We slipped the canoe into the water in the brief window of time between the sun setting and the moon rising. Dusk fell calm and blue, the fading sky reflected on the smooth water. This was when I’m usually pulling up to the landing, coming off the water as the last light lingers. David Aichinger says it’s just when the magic begins.
The idea was an easy few miles down the river, a stretch near David’s home in Osceola that he has paddled in the dark many times. The idea was to see the river at night, under a big, bright, full moon.
It seemed dark when we pushed off the sand and started floating, but twilight still shimmered over the darkened bluffs and the placid St. Croix. Darker was still to come. The sky’s faint shine bouncing off the river provided enough light to make out even distant shadows. We would not reliably be able to use our eyes for the rest of the trip, and our ears would soon take over.
As we paddled out of the backwater where we launched, I was surprised to see the surface of the water alive with dragonflies zipping all around us. These cold-blooded insects are usually most active during the sunniest parts of the day. Two species of dragonflies I’ve observed along the St. Croix do specialize in the dimmer hours: the Stygian Shadowdragons and the Shadow Darners.
Photos by Greg Seitz
The female Stygian Shadowdragons (named for the River Styx) are known to exhibit this behavior at this time of day when they are laying their eggs on the surface of the water. I don’t remember seeing any of them dipping their rear ends in the water, but they may have been. Shadow darners are also known for nighttime activity, including when they emerge as nymphs from the water and metamorphose into aerial adults. The males will patrol over water at night, but these dragonflies were too closely clustered to be feeling territorial.
Maybe they were neither shadowdragon nor shadow darner, and just part of the mystery of night on the river.
After a while, we cut through a gap in the skinny islands into a side channel, where it was somehow quieter, yet even more alive. Now, there were bats flying 50 feet above, cutting impossible courses through the air, navigating by sonar like a submarine in the sky. We could still see them because the sky was not yet pitch black, but I assume they were overhead the whole way.
I was already glad David had invited me along, and the moon wasn’t even up yet.
David is the owner of Paddlefish Adventures, a canoe outfitting and guide service in St. Croix Falls, which he and his partner, Jessica Turtle, launched this summer. A few days after this nighttime paddle, I guided my first group trip with Paddlefish, the “Floating Through Time” paddle on July 12 (I’m planning to do more).
The “chief adventure officer” is an experienced paddler, a championship snow sculptor, a Boy Scout leader, an accomplished artist, carpenter, tiler, and builder — and a passionate fan of the St. Croix River. His partner, Jessica Turtle, is leading another business that operates in tandem with Paddlefish, Treehaus Studio in Osceola. Together, they’re bringing art, ecology, and outdoor adventure together.
David wants Paddlefish to be a means to deepen people’s connections to the river. That means everything from renting canoes and running shuttles to one-on-one guiding, as well as offering trips with guides focused on history, ecology, and other interesting topics. It even means getting people on the river at night, as David is hoping to do again next time the moon is full.
Slowly true darkness settled over us, the shimmer on the water faded to black, and we were swallowed by night. Our canoe was its own shadow, slipping silently along. We were invisible paddlers, unseen observers.
As we passed by a long grassy shoreline, the lush vegetation bending under the weight of a wet summer, we saw fireflies blinking above it. They didn’t venture into the woods or over the water, so they lined the channel like a runway.
Coming around a bend, we heard the distant slap of a beaver tail on the water, sounding the alarm to its clan about intruders. Beavers seem to be abundant on the St. Croix, based on the evidence of their toothy toils along the banks, but they are usually nocturnal and thus unseen by most river visitors. They use their strong sense of smell to detect many dangers, and there’s a good chance this one caught our scent despite the cover of darkness.
Beavers had been one of the draws of the night paddle. David said last time he had paddled on the full moon, he had passed through a channel where he seemed surrounded by slapping tails. This lone sentry of the castor clan was our only interaction on this trip.
Paddlefish Adventures and Treehaus Studio are the result of hard work and persisting through tragedy. It was only two years ago that David was working construction and helping Jessica open a community art center in Osceola. The Natural Heritage Art Center on Cascade Street was to be a place to gather and create.
David says “it was open for 72 days” in early 2022 — and was then destroyed by a fire in a adjoining music store, a crushing blow to them both.
The same day, David was in Stillwater, helping his team carve a snow sculpture on the banks of the St. Croix as part of the World Snow Sculpting Championships. He left the work site when Jessica called to tell him about the fire, and they watched their dream consumed by the black smoke of burning vinyl albums in the neighboring basement and the deluge of water from firefighters who prevented the blaze from spreading any farther.
Despite the devastating blow, David returned to Stillwater at Jessica’s urging and helped his team complete their sculpture, “Journey.” It was a surreal work of art that seemed to question the idea of identity and how reality could be ripped apart without warning. They were named the winners and David felt the whiplash of joy and grief.
Now, Jessica’s idea has found a home at The Acreage in Osceola, where she and other instructors teach classes on art and ecology, and often include a canoe or kayak trip down the river with Paddlefish. And David is putting people on the St. Croix, and creating connections.
Not long after the beaver slap, I looked left and saw a bright glow bursting through the trees. It was the full moon about to rise over the floodplain forest.
The moon occupied our attention for the rest of the trip. It slowly climbed over the horizon and hung there, casting light across the river and drawing all eyes toward it. The photos of course do it no justice, as I couldn’t capture the detail visible on its face, or the way it lit up the land.
David and I followed the river down, now navigating by the light of our planet’s natural satellite. It did wash out the stars that had just been popping out in the sky, and it ruined our night vision, but made up for it with its soft illumination.
We passed under a railroad bridge about 11 p.m., and heard the voices of two people coming from somewhere on it. They possibly heard our low conversation, as well, but we passed in the darkness unseen to each other. They flicked on a flashlight when we had passed, and it made a ghostly glow.
Our final stretch took us through the floodplain and up a side channel. We followed a narrow channel for a ways, and the low, brilliant moon blinded us trying to find our course through narrow channels that happened to be oriented in the same direction. I occasionally steered us through tall grasses and made jokes about spiders, because David was in the bow and catching most of them for me.
As we made the final turn toward the landing, a barred owl started calling, its hoots echoing across the valley. Fireflies still flashed above the banks. A bat flew across the canoe between David, chasing some prey, oblivious to our presence. We bumped up to the gravel landing about midnight, the moon having climbed about 15 degrees from the horizon. The river continued on its way, carrying the light.
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