice day trip lakes, reservoirs and rivers such as Slab Creek Reservoir, Lake Clementine, Cosumnes River and my favorite, Ahjumawi Lave Springs. What's nice here is the 365 day canoeing season!
On my bucket list: Bowron Lakes, Algonquin, Temagami, Some part of the Yukon River, Sweden.

 

[Steve in Idaho]

Stillwater and Labyrinth Canyons on the Green River in Utah have grabbed me. Those 100+ miles down to the confluence with the Colorado are a good book that slowly reveals itself as you gradually descend from ranch lands into Canyonlands. 3 times it has called me and I expect another call to me one day.

However, this year it called to me in another way - an opportunity to "bookend" the Green River. Having paddled the last 100 miles of it, I had one bookend. The other bookend was the opportunity to paddle the headwaters of the Green at its source in Wyoming. Its source is a lake in the Wind River Range. Starts out as a calm lake paddle which turns into Class III WW after about 5 miles.

Photo from my canoe.

Ahhh - Green River Lakes. Been on my bucket list for a few years now, and plans are coming together for a trip up the river from the lakes next year. Squaretop Mountain beckons.....

I have a problem with these places that grab me. It seems that when I get a habit of revisiting them, they soon burn to the ground. It's a danger out here in the Mountain West, with our arid climate. Most of these places were at the end of a hike, or a very long drive on a remote mountain road that penetrates wilderness. 20 Mile Lakes int the Payette National Forest, Seven Devils Wilderness, South Fork Canyon of the Boise, Trinity Lake, Blackwell Lake, Loon Lake, South Fork of the Payette, Willow creek, and others.......all burned up in the last couple decades. Some burned while I was there and I had to evacuate (no, I didn't start it), and some burned within a week of my last visit (again, no...). It's some kind of curse. One of my former most favorite places on earth is still a moonscape 13 years later.

I'm trying not to have favorites now. Just taking new places as they come along.....

 

[Cookannapurna]

The northern Adirondacks in general. I guided up there in my younger days, and have been introducing my son to the Adks since he could walk. I don't know what it is up there. I have been to Alaska, Nepal/Tibet, South America, and lots of other places, but I return to the Adks time and time again. I tell my wife that somehow I feel "grounded" there.