Canoe trip this Spring

[cantdog]

Spring river trip: Friday April 22nd - Sunday April 24th. Fifth Machias Stream down through Fourth and Third Machias Lakes and into the upper Machias River. Of course depending on water levels and weather.

Anyone interested in coming along? We are chic woodsmen, and you need worry about few of the planning details. We can outfit you as a paddler, get you a tent, find you sleeping bags or whatever. There is always plenty of gear.

cantdog

 

[Guest]

Can't do. I'm being forcefully deported on the 25th.

 

[rgraham666]

Damn, would love to cant.

Unfortunately, it's too short notice for me. I would need several months to save enough money to finagle such a thing. Plus get my passport and make sure I can get across the border.

Thanks for the offer though/

 

[cantdog]

Yeah, the border. Damn, I forgot the border. I'll have to come to the mountain, then.



Deportation, bummer. They never deport one to Fifth Machias Stream. Always someplace uninteresting, like Santo Domingo Airport. Whereas Fifth Lake Stream is out of everywhere. A person deported to there would be well and truly gone. The population is mostly birds, fish, and small mammals. This early in the spring, not even insects, for the most part.

 

[cantdog]

We've been doing trips like this all through the good weather every year. This is just the first major one of the season. The kids have a spring break then. You'd have to paddle hardily enough to keep up with a twelve-year-old. I warn you, the kid can be good at it. Lazy though.

We did a lovely trip the length of the Passadumkeag not long ago, but it took a week. We'll be doing weekend overnights all through the summer as opportunity arises. Dead Stream. Main Stream, Scraggly Lake, Pocumcus, Upper Lead Moutain Pond. There's usually an extended trip of a week or so. We're working our way up to the Labrador trip. When we've all finally retired, maybe the Mackenzie River, take a month and see it. But for now, small, nonfancy stuff, just to get a boat under your ass for a few hours.

 

[rgraham666]

Sigh.

One of the highlights of my life was a week trip through Algonquin Park.

 

[logophile]

Oh, what a temptation! I have babies due, but if I didn't I would be there. Sounds like heaven, Cant!

 

[Lisa Denton]

It sounds like fun Cant. Do you have any canoes with motors or does everyone have to paddle? Can I hire a paddler and come along as just me and my puppy as like sightseers?

If it helps I can make pancakes, and my puppy can hunt and kill pancakes, he sneaks up on them and bites em and then throws them around until they are dead.

Do you all make syrup from trees or should I bring some?

 

[cantdog]

On this stream, motors would be a liability. It is reedy, later in the year, and shallow. Motors bang on the shallow bottoms of streams, and reeds are a real annoyance for them. The water should be gooshing strongly with the spring runoff on that weekend, and will need some alert paddling on occasion, although not particularly often. As spring streams go, it's benign. We want to get the kids acquainted with moving water, not scare them away from it.

The thirteen-year-old girl will be in her kayak the whole time, leaving the rest of us, in canoes, to schlep all the camp stuff. Might be something to consider. There could be room for a puppy in a kayak. It's less work and more fun, I think, in a kayak. We don't plan to roll them over or any of that stuff. I can't do a kayak, myself, because you have to sit like that all day, and I would hurt pretty miserably by the end of the day.

Food is good on these things. We do not approach the woods as a challenge to overcome, surviving in the wild against the very teeth of nature. No, we go with a view to being comfortable. We have capacious canoes and the desire to fill them with the good things in life. So far, no puppies, but I don't see a conflict.

 

[cantdog]

The kids like to start the fires, and when we pull in for the night, at full daylight, of course, everyone sets about carrying the stuff in there, and gathering wood for the purpose.

The fire will be the center of the social life, unless there happens to be a good swimming place. There will be some, in the lakes, on this trip, but in April, no one will want to swim for very long. Spring runoff is cold.

So it'll be the fire. Folding chairs, backs on logs padded by the life vests and stuff. Lazy and contemplative, broken up by food prep and tea and coffee. On a short trip the juices and eggs last the whole time, and the fresh meat the first night will move to something like a chili, already prepared and packed frozen, on the second one. Provision is made for vegetarians, and breakfasts are pretty hearty.

Pancakes are always a feature, at least for one morning, since they are easy to do and a crowd pleaser. I'm old enough not to have a lot of dignity, so I pack an extra thick pad to sleep on. It's not a hard life, the way we do it. Teddy might have thought us weak, but he will not be along.

 

[Lisa Denton]

On this stream, motors would be a liability. It is reedy, later in the year, and shallow. Motors bang on the shallow bottoms of streams, and reeds are a real annoyance for them. The water should be gooshing strongly with the spring runoff on that weekend, and will need some alert paddling on occasion, although not particularly often. As spring streams go, it's benign. We want to get the kids acquainted with moving water, not scare them away from it.

The thirteen-year-old girl will be in her kayak the whole time, leaving the rest of us, in canoes, to schlep all the camp stuff. Might be something to consider. There could be room for a puppy in a kayak. It's less work and more fun, I think, in a kayak. We don't plan to roll them over or any of that stuff. I can't do a kayak, myself, because you have to sit like that all day, and I would hurt pretty miserably by the end of the day.

