July 31, Wellesley Island

July 31, Wellesley Island State Park NY, Thousand Islands, St Lawrence River

I overlook the obvious – I don’t see what’s right in front of me.
I don’t see – I don’t know how.

I have learned much from taking pictures:

1. I need to have my camera – too many opportunities are lost if I don’t.
2. I need to realize what I’m looking at and say to myself, “Hey – this is a great picture!”
3. I need to realize that in this digital image age there is no cost to taking a picture and this opportunity will never come again and I should never say, “Naw, not this time.”

Well, those are only three things, but with a camera I am trying to photo-document what I see, rather than just receive light through my eyes…wandering around and taking it all for granted. I’m lucky to see what I see, no matter how incidental it may seem at the moment – it is everything I have. A camera is helping me to realize that.

So we have been on Wellesley Island for 5 days – I can’t call it camping because camping is in a tent with no amenities, just part of hard travelin’, and we ain’t doing that. Tonight V whipped up a great stir fry in our Westbend electric frying pan with all kinds of peppers/mushrooms/carrots/garlic/tofu/brown rice and Franzia wine, and here at the little table in the lap of luxury Aliner with NPR playing a cello concerto we’re settling our bones for a summer night rest. The air is in the 70s, and the water 72 degrees.

Little showery episodes every day or so as atmospheric waves travel up the storm track in the westerlies, shifted North for summer right up the St Lawrence valley. A little fresh water rain falling into the fresh water river and the fresh air…it is all blended into one, and the islands are forested green and lush, flowery profusions everywhere…flowers of all sizes and details, mushrooms of every description in the dampness. Ospreys fishing and rearing their young, and herons squawking and gorging, Canada geese and loons hollering, chipmunks squeeking and groundhogs scurrying all over the place, deer, fox, coyote, otters swimming from island to island with fish, toads hopping all over the place in the dusk as we carefully walk in the woods.

Looking at winter through pictures at this website, we see the flip side to the extremes:

http://wellesleyisland.net/latefebpics.htm

Here’s more on the place:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellesley_Island

Our campsite (grimace) is on Eel Bay, and we look west, upstream…although the current is negligible. We took the kayak out a couple of the days and wandered around on the Canadian side, swimming in the deep delicious glassy grassy and rock-bottomed river, miles across…easy to get lost among the islands - a compass comes in handy. Every island is spoken for with a house perched on real estate not much bigger than a tennis court, some, but at least it is rock, not sand. Lots of sailboats and powerboats, jetskis, and Canadians are so patriotic, it seems…waving flags from poles on islands and boats – they hardly miss an opportunity to proclaim their country. They pay high taxes, a reflection of a highly developed sense of social responsibility, I guess…hence the display of nationalism. They invest in each other.

Back on the US side on the State Park I tied shut the legs of pants I found left on a rock and filled the pants with bottles and cans left on the rock.

Long bike rides the other days around the island, and the folding bikes are perfectly serviceable for hills or distances…but the seats aren’t so comfortable after 10-20 miles and we’ll need to look into that. We pedaled up across the border to Canada…came back when we couldn’t squeeze over the bridge…but on the Island is a neat little Methodist community called Thousand Island Park, full of gingerbread fiction houses.
Getting to the island we crossed the US bridge with the truck/Aliner, and pedaled/pushed the bikes back up to the top for the view.

But the greatest place on the island we found was in the State Park, the little-used nature trails that are at the S end of Eel Bay – the woods and moss and meadows…everything in there was so very beautiful…we could follow deer and come back on a fox that had given us the slip once, and they didn’t seem to mind too much.

We’ll move on tomorrow to Kring Pt St Park, just down the river a few miles, and then we’ll figure our next move.