Passadumkeag to Nicatous

[cantdog]

This is another thread about one of my travels. You guys and the site won't pay me to write them up, but here we go anyhow. I got pictures, but they are of the woods and not particularly erotic, so feel free to ignore me.



Just for reference: The last syllable of Passadumkeag is pronounced like the beer container, but the accent falls on 'dum.' Nicatous is pronounced Nick a Tawas. I feel a little guilty giving away one of our Maine shibboleths, but there it is, accent on Tau (like the Greek letter, or the first syllable of the word 'tower').

ahem.

Whenever the bow's stem slips the bank there is a sensation of well-being, the spirit lifts. To be on the water is to be set free, no matter what responsibility might bring you there. Into the three canoes we have fitted every object six people will require for ten nights' camps. They were packed low and with attention to the distribution of their weight, bagged and boxed to let them be carried. Their gathering took days' planning. But they passed out of mind now, but for the paddles in our hands.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous03-launchonUpperPas.jpg

The drive to No. 9 Camp is not quite two hours; we were on the water by midmorning. The west and east branches had joined above us, and its name will be Passadumkeag River right through to its mouth on the Penobscot. At No. 9 Camp, though, it is only a stream in size and flow. Both banks were intimately close.

It was August 10th in Maine, still high summer. Wild blackberries and early blueberries were ripe, even some huckleberries had ripened. By the end of our trip on the 20th, the blueberries would be ready for hand picking in thick clusters. Cardinal flowers, of a flag red, raised their little starbursts up to gleam against the dark greens, because we were in a wooded section. We heard a raven and watched a kingfisher move from perch to perch.

In August the water moves slowly in the upper Passadumkeag. Current won't help us much, and the trees keep the wind from making any difference. We went entirely as our paddle strokes pulled us. We were fresh from town that morning, grinning to be afloat and confident. The river wound in tight curves. In the stern I had also to remember that the channel winds even more. The deep part is close to the outside of each bend. Part of my mind was given the job of steering to follow it.

Movement of the muscles and response of the canoe teach the rhythm. We have all done this enough to have educated our shoulders and hips. You sit in the car and just drive, that's all; we steered and paddled like that once we were reminded. After a few minutes it became automatic. It freed me to pay attention to the river.

I saw signs that there were beaver. The beaver is the ally of canoeists. He wants to maintain a certain minimum water depth for his own purposes, and it's the same depth a canoe needs. Without them, very few streams will float a canoe this late in the season, but in beaver water, streams are highways. As we moved downstream, we slid the canoes over many of their dams.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous05-launchonUpperPas.jpg

Our boat had fallen behind. I had slowed to a crawl to allow Justin to fish and the other two had passed. After catching a chub or two he took up the paddle again and we moved swiftly to catch them. Each new corner revealed another pool, but the Barrows family wasn't fishing and had sped along before.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous04-UpperPas.jpg

We surprised a merganser. She took to the air complaining with a series of muted quacks. We pushed her downstream twice before she turned to fly upstream behind us.

 

[cantdog]

Around the next bend we could hear wood snapping. We'd caught the others much sooner than we had imagined we would. Both canoes were stopped before a blowdown across the stream, and Mark was crouching on the trunk of the fallen tree. It had certainly been dead long before it fell. It was without bark and bleached to a pale bone color.

Ian, Mark's eleven-year-old, was full of news for us. He told us the wood had shifted and trapped the saw blade, pulling it out of its slot. Crosscut saws like Mark's need the blade's tension to hold their shape. Mark was folding away the bows and the brace, the rod and turnbuckle, to keep from losing any pieces to the river. He straightened and called for his short ax, but I offered mine.

I took no saw along, but I had the heavy ax in the party, ready to hand. I sent the canoe closer and unwrapped the steel, and it was passed forward to Mark, who chopped and tugged until he had opened a way through for us. Besides all the beaver dams, there were three such obstacles. One was a pine tree, still carrying all its needles, fallen in the prime of health and two feet and more in diameter, which forced us to carry the loads and canoes around it by the bank or pass them over the trunk in the middle of the stream. Further downstream, the river widened and trees ordinarily didn't completely occlude it.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous07-logjam.jpg

In a place in Washington County known as T3 R1 NBPP, just north of the Hancock County line, the Passadumkeag enters from the north. It is joined by the waters of a tributary, Taylor Brook, which my grandfather Everard used to fish for trout. There the stream widens and deepens, almost deserving the name of river. It is flatwater still, with little current, tea-colored and cloudy with brown-black silt.

