Spring has turned chilly today with a high in the 50’s, plus it’s cloudy, breezy and tide is almost a the high mark. The tree branch used for pull ups is over the water making it difficult to do the exercise without stepping in the water.
Izzy and I can’t get past the worst beach obstacle half way down and only make half our usual distance. We do a short side trip on a neighborhood road when we get back.
No oyster boats today, either, or birds of note. The tide forces us to climb over jettys we normally can skirt. There are six large jettys on as many properties and each starts at the river bank with large concrete blocks stacked two deep. The blocks are a common size and are described in the construction trade as either a cubic yard or one ton block, I forget which. They are rectangular, about five feet long, two feet high and 18 inches thick with grooves on the bottom and one end, and a ridge on the top and other end. The top ridge has a gap of some eight inches where a lifting loop of half-inch rebar is embedded.
Sand piles up on the upstream side of each jetty. Several blocks have shifted, either because sand washed out underneath, or just pushed over by the water. We have to jump from the top of one jetty that’s about three feet above the downriver sand level, then climb back on the return trip. Only two jettys are entirely concrete blocks. The others are finished up with rocks and scrap concrete on the river end.
Many places along the riverbank are damp from water leaching out through the soil. In addition, two streams flow over the top and reach the river. Three smaller streams appear but disappear into the sand as they cross the beach. Some wet spots leak enough water to form icicles in the winter. Most are ten or fifteen feet from the top of the bank. One is at the base, almost forty feet down, and is just a trickle that reaches out a couple feet. It never changes despite long dry periods or very rainy times. In other places such wet spots have responded to heavy rains by washing out large piece of the riverbank near homes.
The river water is always murky. At the best of times you can see about a foot deep. Notes from Capt John Smith of Jamestown fame some 400 years ago say fish could be seen thirty feet deep in his time. The clarity has changed mostly from farm field runoff. —-
