[caption id="attachment_5419" align="alignright" width="233"] Color lithograph of sheet music by Alfred Bryan and Albert Gumble.[/caption]
A freshwater lake located between New York State on the west, Vermont on the east, and Canada’s Quebec province on the north, Lake Champlain is approximately 120 miles (193 km) long, 12 miles (19 km) wide, and 400 feet (122 m) at its deepest trench. The sixth-largest lake in the United States by volume, Lake Champlain contains 71 islands. (Source: LCLT.org) Source waters include the Boquet, Ausable, and Saranac rivers in New York and the Richelieu, Missisquoi, and Lamoille rivers in Vermont. Contrary to a common misperception, the lake flows northward into the Richelieu River (and eventually into the St. Lawrence River.)
Inspiring artists, musicians, and vacationers for centuries, Lake Champlain is a creative and cultural epicenter for the Northeast. To get in the mood, how about a singalong of Alfred Bryan and Albert Gumble’s “On Lake Champlain”? (Check out the lyrics and audio recording.)
Named for the French explorer, Samuel de Champlain, who was the first European to map the region in 1609, the waterway quickly became an important transportation and trade artery. The Battle of Valcour (October 11, 1776) during the American Revolutionary War and the Battle of Plattsburgh (September 6-11, 1814) during the War of 1812 wove the majestic lake into early American history. Today, Lake Champlain is a popular destination for vacationing, swimming, boating, fishing, and camping.
The Lake Champlain water level is ever-so-slowly dropping, but it’s premature to rule out the possibility of hitting (or even exceeding) flood stage. At present, there’s about a foot of clearance between the bottom of Rosslyn boathouse’s cantilevered deck and the glass-flat water surface. Windy, wavy days are another story altogether.
[pullquote]With the first impossibly green asparagus and precocious yellow narcissus, can summer be far off?[/pullquote]
For now, at least, Rosslyn’s boathouse is safe.
Safe, but not dry. The boathouse, house, carriage barn, ice house, yards, meadows, gardens, orchard, and woods are soggy. Persistant showers with insufficient soaking up / drying out time has resulted in waterlogging. My bride catalogued current circumstances (see video below) including a row of cedars that were destroyed in late winter when an old, rotten maple tree fell down, crushing the hedge. And the vegetable garden has finally been tilled once, at least a week or two later than ideal.
The final images offer a nice balance to the spring rain, rain, rain. With the first impossibly green asparagus and precocious yellow narcissus, can summer be far off?
Lake Champlain sunrise. Still mostly dark. Then an explosion of fiery day over the silhouetted Green Mountains in Vermont, over the slightly refracting waters of the lake…
When Your A-Roll Becomes Your B-Roll (Source: Geo Davis)
It’s mornings like this when your B-roll becomes your A-roll! It’s mornings like this that I pinch myself. Gently. But enough to startle myself into reassessing my day’s priorities.
Today I caught myself just in time to juggle priorities. Here’s what convinced me to recalibrate the agenda.
I few evenings ago I remembered that I’d left my iPhone on the runabout, so I headed down to the waterfront before dinner to grab it.
As I stepped out onto the dock, I noticed an energetic mink playing around on the rocks. I froze.
Would he vanish if he saw me?
He continued to explore the rock pile undisturbed. If only I had my phone I could take a photo or shoot a video. But it was in the boat.
For several minutes I stood motionless, and then I started taking slow steps toward the boat whenever he turned away. Eventually I realized that he wasn’t concerned with me at all. I unsnapped the boat cover and fumbled around in the failing light for my camera. The mink continued to play.
This is the video sequence I shot with most of the repetitive stuff edited out. Sorry it’s still a bit long, but couldn’t bring myself to erase his antics after he’d tolerated mine…
American Mink
From what I can ascertain, this was an American mink (Neovison vison), a semiaquatic carnivore which is inclined to dine on fish, frogs and crustaceans like crayfish. And, yes, it is the source of the fabled fur more valuable globally even than sable and silver fox.
I’d first titled this post “Summer Evening Mink” because it conjured up all sorts of dramatic (if slightly misleading) images. It sounded like a scene from a Merchant Ivory film. Too much. Besides, I knew it would ruffle my bride’s animal-centric feathers.
“Are you suggesting that someone should turn that beautiful wild creature into a collar?”
“Nope. Just liked the sound and imagery…”
“The imagery? Of slaughtering defenseless animals?”
Rosslyn’s American Mink
I know how this conversation goes. And besides, “Rosslyn’s American Mink” — although a bit presumptuous since this sleek fellow no more belongs to Rosslyn than Lake Champlain or that handsome moon does — gets right to the point of the matter. My bride likes that.
