Avon River

Early in the afternoon, as a strong storm system brewed overhead, we paddled the Avon River. The sun would come through for a few minutes at a time, spotlighting whatever was standing in the side channels: cormorants on a bare branch, a green heron in the shallows, and an egret in a fallen willow tree.

None of these are birds we see often, so we took our time to enjoy them while scouring the shore for fishing lines.

It didn’t take long to find them. We picked up two fishing lines wrapped around branches at the waterline where a cast had gone wide, hooks still attached. Monofilament doesn’t break down and it doesn’t let go of anything it catches, which is the whole problem with it in a place where herons wade.

The swans were also back on the lake. Avian flu has been hard on them these past couple of years and they’ve been scarce, so it was good to see them out along the wall near the pedal boats.

After dropping off our boat, we headed downstream on foot along the Avon. Past the dam, the river narrows and the banks get rocky. That’s where we spotted a bike, washed up alongside driftwood. Someone’s clothing had gone in with it—we found a thong nearby, stiff with silt, which we fished out with a stick. There was more on the shore. We didn’t ask.

The bike was heavy and lodged in the rocks, its last remaining wheel barely attached with all the spokes gone. Its seat and frame were fused with rocks and river snails. We dragged it up the stone retaining wall and loaded it into the trunk of our tiny Elantra.

Along with the bike, we removed a large bag of debris from the shore, including heavy acrylic sweaters that would have washed into the river during the storm. The Avon runs into the North Thames, the Thames into Lake St. Clair, and out through the Detroit River to Lake Erie. It’s a completely different river system from ours in Guelph, but leads to the same lake at the end.

We left as the skies darkened and our phones buzzed with weather warnings. The storm hit soon after we were out of town, and the winds and flooding followed us all the way home.