To the river's west, on the right generally as it winds, lies a ridge capped with pines. The ridge is geologically an esker, and knife narrow. This esker divides the broad marsh and bog through which the river runs from the wider boglands of the Thousand Acre Heath.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous06-pauseonUpperPas.jpg

 

[cantdog]

In T3 R1 NBPP, the river makes a great turn to flow westward, being joined by another stream at that corner. This one, perversely, is known as Lower Taylor Brook, even though it does not connect to Taylor Brook at all. Moving west now, by twists and switchbacks, the river passes the esker's southern end and crosses into the Thousand Acre Heath region.

It was at the southern tip of that esker that we made camp that first night. As the day progressed, the river had passed out of the woods into open marshy terrain, but just where the esker meets it, it is closed in and woodsy. Bitterns and herons gave place to pileated woodpeckers and kingfishers, but the beavers were there as much as anywhere. We heard them at night.

Due to our early start, we had spent some six and a half hours in the canoes to reach the place. This is a lot for a first day. We felt it in our weak points. The kids were merely tired, but I had back spasms. Justin felt it in his knees and back, Mark in his feet, Sherrie, Mark's wife, in her arms. There's a reasonably good swimming hole at the Maple Grove site, as it's called. We decided to spend a layover day here, and use it a second night.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous08-setupatMapleGrove.jpg

 

[ABSTRUSE]

Looks like it was a great trip!!!Thanks for sharing.

 

[TxRad]

Haven't done a float trip in a number of years..... Maybe it's time... Well written and thanks for taking us along... I hope we get to finish the trip with you...

 

[rgraham666]

I'm getting relaxed just reading about it.

Thanks cant.

 

[cantdog]

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous14-Passadumkeag.jpg
This is the bosky section by Maple Grove. You see that it will open up shortly. It's like the light from a half-open door.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous21-broadPassadumkeagonthehe.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous22-broadPassadumkeagonthehe.jpg
The place may be a marshy bog, man, but it can be startlingly beautiful.

After another rainy night and a breakfast of pancakes and sweet Italian sausages we struck the damp camp at Maple Grove. Our goal for the day was Pistol Green.

The river goes many miles through the Heath without dropping even two meters, and meanders lazily through reedbeds and weeds. Occasional mounds of higher ground support little clumps of trees. Nothing interferes with the random sprinkling of huge boulders all over Maine, so we passed those, too.

Beaver lodges both old and currently occupied appeared at frequent intervals. In the water at the margin stood pickerelweed with its spikes of purple flowers, the succulent stem always knee deep in swamp water, and clusters of dark straight triangular reeds a meter high, some with a curly flourish of wheat-color, the flower, on the point of the needle, and arrowhead, some in bloom, blue and white. There comes intermittently the smell of mint on the air, but the weeds of that sort were further up the bank.

I could recognize yarrow and queen-anne's-lace, skullcap and goldenrod, and smell the mint among the grass. There was another plant which looked a good deal like goldenrod, and was far more common, but instead of gold, the flower cluster was pink. Pinkrod! No, even a botanist would have thought of something better than pinkrod. A taller pink-crowned one had its flowers arranged fanlike.

The two lead boats saw two moose, but when we fishermen arrived they had gone, and Caitlin's boat saw an otter. Blue herons were quite common this time through, and ducks, even bitterns, but the many harriers we'd seen on the Passadumkeag trip two years before never showed themselves.

I decided to take a sample of the pinkrod and check it in the weed book Caitlin was carrying. While ashore, I finally saw the mint. It was shorter than the grasses and the pinkrod, invisible from the water. The pale pink flowers hugged the stem and were never without bees. I took one of those, too; I could never tell one kind of mint from the next. The smell of the mint came up around me as I walked, and the two weeds made a nosegay in the stern of the boat behind my back when we moved on.

A ridge appeared to my left and the river circled around, edging us toward it. The trees came right to the water's edge in a welter of big boulders. It was the only truly shady spot for a couple of miles. I recognized it from the other trip two years before. We'd had lunch there.

Justin had caught and released chub, sunfish, and pickerel, even a small brook trout. "The others will be there, where those trees are," I told him. "It's tradition."

He put away the rod and we moved faster. When we'd packed at Maple Grove, our canoe had the lunch box, so they'd be waiting for the food. I pulled in by the other two canoes and brought my weeds up into the shade along with everyone's lunch.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous16-Passadumkeaglookingupstr.jpg

Shade! There had been breeze in the open Heath, but we were all being broiled out there. Mark looked up my woody-stemmed pinkrod in the weed guide and Justin went down to the water to fish.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous15-Passadumkeaglunchstop.jpg

 

[cantdog]

Shade on the water raises the chances of catching trout, and so do deep pools with cold water. Just downstream was a beaver dam, and Justin liked the look of the pool behind it. It was good to sit in the merciful shade and watch it all.

Pinkrod is a better name than the one the botanists give it. Hardhack, it's called, or steeplebush for the shape of the flower cluster. The mint was even more disappointing. The book blandly pronounced the specimen to be Wild Mint.