And my bride does not like mink coats. Not American mink or sable or silver fox or any other fur. She’s a big advocate for the critters. No eating or wearing critters for her. For me? I’m a carnivore, a bit like the American mink, I suppose, though my tastes are perhaps a bit more diverse. Oh, and I wear fur. Not American mink fur, but my own fuzzy pelt. Fortunately there’s little demand globally for my fur.
Update:
Leanne Hobbs Bula contacted me via Facebook to share a pair of mink photos that she took near Isle la Motte, Vermont.
Minks, by Leanne Hobbs Bula
“I also have an American mink at my home. She has 6 babies too! Scared the heck out of me the first time I saw her. She doesn’t like my dog… They are a bit far away because I ran away screaming bloody murder… we haven’t seen the babies in a few weeks, only the mom. We now have a pair of bald eagles and an eaglet? … We suspect the bald eagles may have snacked on the baby mink. Nature can be cruel but it certainly makes me less nervous when I am tanning myself lakeside!” ~ Leanne Hobbs Bula
Great photos, Leanne! Thanks for passing them along. I wonder if Rosslyn’s American mink has babies hiding away somewhere. I’ll keep my eyes peeled, but judging from all of the healthy ducklings growing into ducks along our waterfront, I suspect that there may only be the one lonely American mink I spied.
According to this USGS data for Lake Champlain we’re making history. To be more precise, Lake Champlain’s water levels are making history. That red line at the top of the graph is the historic high water mark set during spring flooding on April 27, 1993. And, as you can see, the blue “actual” recordings have already flickered above the red line a couple of times, though — as I understand it — these figures are not official. Yet. Not sure why. Nor when we’ll know the official water level, but I can assure you that Rosslyn boathouse is now swamped. And the lake is virtually windless and flat… Imagine what this afternoon will look like if/when the wind climbs into the high teens as forecast!
Fortunately there’s less debris floating around the boathouse today. I’m worried that heavy wave action combined with a large floating log or two acting as a battering ram against the boathouse superstructure could be devastating. We’ve witnessed the damage already when the water level was 18″ lower. I’ll head down when the rain abates to take some more images of the drowning boathouse to share with you. Until then, please send dry, windless vibes Essex-way. Thanks!
Rosslyn boathouse is flooded (6:00am April, 29, 2011)
We knew it would happen sooner or later. But like so many inevitable but dreaded events, we’d wrapped ourselves in a warm comforter of denial. And four springs slipped quickly past since purchasing Rosslyn without the boathouse getting flooded. Sure, we’ve had plenty of high water, but the water’s never risen above the floorboards. In fact, the highest it had ever gotten was about 9-12″ below the floorboards!
Not this year. Lake Champlain‘s water level has risen quickly in recent weeks due in part to seasonal spring melt after an extremely snowy winter and spring. But spring rains are the real culprit. Lots and lots and lots of rain. We’ve been watching day by day as the water crept up, reassuring ourselves that it must be cresting soon… Only it wasn’t. It’s still rising. About another 5″ inches since yesterday afternoon, bringing it to about one foot in the last 24 hours. That’s fast! But slow enough for us to clear out the items that don’t play well with water. Which put a dent in Doug’s carpentry work upstairs, finishing up the trim and oiling the fir. We also had to shut down all electric. Which makes for a dark and eerie lair in the evening. A bit like a flooded tunnel. Interesting photos though…
Most of the drama surrounds the boathouse, especially since we’ve worked long and hard to restore it to health and happiness. But the waterfront is another big concern. Major erosion already, and that’s with relatively light wind and minimal wave action. Big wind and big waves could be catastrophic! Hoping against hope that the wind will remain calm and the waters will fall. Help me hope if you’ve got psychic horsepower to spare. Although we haven’t finished landscaping the entire waterfront, roughly a third (about 80′) looked great up until a few days ago. We’ve rebuilt the stone walls and planted a lawn on the terrace above the beach. The rear edge of the lawn, following the base of the next stone terrace had grown into a handsome daylily bed that stretched the full eighty feet. Spectacular in summer. Now virtually erased by drift wood grinding and churning in the waves. All hand planted. All pampered through the first season. All healthy and thriving earlier this week. All gone now. Memories. I can only hope that some of the bulbs are intact, floating around Lake Champlain, and that they will wash up on people’s beaches and surprise them this summer with heirloom blooms!
