"Two Coots in a Canoe" by David Morine

Sydney M. Williams

Burrowing into Books

“Two Coots in a Canoe,” David E. Morine

February 16, 2020

“Rivers can’t survive unless they’re constantly moving. That’s how they breathe.

Flowing free had given the Connecticut a chance to take a deep breath and clean out is lungs.”

                                                                                                Two Coots in a Canoe, 2009

                                                                                                David E. Morine (1942-)

The Connecticut River is part of who I am. For twenty-five years my wife and I lived on the River, about a mile from its entrance to Long Island Sound. We would delight in the abundance of wildlife – marsh plants, birds, fish, turtles, muskrats and other denizens of the marsh – that comprise a cornucopia of nature. What we looked out upon was of course the omega of the River; the alpha, the source, began four hundred miles to the north.

Two men, David Morine and Ramsay Peard who had met at UVA’s Darden School of Business in the late 1960s decided to canoe the length of the Connecticut in the summer of 2003. They were friends but had gone separate ways – Morine had spent most of his career as head of land acquisition for the Nature Conservancy, while Peard had had a series of jobs in consulting and manufacturing. Both were retired. Both had a familiarity with New England, due to family vacations and boarding schools, but neither had spent much time in canoes. Both felt they were too old (or disinclined) to camp out, so arranged, like Blanche DuBois, to “depend on the kindness of strangers” for sleeping, as well as evening and morning meals. This is the story of those two coots who canoed 400 miles of the Connecticut River.

During the course of their research, Ramsay Peard had contacted the Connecticut River Watershed Council (CRWC) and spoke to then associate director Whitty Sanford, who was intrigued. He sent a press release to their 1500 members, which prompted invitations for the evenings they were seeking shelter. Nevertheless, shortly after putting into the river in Canaan, VT, Morine writes that the thought suddenly hit him: “What in the world had I done? Here I was alone on a river paddling 400 miles with a guy I hadn’t seen in twenty years. Neither of us knew squat about canoeing.”

But this was more than an endurance test for two retired sexagenarians. Having worked in land conservation, Morine was aware that there were sixty-one small trusts established to preserve land along the Connecticut. Through the generosity of Dan Lufkin, whom he had met at the Nature Conservancy and who had set up a foundation for acquiring land, he was made am unpaid, one-month project manager with $50,000 to spend helping a few of these trusts, which he did as they paddled along.

The reader learns fascinating details, for example that Stratford, New Hampshire was the lumber capital of the United States in the late 19^th Century, sending 50 million board feet down the River in 1890. We learn that those log drives, which ran for 36 years ending in 1915, catapulted the neighboring town of Woodsville, New Hampshire – a town now of 1100 people – into the “biggest and best red-light district north of New York City!”  We learn that Moore Dam near Littleton, NH is the largest conventional hydroelectric power plant in New England, and that Dartmouth’s Ledyard Canoe Club, founded in 1920, was named after John Ledyard who, in 1772, canoed the 173 miles, through rapids and over waterfalls, from Hanover to Hartford. We read that the 7.2 million acres that comprise the Connecticut River watershed are inhabited by two million humans, and that the presence of eagles in Sunderland (Massachusetts) told Morine that “…at least along this part of the river, conservation efforts by the CRWC and other groups were starting to show results.” However, further south, through a twenty-mile stretch that includes Springfield, he writes: “Holyoke Dam had taken away whatever shred of decency the once mighty Connecticut had left. The river was now repulsive. Canoeing it was like driving through the Bronx; we couldn’t wait to get out of there.”[1]

Below Windsor to Long Island Sound, however, there are no more dams, so the River “was its own master.” In contrast to Springfield, Hartford created parks along the River, working with a nonprofit Riverfront Recapture. Just south, between Glastonbury and Wethersfield, the Great Meadows Conservation Trust, working with the Silvio Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge, is trying to preserve 4500 acres of rich bottomland.

Morine notes that towns, which embraced the river, “like Bradford and Bellows Falls, seem to be prospering. Towns that ignored it, like Woodsville and Windsor, seemed to be going nowhere. Making parks and green spaces along the river part of a downtown area capitalizes on a tremendous resource” – a statement we know to be true. After twenty-seven nights with strangers, Morine and Peard docked on Griswold Point at the mouth of the River. From there they sent postcards to all their hosts: “Success!! Thanks to the kindness of strangers, we made it. Your friends, Ramsay and Dave.”

This story, unfortunately, does not end the way the reader would have chosen, but things happen in life that we cannot change. Five months after completing the trip, Ramsay Peard committed suicide. His decision was not spur of the moment. Eighteen months earlier he had purchased the pistol with which he ended his life. Morine quotes the late British critic and poet Al Alvarez who had once attempted suicide: “Once a man decides to take his own life, he enters a shut-off, impregnable, but wholly convincing world where every detail fits and each incidence reinforces his decision.” Dave had no idea that his friend Ramsay was considering such an act, but he writes that it explained his odd behavior as they approached the end of the trip: “For Ramsay, reaching Long Island Sound wasn’t the end of our trip, it was the end of his life.”

Putting aside that ending, the book is a paean to the River, its people, its history and the beauty that nature provides, which is reflected in its waters and embankments. It is a reminder of our obligation to preserve rivers for future generations. As Jerome Kern wrote about an even bigger river: “He must know something, but he don’t say nothing/He just keeps rolling, he keeps on rolling along.” Roll on Connecticut!

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The book was published in 2009 by Globe Pequot Press, Guilford, Connecticut. It can be purchased through Amazon or from your favorite independent bookstore.

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[1] A clean-up process is now underway in Springfield, with the construction of a 20-mile Connecticut River Walk and Bikeway, addressing concerns raised by the author.