An old iron bridge, closed to cars for many years, takes hikers over the Seneca River, to Howland Island, a few miles north of Port Byron, NY.  About halfway between Rochester and Syracuse.

 

 

The island is a state “wildlife management” area, 3,500 acres, near the better-known Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge, 10,000 acres, run by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

Like so many words connected with the federal government, “refuge” is used ironically, since they allow hunting and trapping.

“Wildlife management” seems more honest, with its suggestion of headhunters, cutthroat competition, and getting the ax.  Or maybe, like, letting the animals run things, which seems to be the current political trend.  Howland is hunting land, and not a park, but most of the year, it’s a great place to just walk and bird watch.  The rifle & shotgun “downsizing” season for deer would be the exception, and in late November/early December, you don’t wanna go near the hunting areas.

Waterfowl season, it’s pretty safe, just stay away from the ponds, wear orange, and I always remove the plumes from my Tyrolean hat.

 

Howland is just barely an island, almost a peninsula most of the year.  The channel on the longest, northwest side is narrow in some places, hardly more than a big ditch, except during the spring floods.  But the river along the south shore is pretty broad and impressive.

 

 

 

The Seneca River begins in Geneva, as the overflow from Seneca Lake, and then wanders more-or-less northeast, picking up water from a number of creeks, and most of the Finger Lakes.  North of Syracuse, it helps to form the Oswego River, which empties into Lake Ontario.  It was a trading route for the Iroquois, and then for the colonial fur trade, and for almost two hundred years, sections have been dredged and “canalized” as part of the Erie Canal system.

So today, you can cast off your boat from, say, Watkins Glen, on the southern end of Seneca Lake (42° N), only thirty miles north of the Pennsylvania line, and sail, by way of canals, Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River, all the way to the North Atlantic, at Nova Scotia or Newfoundland (49° N).

(Or you could reach the Atlantic by way of the Mohawk River, and then south on the Hudson River to New York City.)

(Or, if it’s a really small, inflatable boat, you could put it in a duffle bag, go to the Trailways station in Elmira, take a bus to Patchogue, then take the ferry out to Fire Island, and row into the Atlantic from the beach.)

(And the buses do have WiFi now, and I’m guessing the St. Lawrence River doesn’t, unless you’re really close to Montréal.)

(If you do choose that St. Lawrence route, remember, when asking for the WiFi password as you float past Montréal or Québec, they pronounce it “le wee fee.”)

(I’m not trying to tell you which is the best route, you know, but if you did take the bus to Patchogue, you could stop by Flo’s Luncheonette, and have waffles, before you get back in the boat.)

(But for heaven’s sake, wait half an hour, after the waffles, before you go onto the ocean.)

 

 

Waffles, yeah.  I have not had waffles since I moved to Milwaukee.  It is getting cold, and time for waffle long johns, and for waffles.  Where was I?

 

I’ve walked around the island many times, and am often struck by the relative scarcity of game.  I’ve don’t recall ever seeing any grouse, pheasants, or rabbits, or even their tracks.  Despite the hickory trees, even squirrels make themselves scarce.  A few whitetails, groundhogs, and ducks, but there are way more deer, geese, and turkeys in the surrounding farms, than that woods and ponds here.  So maybe word gets around, and the animals actually avoid a designated hunting zone?

 

 

Some acreage is leased for growing soybeans, but no one lives on the island anymore.   Woods, fields, sandy hillocks, ponds and marshes.  Settlers in the early 1800’s spent a lot of time draining the swampy areas, and then in the 1930’s, the Civilian Conservation Corp reversed course, and spent a lot of time creating ponds and marshes, for waterfowl.  The CCC barracks later housed POWs from Rommel’s Afrika Korps, who worked as farm labor ($.80/day), and in a nearby Procini & Rossi pasta factory.  (Apparently, things worked out peaceably – I’ve never read of any escapes, or trouble of any kind.  Although, being German, they insisted on straightening the elbow macaroni.)

 

 

On a walk in October, it seemed surprising to find dozens of orange butterflies, fluttering around with the falling leaves, almost like they were trying to blend in.  ¿I think they were Question Mark Butterflies?  (which seem to have a varied appearance, depending on which book or website you’re looking at), but please let me know if that guess is wrong.

 

 

The very green frog, is named appropriately – Northern Green Frog.  He blew a lot of money on that camouflage outfit, feeling pretty fly, as frogs said back in the ’90’s, but now he finds he’s no longer blending in, as the leaves and ferns turn brown.  You know the song sung by Kermit on the Muppets, right?  I had to look up the writer, Joe Raposo, and I had no idea it was covered by Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Van Morrison, Shirley Horn, Lena Horne, Diana Ross, Della Reese, Ray Charles, etc.

 

It’s not that easy bein’ green

Having to spend each day

The color of the leaves

When I think it could be nicer

Bein’ red or yellow or gold…

 

There is absolutely nothing spectacular about Howland Island. It’s just a pleasant place to stretch your legs. There are generally a couple of people fishing in the river, and on a typical day, when it’s not hunting season, you’ll probably have the place pretty much to yourself.

 

Looking at that frog reminds me.  Did you know our military now has at least ten types of camouflage, for different situations?  The Navy has a uniform for the desert, which is a bit mystifying, unless your ship was going really, really fast when it hit land.  Or maybe, once in a while, the sailors just like to get as far away from water as they can?  And according to the Washington Post, the Navy wanted to distinguish their uniforms from the Marines’, so their desert pattern is green.

Maybe “sand” was too obvious?  I guess if the Navy guys are green, and sticking out like a sore thumb, they could hunker down, and pretend they’re frogs?  Just abnormally large, Northern Green Frogs, who tragically, have become lost in the desert.  Technically, that kind of camo’s called “mimesis,” trying to look like something else, rather than “crypsis,” avoiding detection.

 

A discarded snakeskin almost made me jump out of my skin

 

Well, I had been feeling kinda good about this post, actually staying focused & on track, but now somehow we’ve wandered into a discussion of Muppets and camouflage?  I suddenly thought, wasn’t the inventor of waffle irons named Howland?  That would be a nice coincidence and a good wrap-up.  But I was thinking of Elias Howe, and it was a sewing machine.  But I’m sure some people are aware of another Howland Island, a tiny coral lump somewhere in the Pacific, where Amelia Earhart was headed, when she disappeared, kind of like the thread of this story.  The airstrip there was another New Deal project, done about the same time they were constructing the ponds on our local island.

The Pacific’s Howland Island, now managed by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, is one of only ten remaining territories still claimed by our country, under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.  That law is still on the books, allowing us, the citizens of the U.S.A., to take possession of any unclaimed islands, as long as they (the islands) have a really big pile of bird excrement.  No kidding.  And on that note, I’m gonna go get some waffles.

 

Washington Post May 8, 2013  “U.S. Military has 10 Kinds of Camouflage”

[http://wapo.st/18u4O50?tid=ss_mail&utm_term=.8147b05254f2]