Can Mill River Be A Bridge?

Orange Street was quiet, and the parking alongside East Rock Park ample, when we stopped next to the canoe launch at the bridge and slipped our canoe into the water of the tidal Mill River at about 10:40 a.m. on Independence Day. We — my wife Steph, my son Leo, and I — were there to enjoy a perfect summer morning.

We were also there to take stock of the Mill River in East Rock amid plans to open it further to recreation, in both the city’s plan to expand the trails along the river and the private developments happening right around where I‑91 and State Street cross the water.

It’s possible to get onto the water in East Rock Park if you don’t have a boat, or access to one. The city’s parks department lists canoeing and kayaking clinics among its activities; those interested in taking advantage of this can call the city’s outdoor adventure coordinator, listed on the parks department’s website. Maps of the Mill River as it winds through East Rock Park are also available for those who do have boats; the map is very good at pointing out where the boat launch is, and at alerting paddlers to the possible dangers of some parts of the river.

We happen to own a small canoe, a product of my having developed a persistent love of paddling 20 years ago in college. (Canoes and kayaks range astonishingly in price, but can be acquired secondhand for prices that don’t break the bank.) East Rock Park has become a frequent destination because it’s so close to where we live, and offers a lot to see in a very small area.

The launch on Orange Street is fairly well marked at the south end of the bridge where the street crosses the river. From the sign, a short path leads down the riverbank to the water, where the gravelly launch can accommodate a few boats at once — and does, when camp programs come to use it.

This Independence Day morning, the launch was all ours, and finding the current in the river to be slow — it changes hourly — we headed south, toward I‑91.

Almost immediately we startled a great blue heron and a great egret, both birds that really remind you that they’re descended from dinosaurs, from the way they fly to the way they hunt. Not two minutes later we came across what was likely the same heron, perched in a tree with two cormorants. Startled again, the heron and both cormorants took off downriver. A second heron joined them, and the four birds disappeared around the river’s bend.

“Weird to think we’re in the middle of New Haven,” Steph said. By then we were almost behind Wilbur Cross High School, where a very short trail headed down from one of its athletic fields to the river’s edge. In a spot where the river widened and tall grasses took over from the trees, we spotted a family of geese. In that part of the river, the city, or any city, felt a hundred miles away. Though the noise of cars rushing by on English Drive can bring you back. This part of the river also had a few homeless encampments on its banks, marked by blue tarps suspended in the underbrush to keep off rain, a plastic chair facing the water.

The current was still quite weak, and pushing us gently upstream — the Mill River this close to the bay is affected by the tides from the Long Island Sound — and so we proceeded southward against the tide, under the bridge where Willow Street crosses the water just before it becomes Blatchley Avenue. This bridge, which seems fairly small when you’re driving across it, appears fairly monumental from the water. It’s a huge reminder that you are, in fact, in the middle of the city, and is a harbinger of the even larger pieces of infrastructure that await, if the current allows.

Now is perhaps the best time to mention just how variable the current in the Mill River can be. Catch it at a time when the water is flowing swiftly south, and the Willow Street bridge is a signal that it might be time to turn around and start an arduous paddle north. Further south, the tangle of I‑91 and the curving northward onramp have their footings in the Mill River, and this combined with the tide gate just below those footings can make the Mill River a dangerous place for a little boat to be. The strong current can create whirlpools around the footings, and the impassable tide gate at the bottom could be the equivalent of hitting a wall, and possibly flipping a boat over.

On Monday morning, though, the current was sluggish and still pushing us northward, allowing us to get close. Paddling under I‑91 and the overpass felt a bit like exploring a flooded airplane hangar, or the armory on Goffe Street if the tide ever rose way too high. The brackish water lapped at the side of the boat. The reflected sunlight weaved around the underbelly of the highway.

As we moved cautiously toward the gate, we caught a fisherman in action (it’s legal with a permit).

It remains to be seen how the proposed trail, which hopes to connect Wilbur Cross with Fair Haven, might navigate this particular part of the river. Also unclear is how and whether a kayak launch possibly in the works — whether it intended to send its users north or south of the tide gate — would work out. Though if done right, the trail and the launch could make this part of the Mill River a bridge between neighborhoods, and the people who live in them. They could bring more people to the river itself.

Heading northward again, we passed beneath the Willow and Orange Street bridges and paddled into the section of the Mill River that, in my experience, gets a lot more traffic than the somewhat gnarlier southern half of the river in the park. This year, on the first good day for paddling, we found maybe a dozen other boats in the water. Monday was quieter. Fish jumped out of the water at Orange Street while, on English Drive, a car passed by, pulsing out reggaeton that echoed through the woods.

North of the rebuilt East Rock Road bridge, the river widens a lot, gets a lot more shallow, and gets a lot more sun. On this July morning, this meant flowers blooming among the lily pads. The trails through the park are also visible from the water (and vice versa), which meant a lot more waving to people hiking. The sounds of the hikers’ voices mingled with the now distant rush of cars on Farnam Drive and Whitney Avenue.

Our canoe began to feel the bottom just before we got to the covered bridge at the Eli Whitney Museum — another reminder that we were still in the middle of the city. A good half of the hard objects in the mud weren’t rocks, but bricks. The manmade objects were a visible analogue to the invisible effects of human activity on the Mill River, which the Environmental Protection Agency, as of its most recent study in 2014, still designates as impaired.

Navigating the shallows near the covered bridge was worth it to follow this great egret, possibly looking for its next meal amid the river’s rocks and bricks. The wildlife in general reminded me of something a friend of mine, now an oceanographer, had told me while we were both in college: that animals, in one sense, don’t care whether they’re in a vast wilderness, a city park, or even an urban neighborhood, as long as their surroundings don’t disrupt what they want to do. Peregrine falcons nest on tall buildings in New York City like they would any high cliff, and coyotes hunt for prey on the streets of Los Angeles like they do anywhere else they live. So this egret hunts for fish in the Mill River a stone’s throw from the state highway, like it might if it were in the middle of Maine. Hopefully the fish it finds to eat in the Mill River will keep it healthy.

The park was also an integral part of human behavior that day, from the people who talked to us from the footbridge that crossed the park (“You guys are going fast!”) to the other boaters we found on the river.

We met Kai Mesa and friend while heading back to the canoe launch at Orange Street. Originally from San Diego, Mesa is in the fourth year of his Ph.D. program in Yale’s department of genetics and lives in East Rock. He said that he quickly made the park a part of his routine, talking walks and jogging along its paths.

“It’s definitely where I take people who are visiting for the week,” he said. ​“I take them to East Rock.”

Ever since he moved to the neighborhood and got to know the park, it occurred to him that he should find a way to get on the water. The fact that you can do so is ​“not well-publicized,” he said, but he’d seen the sign for the Orange Street launch. A month ago he finally got around to buying a small raft. This was his second time on the water.

When we arrived at the canoe launch ourselves, a woman and man were bringing their kayak out of the water. Another couple were taking their boat off their car to start their paddle. The sound of gospel filtered through the trees, coming from an enormous barbecue in the park, about thirty yards from the water. There, the people at the barbecue had two grills fired up and a long row of trays set up on folding tables under two large canopies. Our time in East Rock Park was over for the day. Theirs was just beginning.