August 30, 2007

#56 A River Runs Through It:
Paddling the Rivanna from Darden Towe Park through Woolen Mills after the dam removal

Saturday morning. The first day free of humidity in a week. Also, the first day I get to travel by boat through the old Woolen Mills dam site just three days after the breach on August 15. Today, there will be no slow slog through impounded water behind the dam; no heart-stopping worries that I am getting too close to the 9 foot drop; and no portage through poison ivy over rough concrete to get around the dam to safe water below.

Even so, it’s an unlikely day to paddle. While there have been near-perfect conditions for dismantling the dam and assessing the structural results, the water level is not really optimum for a canoe trip. It is somewhere around 50 or 60 cfs, a seasonal low reflective of our drought conditions. Hopeful, I glance quickly at the water as we drive over Free Bridge. It’s shallow, for sure, and I see the usual rock outcroppings upstream that are evident in low water.

In the last several years, I have not paddled this stretch of the river very much, in large part due to the long and lifeless pool behind the dam and my perception that the river is too urbanized for enjoyment. So I am surprised, when we first shove off from the boat ramp at Darden Towe Park, how quickly we are in another world altogether. The level of the river in almost any flow is well below the tops of the banks – and while this is an unfortunate and problematic result of poor land practices in previous centuries, I immediately feel that I am now down, in another world - the one of kingfisher, green heron, Canada goose. Joe-pie weed’s pale purple blossoms hang heavy over the bank amidst the late summer blooms of wing stem, boneset, asters and goldenrod. As it turns out, the river is shallow, but quite passable, and we wend our way through outcrops of dark basalt and Cotoctan greenstone.

Suddenly, a head pops up ten feet away. I see brown, small eyes, whiskers, before it slides back down into the ripple of pondweed. We still our canoe and wait. When the animal comes up for another look, we recognize a small river otter who continues to forage amongst the weed for slow-moving fish and mussels on the bottom. We glide into the cool echoing expanse under the Free Bridge on down to the sandbar bend below Pantops.

We watch for the signs of where the drowned river started and is now finally exposed. It’s tricky, for last night’s rain left a bathtub wash of mud along the bowl of what was the impoundment. Slick banks of mud not yet claimed by vegetation and the absence of trees and shrubs are our clues as we can see where the river has dropped three, four, five feet and more as we descend along the length of what was a pool behind the dam. A green heron flaps up with a start, its crest raised in black alarm. And we too are surprised when we round the bend to see the startlingly sight of a river strewn with rocks and pools that have not been uncovered for 175 years. No longer punctuated by the horizontal drop that was the dam, the river disappears in the distance in a soft bend with Brown’s Mountain in the distance high above. Pockets of coarse sand have filled the crevasses in the black rock, ridged across the river here where the Southwest Mountains are cut by the Rivanna, and the work is still underway.

Now the going is not exactly smooth – we try to find and follow the channel as the water drops over small ledges and around sand bars. Occasionally, we run aground and have to sling a leg over the side of the canoe for a quick push. We’re not alone in our discovery this morning: a dozen blue-winged teal alight in a soft flush of wings from a downstream pool. Fly fisherman standing mid-river are casting into new territory, gently kissing the water with their lures. From time to time, we hear the sounds of runners and bike riders and the voices strollers along the Riverview Trail on our right and on the Old Mill Trail to our left.

Our arrival at the site of the old dam is somewhat anticlimactic. There’s still rubble to be removed and the water is so low that we cannot actually paddle through the twenty-foot wide channel. But it’s a good cool wade to shore, where we haul our boat up onto a grassy spot on Market Street and depart on foot back up to our car at Darden Towe.

And this, it turns out, is the best part of our canoe trip. As pedestrians along Riverview Park, we have a view, intermittently through the trees, of clear, slow flowing river. And despite the fact that the current is low, we hear the river, dropping from rock to pool on its way downstream. I don’t know the song it would sing, this river now undammed. But I know that my heart feels lighter, not just for the sweet river time that I have just had this Saturday morning, but also for the new freedom for this stretch of the Rivanna River. It’s a very good feeling.