When we were young and had ready access to powerboats, my friends and I would sometimes travel up the Connecticut River to explore or stop at the Gris for drinks and dinner. I recently heard the river was once again home to bald eagles—I’d just seen two eagles in the Blackwater on Maryland’s Easter Shore—and wanted to see more. So, we took a river cruise out of the museum’s steamboat dock in Essex. The boat passed a number of familiar places and stopped now and then to watch a particular eagle. The birds have the annoying habit of sitting for hours at a time on a branch waiting for some poor fish to come close to the surface, and then they’ll take wing. Why waste energy flying when you can sit? I guess they know what they’re doing. 

We passed Hamburg Cove where I once sailed from North Cove in Old Saybrook with a friend in an IC dinghy at the tender age of 12 or 13. My parents had no idea. Farther north, we passed some old ferry-crossing sites and river-side quarries from centuries ago. The last glaciers left a lot of rock behind so why not use it?

The boat churned farther north to Seldon Neck, a large and wild island on the Lyme-Hadlyme side of the river. On a Boy Scout canoeing trip down the Connecticut, we stopped overnight here, and this is where I learned how to rock climb and rappel. Thank you, Mr. Mac. Like everything else, climbing was different 50 years ago from the techniques and equipment used today. Everything changes. Though you can still get killed doing it now. Just like then.