Food is good on these things. We do not approach the woods as a challenge to overcome, surviving in the wild against the very teeth of nature. No, we go with a view to being comfortable. We have capacious canoes and the desire to fill them with the good things in life. So far, no puppies, but I don't see a conflict.

A thirteen year old in a kayak is the leader of the expedition?

Let me check my life insurance policy clauses on stuff like that.

Is anybody gonna bring a map maybe?

 

[cantdog]

Well, it's a stream. You point downstream, and follow the flow, generally. In the spring, a much smarter plan than trying to buck the flow and go up. It can really goosh. There should be places with beaver dams and flat water, too. The runoff will generally make the dams passable by running right over the top of them, which is great fun, actually. And the girl in the kayak is a very competent woodsman, more so than a lot of people thrice her age.

I guess, on the whole, though, insurance might be a concern. It isn't sky diving, but I suppose things can happen. We ran into ice dams one spring, where we didn't expect them, and moving through the ice slowed us up. We could not finish the trip before dark, and the ice was making us all cold and wet.

So we pulled the boats out and stashed them by the streamside. We carry plastic tape, flagging tape, not the sticky kind. We flagged the area with the boats and took a compass line away from the stream. That one had a railroad track maybe half a mile away which we knew from the map ran parallel to the stream.

We walked out on the compass line, and flaggied the tree by the side of the railroad track when we got to it. We walked the rail line out to the road, and then to the cars. Days later, we walked in by the rails, took a left at the flagging tape on that tree, and walked in on the same compass line. We struck the stream at about the right place, and finished the trip a couple weeks late.

It's all in knowing how to cope.

 

[OhMissScarlett]

Will there be alcohol on this trip?

 

[cantdog]

I wish I could say no, but actually dark rum or Rumple Minze goes very nicely in hot chocolate, and the Black Bush or the Glenmorangie will sometimes come along. For the campfire, at night. You know. It unbuckles people fiercely to be before an open fire, and stultifies their judgement. So they tell stories on themselves. It can be very good indeed.

 

[cantdog]

As to other arrangements, there are kids along and a person needs circumspection. The woods, though, are very entertaining under the right conditions and, uh, state of mind.

 

[rgraham666]

Sigh. Sounds like fun.

 

[cantdog]

It's complex and involving, the best kind of fun. Ducks, geese, eagles, beavers, otters, blue jays, kingfishers, loons, bitterns, all that stuff. Campfire, air, water, woods, even children in moderation. It's a nice time. We don't always have children along, of course. There are some ad hoc day trips and there's always the camp on the unpronounceable lake if people who come by for the weekend aren't ready for hanging in the woods but would like chairs and tables instead. Work gets in the way of all this, of course, curse it.

 

[cantdog]

I have come to like the woods trips better, but the camp is all right. My daughter and I own it jointly these days. You don't require gear to go to that. One drives to the beach, known locally as the Sandy Beach, a more or less descriptive place name. There's a stretch of water to cover, maybe a half mile, fairly sheltered as these things go. The camp may as well be on an island, since you can't possibly drive to it. You could walk in, but it requires beating cross country through the woods on game trails, part of the way. We allowed the trails to close in and die after the snowmobiles used to come all the time and trash the place.

I have walked people in when they had a real difficulty about the water, and it's the good way in when the ice is forming on the lake in the fall.

But ordinarily, we just pile into the boats and come across. There are two main buildings, each with a wood stove and gas lights. We can sleep a good sized group, and the cupboards are full of food. Good cooks in the party, as well.

A spring fishing favorite as done by my grandfather:


Spring Fishing Potatoes

Render some bits of salt pork fat in a big iron spider, and slice lots of potatoes and onions. This is a side dish to go with the fish or what ever there is. Layer potatoes and onions across the pan, salt and pepper once in a while, until there is a heap. By now the ones on the bottom are browned, so you turn the whole heap with the spat. The sizzling brown ones on top now, you eat. Soon enough, that layer is eaten, and you turn the whole heap. Heh. If you do it right, people have snacking food while the supper is preparing and they have potatoes to eat with supper, besides, all browned in salt pork fat.

But we cook more sophisticated stuff, too.

There is a porch which connects the two camps, which are called the Little Camp and the Main Camp. The main camp has recently undergone renovation and sports a new roof with new skylights in it. That's the one with the kitchen in it, a gas stove, a gas refrigerator, and so forth. Electricity has also come to Horseshoe Cove, but we make it ourselves with photovoltaics on the roof. We basically do without electricity for most things, but power tools can be charged and there is a little dorm fridge which is kept cold by the wan sunshine through the pines.

This is a great place. It smells good there. You can be away from everyone.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

That's in Maine, right? Jeez, if the weather there is anything like Chicago, April is freezing cold at night, and the water's like ice. I hope those aren't aluminum canoes.

Anyhow, I think it would be much more stylish if you took gondolas and wore those fancy hats. You could sing all the way downstream.

--Zoot

 

[cantdog]

It is genius innovation like this for which the world yearns, Zoot.

 

[impressive]

This sounds like SUCH a good time. I wish I could swing it!

 

[cantdog]

That's nothin. I have to figure a way to come to Toronto now. There's just too many cool people there.

It really would be nice, camp or camping out. Why can't we all be creatures of leisure and just jet ourselves about the world at will?

 

[tolyk]

Sigh.

One of the highlights of my life was a week trip through Algonquin Park.

I live near there