Yeah, well. I already knew that much. But that's all the name it has. Maybe I'm too romantic, but I'd wanted more.

It was at this point that Justin landed the 14 inch (35 cm?) brook trout.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous19-brooktrout.jpg

They're a beautiful speckled multicored fish. We cleaned it and coolered it and it became our dessert (in cornmeal and butter)that night at the Pistol Brown campsite.

Ian had a little difficulty. There had been a death, which we had caused. To eat, yet. There ensued a discussion of the morality of the hunt and of fishing, of morally-based vegetarianism. A person's relationship to these things is worthy of a long and thoughtful book. We ate our eggs, cheese, and peperoni, our raisins and crackers and chocolate, and got back in the canoes.

 

[cantdog]

multicolored (coloured for the Brits) fish, not multicored. Gad. Sorry.

 

[CharleyH]

Thank you so much, Cant, (Swoon) Will you write a story?

 

[cantdog]

Thank you so much, Cant, (Swoon) Will you write a story?

Actually, I already did, for Lit. Encore was written in the wake of the Passadumkeag trip I made two years ago. It's a one-Lit-pager about fucking your companion on a river canoe trip.



And damn it. You know I love you, and you got me by the glands with that swoon and the elegant legs in your av!

Besides, I always write up my journeys anyway. I sent you the story of the kids in Las Cejas. I can't help it.

 

[shereads]

This is worth at least a HUZZAH.

Thanks, Cdog. I needed to be reminded that tranquility exists.

 

[shereads]

My nephew went on a canoe trip in Minnesota with his Boy Scout troop. He told his mom that using soap or deodorant is forbidden because it attracts bears.

How big a lie is that?

 

[impressive]

Welcome back, cant. You were missed.

Thanks for taking us along. Your narratives are vivid and just ... zen.

 

[TxRad]

My mom had a patch of wild mint growing in a corner of her backyard.... cutting it with a lawnmower would make your eyes water but it smelled so good for days afterwards....

Shereads.... the fragrance in soap, perfume, and deodorant attracts bees and mosquitoes but I don't know about bears....

 

[cantdog]

Pistol Green is ill-defined. Pistol Stream flows into Nicatous Stream, and then Nicatous Stream into the Passadumkeag, all within a relatively small area. Somewhere in there we needed to find a place to camp. We stood in the canoes and searched the banks for a decent place to put four tents. A boulder shaped like the Pyramid of Cheops lies not far upstream of the mouth of the Nicatous, and we began looking soon after that.

This is at the confluence of Nicatous Stream and the Passadumkeag, looking back upstream:

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous15-broadPassadumkeagatNicat.jpg

And into the narrower Nicatous from the same spot:

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous23-PistolGreen-turningupthe.jpg

We were all done moving downstream. We will travel up against the current to the lake now.

 

[SensualCealy]

This is so cool Cantdog, as though I were sitting in an auditorium, listening to a travellog with the rotary club. I could do that for hours!
Keep the pictures and story coming Cantdog, I too believe in its calming effects.
C

 

[McKenna]

I've been enjoying the photographs and the narrative equally, Cant. Thanks for sharing.

 

[cantdog]

It's gratifying to hear that I have an audience, especially such a distinguished friendly and (ahem) discerning one...

 

[cantdog]

We swung the canoes upstream, feeling through the seat of the pants, looking carefully at the submerged lobelia and eel grass. Is the current strong? Is the water different?

All this before us now was new country, with the exception of two hundred-meter sections we’d scouted from the road. A kingfisher paced us, just ahead. Many times, the approach of a big object like a canoe will push fish out of their hiding places. We had many times seen fish jump ahead of the boats. She was ready to take advantage.

The water in Nicatous Stream was indeed different. It still had the color of weak tea, but it was not turgid with silt and mulm like the river. Instead, it was clear. We could see every rock and log and every clump of water plants. We could watch fish moving through it and hovering in the eddies. The flow was palpable here. The narrower banks were deeply undercut; spring flows must have been powerfully hydraulic.

Looking ahead, we could see that the stream flowed out of woods. Rotten-bark smells overlaid the scent of the marsh and raised peat bog, confirming the nearness of ridges with trees. Tamaracks, beeches, alders, cedars; shade in the groves and with any luck a campsite.

The water looked so fast-moving and so clear, and the sun had been so harsh. The kids demanded a swim break.

