Take me to the river
My drive to work takes me along the Saranac River, first along the east branch, then across the bridge in Clayburg at the confluence of the east and west branches, then along the river to Cadyville, where the river goes one way and the road goes another. Every few years when we were kids we would take a canoe trip down the Saranac. It was a big dramatic event involving my 80-90 year old grandfather (we must have done it for 10 years). We used our wood and canvas canoes, which weighed a ton. My grandfather's man-servant (jack of all trades: butler, chauffeur, carpenter, gardener, etc.) would load the canoes in his truck, on the cars, wherever, and we'd have two cars--one at the beginning of the trip and one at the end. We'd paddle merrily downstream, stopping for a picnic lunch along the way. I can remember spots where the river was so shallow we couldn't really paddle. We never hit rapids, my grandfather knew exactly the part of the river we could travel. So there we'd go, the same place over & over. But for a kid it was an adventure. The river is brown and not very clear, and we were used to the crystal clear water of Silver Lake. It was sort of a shock to me that water could be like that.

The last time I took that trip I was just out of college, so that was 30 years ago. We went with my cousin that I can't stand, the man who became my husband, my mother and my father, and my red haired cousin (who was in my canoe and didn't want to paddle). It was pretty much as I remembered it, but there were a lot of cows along the way that I didn't remember from my youth. In between that trip and the trips of my youth I had done canoeing in the Midwest, where the rivers are much wider and in some ways prettier; and in Connecticut, where there's whitewater. The Saranac seemed rather dull.