In the time it took me to whip up this post, the USGS has changed the Lake Champlain water level from 102.54″ to 102.61″ which happened over an interval of about three hours. So, still not cresting. And the sky has gone from sunny and clear to dark and cloudy. Storm clouds threatening. Wind rising…
Our caretaker adrift after the boat lift cable snapped and he leaped aboard. I taught him to operate a boat via mobile phone…
Boat Lift Moved in to Shallow(er) Water for Repair
Boat Lift Cable Shredded
Boat Lift Replacement Cable
New Boat Lift Chain Does Not Fit
Aborted Repair; New Chain too Short
We were sent the wrong chain: too short!
Boat Lift Chain Replaced
Boat Lift Repaired at Last
There is a musty old adage among boaters: “A boat is a hole in the water into which you throw money.” And time, I hasten to add.
It’s not only boats. It’s everything that has to do with boats. Boat lifts, for example.
“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” ~ Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
I heartily agree with the Water Rat, but if ever I stop messing about with boats long enough to formulate a spreadsheet and fill it with calculations of the time and money I’ve poured into nautical endeavors, I’ll be forced to immediately stop boating. For I’ll certainly discover that each hour, no, each minute spent actually sailing or paddling or waterskiing has cost me a king’s ransom in time and treasure. For this reason, I’ll never attempt the calculations because – truth be told – no sensible person can justify recreational boating.
It’s not the boating itself, you see. It’s everything else. It’s maintaining and preparing the boat and tidying up after boating. It’s making sure the boat consistently, reliably works, and fixing the boat when it doesn’t. And it’s all of the peripheral tasks like installing and removing the dock and the boat lift each spring and fall. And fixing them when they break… No, that sounds far too easy.
Time to Sing the Boat Lift Blues
Until yesterday, a broken boat lift was the most recent foible co-conspiring with six straight weeks of rain to dramatically dampen our 2013 boating season. But this morning, when the luxurious responsibility of returning the lift to deeper water and transporting the Ski Nautique from the Essex Shipyard back to Rosslyn’s waterfront, I am at last willing to summarize the boat lift blues.
I will refrain from sharing the boat lift manufacturer’s name, because I do not wish the company ill, nor do I hold them totally accountable for the parade of mishaps which have stunted our boating season significantly. And I genuinely believe that the manufacturer has made an effort to help us resolve this mess. An imperfect effort, but an effort. So I’ll spare them embarrassment and you the sort of grumbling that grates at our emotions like nails on a chalkboard.
Rather than chronicling Rosslyn’s 2013 boat lift blues in the nail biting detail that my bride would readily offer, I’ll recap a few highlights and get on with it. Why? Because the only greater truism about boating than its uneconomical folly is that boaters enjoy, no, love laughing at the boating misfortunes of other boaters. Sophomoric you say? Perhaps. But nautical nuts seek sweet recompense where it swims. So today, I offer my misadventures for your psychological succor. Enjoy.
The photo gallery above captures the trajectory of our boat lift blues and quickest and tiniest terms. The slightly more dilated story begins back in March or April. Normally we take advantage of Lake Champlain‘s boating “pre-season”, launching in early May when the water temperature is still in the 30s. But our Santa Fe sojourn and cross-country walkabout this spring resulted in a later launch, timed to follow our late may return to Essex. We padded launch day with enough time to install the dock and boat lift, and by the beginning of June we were ready to make up for lost time.
We were ready, but the meteorologists had other plans for us. Rain.
Despite the unseasonably low Lake Champlain water levels when we returned from the Southwest — so low in fact that North Country pundits were already lathered up about the causes and impact of shallow water — meteorologists began to dish up rain. And then more rain. And then still more rain.
So the boat was in the water. But the miserable weather prevented us from using it. And worse? We had to raise the boat lift every day or two just to ensure that the rising lake Champlain water levels wouldn’t sweep our craft away. Day after day, week after week lake levels rose and we elevated the ski boat up, up, up.
Until the fateful day. My bride was abroad. And I had just boarded the ferry to Vermont. I was scheduled to be de-pretzel-ized by my chiropractor in Shelburne, and noticing how high the waves were coming to the boat, I called Doug (our handy man / caretaker) on my mobile phone with a request to stop at the waterfront on his way to lunch and raise the boat lift once again.
And then suddenly my phone was ringing. In a rushed jumble of panicky language he explained to me that the lift broke and the boat was bobbing in the waves. No, worse. the boat was in danger of cracking up in the rough water, either smashing against the stone retaining wall, or against the dock, or against the boathouse. He was worried about all three options. I was worried about a fourth, I was worried that the boat might crush him. It’s worth noting that he doesn’t swim. In fact, is not at all fond of water. Nor is he a boater. He’s never been in a boat so far as I know, and he’s often told me that he doesn’t know how to operate a boat. And yet somehow he was clinging to the broken boatlift, a wave-rocked dock, a bobbing boat weighing is much as his pickup truck, and carrying on it panicky dialogue with me on his mobile phone.
