This a series of posts about paddling the whole Kokemäenjoki ("Kokemäki River") and out to Reposaari island at the Bothnia Sea with my friend A-J. It was 130 kilometer journey and took six amazing days of adventuring.
Canoeing the Kokemäki River - part 2/6
The Day of the Osprey
14th of August | 2022
Morning view from the hammock through the mosquito net.
The morning sun awoke us up at around 6:30 am. Despite of relatively early wake-up it still felt like a good night's sleep. When sleeping outside you often wake up and come to your senses nice and slowly when the day grows brighter and brighter. It's different from immediately jumping up to an alarm clock.
Now it was time for a breakfast. For cooking A-J had brought along a portable cooking device, trangia, but instead of the commonly used alcohol-burning version this one was fueled little branches burnt in a simple, little "stove". 
We set up our breakfast cooking base at under the bridge that was crossing the river right at this beach where we had slept. The breakfast was going to be porridge, with a little tasty and nutritious twist...
There were few sea-buckthorn bushes growing at the beach, so A-J harvested some fistfuls of the berries for the porridge. And we also saved and packed some fistful for the later. You never know when you'll need sea-buckthorn berries on your paddling journeys.
The day was warming up fast, and it was going to be a hot one, so we packed and jumped into the canoe with no delays. Luckily there was also a water tap at the beach so we fill our water canisters.
My shoulders and back felt a bit strained from the first paddling day. No pain, no paddling gain. That's how it goes.
After paddling only a little while we saw the Great Egret again! The same as yesterday, or another one? In any case it was a magnificent sight once again and kept leading us along the river towards the Puurijärvi-Isosuo National Park which was about to start just around the corner. On our way there
we also saw an Osprey scouting its' territory from the treetops and flapping over its' fishing grounds.
At the National Park area sightings of the beaver life started to amass. For kilometers and kilometers we saw beaver den holes in the riverbanks, aspen groves with the felled trunks, and gnawed stumps.
A beaver felled mighty aspen tree at the riverbank. We took a little pause floating beside this trunk,.
After the first 10 kilometers of paddling in the blazing sunshine we headed for a public wilderness shelter at the National Park area. There was a pier, a big lean-to shelter and proper fireplace just close by the river.
We cooked a great big meal at the shelter, and took some time to rest and cool down there. There were also couple of berry pickers there camping in a tent. They had been picking lots of northern bilberries, and we did a little berry trade with them. We got some northern bilberries in exchange for our sea-buckthorn berries.
And the paddling continued. Marks of the beaver life remained numerous. Here and there the river offered little side branches to follow and we often took these changes. Sceneries at the narrow, almost hidden river branches were always really interesting, and the travel seemed to go way quicker than paddling at the wider sections of the river.
Here's footage from paddling one of the narrow and quite shallow river branches on our way.
The day had become extremely hot, the sun kept draining our energy fast, and we were also soon about to run out of water. After 20 kilometers of paddling for today we reached wooden suspension bridge of Säpilä, and decided to go seek a little shadow and place to rest from the woods beside it.
The woods by the shore didn't provide much coolness, but the rest and little shadow was urgently needed. We sipped our water supplies carefully, ate some unprepared foodstuff and also the earlier today traded water-rich northern bilberries. And we thought about our options. There would be a public shelter about 6 kilometers away, which would be a good spot to spend the night. However, that would mean at least an hour more of paddling in the sun.
After 6 p.m. the sun had come down to the extent where the longest trees by the shores started to provide some shadow. We decided to go paddling that 6 km to that next public shelter we knew about, trying to stay close to the shore and in the shadows. And we managed.
We reached the pier of the Raitio Village Association public shelter quite exhausted and almost having run out of the water. It was around 8 p.m. when we got there. There was only a little water left for drinking, and a little had to be reserved for the morning, but we knew there's farmstay accommondation place only one kilometer away along the river. In the morning the first thing we would do would be to paddle there and ask for water.
The Raitio shelter was a nice place to spend the night, and the cool of the sunset was much appreciated. There were cows on the opposite shore with their cowbells clanging in the evening. I went for a little swim. Some people came to fish at the pier for a little while. We made a fire, baked some vegetarian snack sausages and ate a simple non-water-consuming evening meal.
I slept on the shelter floor with some spare clothes as a matress. A-J slept in his hammock under the shelter roof. This was a rough day, but also a rewarding one.
This was the second day. Stay tuned for the next post.
Now should you feel like buying a coffee for a weary paddler one of the upsides is that every supporter gets e-mail notifications when future posts are up.