By Esther C. Baird, first published in the Ipswich Local News, November 3, 2023
I’ve written this column before. It’s almost unfathomable that I’m writing it again. How many times can one get lost in their own backyard while also involving local waterways? Regular readers will recall I’ve washed up on a beach and also found myself floating in a field — both times within a mile of my home.
Today, I give you the third installment, in which our neighbors kindly offered us the use of their canoe to take out on Lowe Pond, which runs the length of our neighborhood. After nine straight weekends of rain, even our marshier end can technically be called part of the pond, so I took them up on their offer. They left it behind their house, directly next to ours. When I walked out of our backyard into the steep, wooded hill behind us, I was able to see it on the bank.
It was an obvious location: next to a fallen tree (in the water) and a standing tree (to which it was tied). As I launched, I made a mental note of the location while also leaving one of the two paddles on shore, since I would only need one.
Our end of the pond is not large or deep. In fact, I canoed over dead tree limbs and had to push off to find deeper water. There were lilies everywhere, and swampy plants that were rotting, and quite a lot of curious bees. Immediately upon getting into the middle of the pond, a small worm fell out of the sky onto my head and a tick crawled over my leg.
It was canoeing, Boxford style.
But I saw some lovely flowers and lichen on a log in the middle, as well as a curious kingfisher that flew laps around me. It was relaxing, peaceful, and precisely what I needed at the end of a crazy week.
Feeling refreshed — but also out of places to paddle — I headed back to the fallen tree by the standing tree and got out. By the time I’d tied up, I was sweaty and muddy from a few close encounters with slippery rocks, wet rope, and the paddle.
Paddle … singular.
Where was the second one I’d left as a clear marker upon return? I kicked around some leaves. No paddle. I went a few feet to either side. No paddle.
Had I come up in the wrong place? Fallen tree by standing tree? I scanned the bank and saw more than a few fallen trees near standing trees that suddenly looked all the same. Why were there so many trees in Boxford? Would a pond-side Starbucks really be so out of place?
It was ridiculous.
I needed to start over. I climbed up the hill to re-start in my backyard — except as I emerged, it was not my backyard. I quite literally had no idea whose yard it was, which meant it wasn’t a house on either side of ours, either. I dodged in and out of the back-wooded yards hoping that no one would see me — how to explain? —trying to retrace my steps.
But here’s a tip: wet, woodsy, marsh banks don’t lend themselves to suburban sports moms attempting to suddenly succeed at tracking. At this point, I thought about sending my husband an S.O.S. text. But what could I say? “I’m simultaneously personally lost and — just for funsies — I’ve lost a paddle after canoeing in a marsh.”
The whole chain of events was so remarkably dumb that I couldn’t admit it.
Finally, after tromping through a newly discovered circle of Dante’s Inferno that involved ruining my shoes and late-season bug bites, I found the paddle. It was nowhere near any place I believed I had been. It was, however, by a fallen tree next to a standing tree.
I hauled it back to the canoe and declared victory (or at least an end to obvious failure).
I don’t know how many more of these columns I can withstand. I love exploring. I love being outside. Most of all, I love water. But if there is a fourth one, you may just need to let me float away.