We called the place Pistol Brown and claimed it for the King of Spain. If de Balboa and Colombo could do it, we could do it. It was nobody’s ideal site, entirely rough. We had to dig through the duff to mineral soil to make a firepit, and we had some small seedlings and ferns to clear for tent spaces. But there was room for five or six tents, easy, along with a spot for a kitchen area. We felt we had something to show the others.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous31-inthecedargrovemooseHwy.jpg

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous35-BOKAfirepit.jpg

Pistol Brown’s younger trees were chewed by beavers. Reedbeds have little with which to make dams, after all. We found firewood, with the bark off, cut to length by our totem animal, the Beaver. They don’t stack it, but we accepted it with thanksgiving. There was a set of bear tracks. Hmm! And the frilly webbed feet of geese had made imprints in the mud near the landing. But the moose had been there the most often. The place was clearly the moose highway to the streamside.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous32-settingupinMooseHwy.jpg

Ravens cawed ominously. We cast aside doubt, though. The working name of the site became the Moose Highway Camp, not Pistol Brown. We had to avoid the Moose’s Restrooms, for instance. Supper was my A.c.s. and Justin’s brook trout, two cans of pears. Upstream in the morning! We went to bed, a moose passed through the campsite, and I heard mice. Then it rained, inevitably, in the night, giving us lovely mist in the morning. Home fries, pancakes, and off into the cool misty stream. We all lay damp towels and clothes over the tops of our loads, hoping to have the sun of the new day dry some of them.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous24-PistolGreen-uptheNicatou.jpg

 

[McKenna]

I look at these pictures, Cant, and think they could be used as a spread in an L.L. Bean catalog.



Lovely, keep going. Enjoying this very much.

 

[cantdog]

I have to stress that the pictures are static. The sky moves all the time relative to the horizon, the trees slide into new visual arrangements constantly due to the winding stream, which makes you point yourself in a new direction and swing in loops.

Finally, and most importantly, is the moving water. Moving water snags the eye and holds it. It is always a fascination. People walking on a bridge will want to regard the water if they can. It's good to just stare at the surf on the ocean. Something about it is magically important, and, I think, soothing somehow, if where one stands or sits to view it is a comfortable place, not windy or wet or cold or something.

We had the moving water all around us for hours every day, and a campfire, which is much like that, at night. The mental or emotional life on one of these trips is what sets them aside, and much of it is the motion of fluids: sky and clouds, water, fire.

Nature, when it does things, is right to do them, we think. The movements of the natural world are soothing, fascinating, but the content is always rightness. And nature is endlessly detailed. The closer you look, the more you magnify, the more detail there is to see. Like a feather. Artificial things resolve much more quickly to some uniform material, plastic or linoleum or what have you, where the progression of detail ceases, but the natural is endlessly complex.

I'm no expert. I'm kind of a patron of the natural; I don't know that much about it, but I know what I like.

 

[cantdog]

Once we turned up Nicatous Stream at Pistol Green we were exploring country new to us all. And a beautiful stream we found. The stream changed character every mile or two, fast clear water over a shallow gravel bed through wild meadows (Pistol Green), tight meanders around maple groves (with moose), broad slow channels though wide marshes, steep rapids twisting down a narrow valley and quiet dead waters bordered by deep spruce and cedar forest.

It is the single most beautiful stream I have been on.

The morning mist held through some of the lower stream, with its narrow undercut banks, big boulders and fallen trees. Overhanging trees shaded the deep and fast water, and the rocks and logs provided eddies and cover. Trouty it was, and twistier than any snake. Justin was slavering to fish in every bend.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous30-lowerNicatousStream.jpg

A flatter gradient followed. The stream became shallower and far broader.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous36-NicatousStreamopens.jpg

Trees receded into the distance. Open marsh with the sun sleeting down on us, and also reflecting up on us off the surface like a reflector oven. But even here, we saw trout, despite the lack of shade. The carpet of yellow-green underwater plants, leaves like long ribbons, gave them shade and shelter. And would have tangled any motor. Our six Canada geese appeared here again.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous37-NicStream.jpg

The marsh came to and end. Here the stream came to the marsh down over the shoulder of a hill. At the beginning of the steeper section was a rocky zone with a sandy bottom. The tea color was gone. It acquired that in the marshes, evidently, because it was much clearer now. It rushed through too fast to paddle comfortably against. The time had come to step out and just pull the canoes along. We stopped to eat and to swim. The sandy bottom and fast clear water gushing between the rocks were a fine swimming spot. Justin fished it.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous39-thatLLBeanguyatSandyBott.jpg

 

[cantdog]

Looking up the stream from Sandy Bottom Swimming Hole:

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous40-startingthedrag.jpg

The first bend after Sandy Bottom was the beginning of the steeper part. Before very long it was bony rapids. We were following the description in the AMC guide, which said much of this was class II and III rapids, in the spring. It recommended a "pleasant picnic spot' at a place called Idiot Dog Falls.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous41-draggingtoIdiotDogFalls.jpg

The rocky gorge contined beyond those falls for a good mile and a half. We were hoping the pleasant spot had room for tents.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous42-ArrivingIdiotDogFalls.jpg

 

[cloudy]

Just beautiful, cant.