Subject: the sky opened up on our sawanabori<br/>
Date: Jun 01, 2004 @ 15:37<br/>
Author: Michael Donner (&quot;Michael Donner&quot; &lt;barbaria_longa@...&gt;)<br/>
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<div id="ygrps-yiv-1584374548">thanx again lowell & theia too<br/>
i like them both<br/>
<br/>
an online japanese english dictionary agrees nobori means ascent<br/>
while incidentally denying nabori means anything at all<br/>
<br/>
& for sawa<br/>
this dictionary gives swamp or marsh or valley or dale<br/>
<br/>
so perhaps sawa nobori really refers to the ascent of any valley<br/>
& not necessarily only a particularly high or steep or wet one<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
in any case it was indeed already showering as we climbed gently out of the <br/>
greater hartford area<br/>
& by the time i could find a suitable place to duck into the bushes for a <br/>
rest stop<br/>
i was surprised to find myself standing over a perfectly idyllic little <br/>
canoe stream<br/>
which<br/>
when i finally consulted the map<br/>
proved to be none other than the willimantic river<br/>
in fact just below stafford springs<br/>
<br/>
i guess that stop marked the unofficial start of the physical sawanobori<br/>
<br/>
but wondering also where to officially start double checking my guesses<br/>
i inspected first the confluence of furnace brook & middle river in downtown <br/>
stafford springs<br/>
where a great blue heron i flushed gave me my start<br/>
<br/>
but i was not surprised to find the latter stream the greater<br/>
<br/>
as the hour was late & the shower increasing too<br/>
we next made a bee line up route 32 past state line pond til i saw a <br/>
familiar looking ctma marker go by on our right<br/>
<br/>
i pulled over & stopped tho<br/>
for i knew we had made a rather tentative decision here about following <br/>
sawmill brook<br/>
a decision which was really still blowing in the wind & in need some <br/>
buttressing before we could proceed up this brook with a clear conscience<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
that old truth head<br/>
colonel schoolcraft<br/>
is credited with discovering the source of the mississippi<br/>
& naming it lake itasca as in<br/>
ver itas ca put<br/>
which he thought meant true headwater in latin<br/>
<br/>
it is always forgotten tho<br/>
number one<br/>
that the true mississippi is not the upper mississippi but the missouri <br/>
river<br/>
& number 2<br/>
that even this truth head lake has several feeder streams<br/>
<br/>
& so there is still in fact somewhere to go & grow on a nominal upper <br/>
mississippi itasca sawanobori<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
of course we dont want to make these same old mistakes on our sawanabori of <br/>
the new thames<br/>
<br/>
& moreover it would have been all too easy to just plow ahead right up <br/>
sawmill brook or even to just assume & declare our state line pond here the <br/>
itasca or truth head of the thames<br/>
& call it a day<br/>
as it was growing darker too<br/>
<br/>
this would have been a beeping fine place to quit too<br/>
right at a border stone near a state line pond<br/>
<br/>
yet this divided pond was not divided by the border<br/>
<br/>
yikes<br/>
divided object freaks<br/>
<br/>
what it was divided by was only 2 distinct major watersheds<br/>
<br/>
the one entering from the north & called sawmill brook<br/>
& the unnamed one entering from the east<br/>
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=42.0225&lon=-72.31528">http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=42.0225&lon=-72.31528</a><br/>
where selecting large map size & updating map at left gives you the state <br/>
line itself<br/>
<br/>
of course<br/>
what i really needed to do first was examine the mouths of both these brooks<br/>
in order to compare the volumes of their contributions<br/>
<br/>
& yet when i turned around & scouted the neighborhood<br/>
i found i couldnt reach or even see the mouth of sawmill brook without a <br/>
canoe<br/>
& also found that the unnamed brook was streaming significantly at its mouth <br/>
near stoney lane<br/>
<br/>
& i then concluded<br/>
all i could hope to do was carry my visual impression of this stream with me <br/>
up to the lowest place on sawmill brook where i could see it & compare these <br/>
apples & oranges impressions<br/>
<br/>
not a very satisfactory method<br/>
but if the sawmill was found to be streaming anywhere better than this <br/>
nameless brook was streaming at its mouth<br/>
it could win hands down by such a method<br/>
without needing to pull rank by comparative appellation<br/>
<br/>
which had been the only & tentative basis of my earlier assessment<br/>
<br/>
so maybe we might get away here without a canoe trip<br/>
<br/>
but tho the rain was increasing<br/>
sawmill brook was not appreciably stronger than its unnamed competitor<br/>
when i finally reached it at the first road crossing<br/>
<br/>
so all bets were suddenly off<br/>
<br/>
& the expedition is stalled again<br/>
at state line pond<br/>
<br/>
this is of course not the whole story of the try<br/>
but it is the essential nutshell<br/>
among many other wanderings around moulton hill i will save for later<br/>
<br/>
but when as a parting gesture<br/>
i examined the outflow over the dam of state line pond i found it <br/>
substantially greater than the sum of my 2 admittedly imperfect inflow <br/>
impression assessments<br/>
<br/>
which threw the last of my calculations & assessments into complete disarray<br/>
<br/>
& was startled again by a second great blue heron i had also surprised into <br/>
flight<br/>
here at the exact top of the middle river<br/>
to perfectly match the one i had started with at the exact bottom of the <br/>
middle river<br/>
<br/>
but i kid you not<br/>
bottom middle & top<br/>
she really wrote<br/>
<br/>
& you dont often see a couple of great blues in a month around here<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
should i leave you with aerial pix of the state line pond feeder streams<br/>
<br/>
thats where i am headed next<br/>
<br/>
will also try to compare watershed areas<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
yoicks tally ho & boops<br/>
i mean beeps<br/>
<br/>
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