Spurred on by our hiking adventure yesterday and loathe to devote this gloriously warm Thanksgiving Day to the mundane, Vilis and I hoisted a Grumman canoe atop our Ranger, dropped it off on the bank of the Waugh River a kilometre from where we live, and then dropped the truck off in Tatamagouche, a small village on the Northumberland Strait that’s our home community. We returned to the canoe in our Echo, and then set out to paddle to the ocean.

Bolstered by heavy rains during the past weeks, the Waugh was running high, but not at flood levels. As we floated past trees decorated with the golds and reds of autumn, we spotted flood debris snagged in branches at least two metres above the shoreline. Here in northern Nova Scotia, where so much forest has been clear-cut, the run-off after heavy rains transforms brooks and rivers into raging torrents and spills floodwaters onto adjacent fields, occasionally even washing out roads and damaging bridges.

Today, the river was serene. We paddled its golden brown belly underlain with stones and boulders and ridges of rock seen through clear water, practicing backpaddling and directing and shifting the boat across river. I took photographs on the smooth sections and stowed the camera during the rough ones. We dodged fallen trees, overhanging branches, boulders, sand bars, and fly fishermen, picked our way through riffles and rapids, and sent the Grumman straight through foaming haystacks formed by the sheer volume of water surging down the river.

Small flocks of common mergansers and black ducks lifted into the air at our approach, and we flushed a spotted sandpiper along the shoreline. A flock of conversing blackbirds flew noisily past, the birds’ shiny black plumage dramatic against a backdrop of brilliant yellow leaves. A fresh breeze blowing against us tugged leaves from their moorings and tossed them into the air, where they floated down onto the river like golden brown confetti.

As we approached the estuary of the Waugh River and Tatamagouche Bay, the wind flexed its muscles, causing us to flex ours with greater determination. Double-crested cormorants perched on a massive tree trunk lodged in the wide river mouth, and gulls speckled the water with white. Three hours after setting out, we pulled the canoe from the salty water next to Creamery Square, our spirits replenished with the smell of water, the sight of trees dressed in the brilliance of autumn, and the adventure of running a river.