Quite magical looking.
With our extraordinarily high water here, are you ever concerned about tree fall while you’re paddling?
Widowmaker in a wind.
That could be the mother of all strainers if it falls.
I hope that’s not kudzu or English ivy growing up the tree.
Bet it does a lot of yoga.
I climbed over one of those in the upper end of the French Broad. It had a big fuzzy vine on it, no leaves. A couple of days later I had the rash and itch from my knee to my bathing suit line. Had to go to the doc for that one.
Given that Tom is in the Southern Michigan lowlands that’s probably poison ivy (just as String suspects).
Yep. Soon as I read the words “fuzzy vine”, that had to be it.
We don’t have high water on our local rivers, the St Joseph is running at 2000 CFCs which is normal for this time of year. I don’t trunk it’s been down to normal in years.
I never worry about trees falling. It’s not that I’m safe, it’s just that it’s not something I worry about. I’m usually on rivers and they all have trees leaning at every possible angle. I was paddling with a friend yesterday and we were talking about how difficult it is to know when a tree might fall. The ones you think will fall may stay up for years and the ones that look sturdy sometimes fall on a calm day.
It’s a big river so I’ll just go around it if it falls.
It’s definitely not kudzu. I think people call it Poison Oak.
Often those trees are rooted in limestone on the other half. (Suwannee River )
I seem to have low sensitivity to poison ivy. People are always warning me and it’s all over around here but I just ignore it. I explored the Rabbit River yesterday and it required climbing over fallen trees and pulling the canoe over many times and I was happily sitting in poison ivy and not about to give up the best spots for perching while yanking the canoe over. The guy I paddled with is some kind of monkey or acrobat and I’m just happy I didn’t fall in.
I also am not very allergic,but rubbing bare skin over it is not a good idea. As I learned the hard way.
walks on the wind
Amongst the alders
the old oak knew
timeless river’s gonna chew
bank deposits will come few,
set your roots in deep
then levitate like passing boat
till one day on sky you float
a rise to fall reflects in moat
The vine is Virginia Creeper; turns bright red in the fall. There are trees like that along the Huron, and when undercut like that they tend to fall away from the river, not toward it.