Today I went kayaking down the Harpeth River from Kingston Springs Road to the bridge at the intersection of Highway 70 and Mound Bottom Road. The hot midday sun and blue skies made for conditions that could not have been finer. I brought along my fishing pole but had absolutely no luck despite changing lures three times.
I tried bouncing a weighted worm along the rocky bottom and then reverted to two different minnow lures that caught me a few smallmouth last summer. But I don’t let petulant fish cast any cloud on such a fine day on the water.
One of the highlights was about halfway through the float when I stopped at the mouth of Turnbull Creek and waded up into its clear, briskly flowing waters. The bottom was a mix of brown river pebbles and grey slate. In one fast moving channel I came upon a school of about forty or more gar all crowded into the fast moving water and surfacing to snap at the air. At times a mildly explosive roe would ensue with the long fish breaking the water with their tangled bodies.
This particular float down the Harpeth takes kayakers and canoeists past high river bluffs. Ages ago prehistoric inhabitants painted and chipped petroglyphs onto some of these bluffs. The petroglyphs depicted the sun and the moon as well as bison, which were once common in the area. One depicted a baton. These messages from those that came before could be seen as late as the 1970’s and are discussed by James Crutchfield in his relaxing book The Harpeth River: A Biography, but I don’t know that anyone can point them out today.
The river also passes through pastureland with crumbly loess banks and some low country filled with gravel bars supporting stands of water willow and sycamore shoots. In time the tree roots and collapsing banks will direct the river into new meanders that generations too distant to contemplate will explore in their own version of canoes and kayaks.
On a less contemplative note I would liked to have seen more ladies in bikinis. I talked to one girl during my stop at Turnbull Creek but she was perhaps too young and at any rate people have different things on their mind during a working day Monday float than they do on weekend trips when the river is packed with people…and beer cans in the process of being emptied. Still, this young lady was right pretty with her full figure and country girl tan lines. The way her bikini bottom angled down just below her left hip bone was rather sexy. As for me, my farmer’s tan has left me with a dark face and arms but the sun burn I received on my chest and belly today likely gave me the appearance of a boiled crayfish in her eyes.
I am rounding out the day by firing up the grill. The charcoals are burning down as I write and it will soon be time to put on the meat. The menu is simple: thin pork chops marinated in black pepper and soy sauce, fresh cucumbers and sliced tomatoes. The beverage is Miller High Life Light…which just goes to prove that sometimes its worth springing the extra $2.50 to get the 12-pack of Miller Lite.
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