St. Croix, Upstream and Down

My philosophy of river travel has always been—presuming you don't have a shuttle—that it's best to begin your journey going upstream. That way, you can be sure that regardless of the strength of the current, whenever you decide to turn around, you'll be able to make it back to where you started from without difficulty.

This theory is sound, as far as it goes, but it fails to take into account the fact that the wind can be a more significant factor in river canoeing than the current. It also fails to consider that the more interesting part of the river might lie downstream from your starting point.

We found this out on our recent overnight to William O'Brian State Park, a mere sixty minutes  away from home. For decades this park has been a favorite destination for day hikes, but we tend to consider the upland trails through the hills, reached from the trail center or a minor parking lot off County 4, more rewarding than the more popular riverfront section of the park, which has a lovely trail along the St. Croix River through towering white pines but is more "developed" than the upland section—artificial beach, picnic area, amphitheater, boat landing, canoe rental—and hence more crowded, less interesting, less "natural."

We found ourselves on the riverfront trail a month ago—I don't remember why, we may have been hunting down an elusive prothonotory warbler—and I spotted a tent attractively situated amid the pines not that far from the riverbank path. We discretely took a short trail through the woods to get a closer look. It was site 47. When we got home I looked it up and found that it was available on only one day in the upcoming month: August 25. I booked it.

We arrived that day in early afternoon, made camp, and drove to the boat launch a half-mile away, where we unloaded our canoe, headed out into the river, and paddled upstream for a mile or two. It was nice. We had done this before. We followed along the attractive cliff-like banks under the pines, with a typical skanky river-bottom island to our right, until the river opened out into a lake-like expanse beyond the borders of the park where families had been maintaining rustic cabins with expansive lawns, gazebos, and pontoon boats for generations. We stayed in the shadows of the west bank as much as we could. It was all slightly overheated, but also very attractive, bucolic, enviable.

Eventually we turned tail and drifted back to the landing with the current, admiring the cardinal flowers growing along the shady banks, scrutinizing a juvenile green heron standing motionless on a sun-bleached log, and stopping at one point at a semi-secluded beach to wade.

Drifting downstream

"We should go out again in the morning," Hilary said. "It's too bad we have to rig this canoe back up on the car."

She had a point. Our car doesn't have a rack, and muscling our heavyweight Grumman canoe to the roof and then fastening it down using foam blocks and numerous ropes and straps is always a chore.

"I've got an idea," I said. "Why don't we just chuck it up here in the long grass by the landing." And we did.

Our canoe, tucked into the weeds

I wasn't worried. I suspect that few individuals visit the boat landings of state parks looking for old aluminum canoes to steal and sell on Craig's List. All the same, a few hours later, when we discovered we'd forgotten to pack any coffee, and I volunteered to drive in to Marine-on-the-St. Croix to buy some—that's a five-minute drive—I went out of my way to revisit the landing to see if the canoe was still there.

The payoff was that after a pleasant evening sitting around the fire, vaguely enjoying all the dog-walkers, the kids on bicycles with neon green tires racing through the campground, the moon rising above the river islands behind the tent, and the young woman in the shadows of the campsite next door setting up her hi-tech gear for what seemed like hours, we could wake up the next morning, break camp, and find a canoe waiting for us in the weeds at the landing.

We were on the river at seven, and this time we were heading downstream. I was further emboldened by a reference I'd spotted to Greenberg Island in a local birding guide. Evidently that's the name of the big chunk of land just off-shore from the park. Who knew? From the riverside path it looks like an enormous tangle of willows, reeds, and cottonwoods  crisscrossed by creeks and channels rendered impassable by low water and fallen trees. The idea that it constituted a contiguous mass that had even been given a name made it seem more substantial, more appealing to circumnavigate.

And the trip proved to be easy, gorgeous, yet tinged with exploratory interest. The river was low in many places—often no more than six inches deep—and we had to get out and walk in a few places, but the bottom was invariably sandy, and it was a pleasure to kick through the cool water like children as our canoe drifted alongside us.

A kingfisher flew on ahead of us at one point, his distinctive rattle echoing all the way. A bald eagle was fishing the shallow, a spotted sandpiper, a juvenile green heron, and on one sandy beach we spotted a lesser yellowlegs in the distance.

Four or five bends downstream we arrived at the main channel of the river and headed upstream. The sky was blue, the clouds were shifting, there was a faint smell of smoke in the air, more likely from the forest fires up north than from the campground hidden in the trees on the other side of the island. At several places the shoreline ahead of us split, giving us two channels to choose from. We kept to the Wisconsin side, and at one point, as the banks closed in on either side of us, I began to wonder if we were heading into a backwater.

"Well, if this is a cul-de-sac," I said, "it's certainly a nice cul-de-sac."

We weren't in a hurry. It was that kind of a morning.

But no. As we rounded the corner, we could see the river opening up again a hundred yards ahead of us, and a man was standing up in a boat in the middle of the channel, fishing.

"Catching anything?" I said as we approached.

"Pretty quiet. I got some walleye downstream from here last week."

"Nice morning to be out on the water," Hilary said.

"It is indeed." And we were past.

We pulled ashore on a sandbar at the upper end of Greenberg Island, from which point we could see the riverside path on the Minnesota side of the river. A washboard of shapely, grass-covered dunes rose from the river to the north of us, with tall, tree-covered banks on either side beyond.

Never again will I gaze uncomprehendingly at this island from the park. Never again insist on heading upstream rather than downstream. I can even imagine spending some time on Greenberg Island--though I didn't see any trails climbing up from the grassy banks--trying to hunt up those prothonotory warblers.