A Messy Situation
Within minutes Doug had managed to open up the boat cover, turn on the batteries, started the boat, learned how to use the throttle, and pulled away from Scylla and Charybdis into Lake Champlain’s rougher but presently safer waters.
We remained in telephone contact as he learned how to operate the boat, and I arrived in Charlotte, Vermont long enough to reboard the Essex-bound ferry. As I chugged back across the lake with a half dozen other commuters, I looked out for our boat. The image of a shoreline above with a tiny runabout was my first view of man and boat intact, waiting for me to arrive and help him dock at the Essex Shipyard. In short order I received permission from the marina’s operator to store our boat for the foreseeable future while we repaired our boatlift.
In the weeks since then we have tried and tried and tried to repair the boat lift. At first it appeared that the cable had sheared and snapped. So the manufacturer sent as a replacement. Although it took a week to arrive, I was elated to have it in my hands, and I immediately hauled tools to the waterfront. Unfortunately I discovered that one of the three chains, akin to oversized motorcycle chains, which connect the gears inside the lift was broken. Snapped. Another conversation with the manufacturer, and this time the shipping was prompt and gratis. Again, my spirits soared. Unfortunately while attempting to install the replacement chain discovered another setback. The replacement chain was about 56 inches shorter than the one it was intended to replace. Another conversation with the manufacturer, more frustrated now, and curt but told me he’d figured out. A few days later the correct chain arrived. My bride backed me up with a bucket beneath the lift to ensure that any falling parts wouldn’t sink to the bottom of the lake, and after an hour or so of mechanical microsurgery the chain was installed and working. Yesterday the caretaker and I managed to thread the new cable through the lift and perform a successful test. Today I’ll retrieve the boat from the marina to whom I owe a gargantuan debt of gratitude. Will pull the lift back out to the end of the dock, and — just in time for latest round of houseguests — we will once again be able to use the boat conveniently from Rosslyn’s waterfront.
That’s the boat lift blues. Sing them with me, and hope with me that the lift work properly, unfailingly for the balance of the boating season. All aboard!
Sun Setting into the Adirondacks before Perseid showers
Darkness is falling in the Adirondacks, and soon with a little luck I will witness the Perseid showers streaking the Champlain Valley dome. My bride shot this image on her mobile from our runabout in the middle of Lake Champlain on August 12, 2013 while waiting for the meteor shower. If you’re in the neighborhood, look up. And watch out for flaming pebbles!
That seems like the perfect, cheesoise title for this photo I just snapped standing in the road between our home and the boathouse. Looking east at Vermont’s Green Mountains, though you’ll have to take my word for it since the rain and fog have veiled the view.
But fully in the dairy free camp in recent years, I’ll sidestep the cheesoise in favor of the inane.
No rainbows were injured making this picture.
Just to show I’m a nice guy. And comfortable patting myself on the back for being a nice guy. Or is that goofy? No, this is goofy.
No ferries were injured making this picture…
Basically the photo speaks (or whispers) enough on its own. I need to zip up my blather mouth and let the moment carry the post. Quietly. Except of the wind which was whipping. Is whipping. And the raindrops which — despite the sun and clear skies behind me — were beginning to pelt down. Hence my retreat from the boathouse hammock to the sunporch with a very soggy Griffin who chased frisbees in the rolling waves without the least concern for darkening skies and rainbows.
Yes, rainbows. There are actually two. Can you see the slightly fainter echo of a rainbow just to the right of the more pronounced one? Look carefully. And you might even spot a pot of gold. Or a ferry?
One is a large cottonwood with a pair of fallen locusts hung up on it. The beaver (Castor canadensis) has already gotten a pretty good start, and the tree is laaarge and disconcertingly close to Rosslyn’s boathouse.
We contacted the neighbor in the hopes that they would take a look at their earliest convenience (i.e. before the cottonwood and gravity conspire against the boathouse!) I suggested the possibility of wrapping the tree with steel mesh/screen to inhibit further damage. This isn’t the most sightly solution, but it tends to be effective.
Just when a couple of dry, sunny days had begun to feel familiar, even normal, the rain returned. It came down in waves upon waves. Streams and rivers swelled, the driveway became two coursing torrents, and the vegetable garden turned to soupy mud.
Spirits slipped.
And then slid deeper.
But… as cocktail hour yielded to dinner hour, the deluge ceased, the fog lifted, and the setting sun bathed Vermont’s Green Mountains in alpenglow.
Color lithograph of sheet music by Alfred Bryan and Albert Gumble.[/caption]
