Passadumkeag to Nicatous

[cantdog]

After bacon and pancakes we did our laundry in the Power Rinse at the upper ledge drop. The flow had worn smooth the granite and the drop had scoured out a rounded depression below the lip. It was like a bathtub-- a granite jacuzzi, in the rapids. Sit in it and endless gallons of water swirled around you and rushed by. The lower ledge was more like a rough waterslide.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous46-LaundryDayattheBathtub.jpg

Layover days always mean good food. Mark baked a pan of brownies, to perfection, in the Dutch oven. Being outdoors and travelling burns a lot of calories. We ate much more than we would have in town, and we ate more fat. But no one gained weight on the trip, and fat is always yummy.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous45-IdiotDogFallsledgedrops.jpg

Monday: We hashed bacon and potatoes with eggs and rolled them up in a wrap to eat out of hand, and struck camp early and efficiently. More joyous effort up the gorge, more gorgeous resting spots with waxwings in the trees and wildflowers on the sweet brink of laughing streams, eating chocolate. The darning needles had black velvety-looking wings and wore iridescent purple. A great day.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous47-draggingaboveFallsMonday.jpg

Soon enough we were able to step into the canoes and paddle the flatwater stretches close to Nicatous. Real lotuses, irises, black ducks-- full of trout and unsullied, ringed by real woods. Then in the final 120 meters we heard children and outboards.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous48-heartsdesire-flatwaterat.jpg

The portage was a bitch. There's no good landing behind there, only a steep footpath leading from the road to a notch between boulders. We offloaded the cargo onto rocks and then lifted the canoes bodily over them and up the bank. Across the road fifty feet away was a mowed, grassy lawn in front of Porter Point Cabins.

We were stupid-tired and staring about the place at the first human beings we'd encountered the whole trip. They looked askance at us, barbarians appearing from the wilderness as we were.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous53-housesboatspeople.jpg

 

[cantdog]

The rest of humanity had a suspicious and alien aspect. Everything about them pointed up how different they were.

There were lots of floats chained to docks and people in lounge chairs. Marinas of power boats tied to the piers or buzzing around the lake. A tall yellow grader clanked down the impeccably groomed dirt road; it rumbled past road signs and advertising signs every few yards.

A three hundred fifty pound man (160 kilos) drove into Porter Point on a very large four wheeler ATV and out again carrying with him a six year old with a helmet on her head. He looked grotesque, man; he must have been six or seven times the mass of the child. Without a machine to carry him he could never have managed to see the woods. His machine never left smooth gravel driveway or graded road, so he was experiencing the woods as scenery more than environment.

SUVs and pickups backed and filled to use the parking slots by the landing. Hundreds of square miles of real woods all around them, and they were crowding one another to come to this development.

They had levelled lawns, these places, in the middle of the woods; shrubs and hedges! Every boulder had been moved to lakeside or pushed off the road into the trees. If they came here because the woods were so beautiful, what were they doing landscaping? If they wanted to see animals and birds, why the constant motor noise?

But we would probably have found some rationalization anyway, even if they’d all been Sierra Clubbers with nothing motorized except their hybrids. We’d been several days relying on one another. Perhaps humans are meant to live in small, close-knit groups. Maybe that’s why we fell so easily into the tribal attitude. Their cars, their motors, their casualness even, seemed wrong.

 

[cantdog]

The wakes of powered boats rocked us many times as we went, but one could not have ordered a la carte and gotten better weather.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous54-lookingforacampsite.jpg

If you've been on Nicatous, you know the one we found. The little knoll was the end of a peninsula, but you'd never walk to it or from it. It was connected to the main shore by a neck of marsh and bog.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous55-Sandypointfestooned.jpg

Sandy Point had all the beach the kids would want, and plenty of room. It was an exposed site, though, and it was all sand. A sandy knoll with pines and even some blueberries, a gravel beach before and a sand beach behind.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous64-Justinlazing.jpg

The back beach, the one facing away from the swarm of aliens at the north end of the lake, had been visited recently by a large dog, maybe for quite some time. We called that one Number Two.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous58-Ian-BeachNumberTwo.jpg

That night, no firewood was needed; we fired up the stove instead, ate a huge one dish meal and were all abed by sundown. We were all proud of each other. We had come from Idiot Dog Falls to Sandy Point all in one day. Now for some Lake Time.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous57-viewtowardBeachNumberTwo.jpg

 

[cantdog]

Okay, that'll do us, I think. Here's the six geese, though. We saw them a few more times. This was at Broken Faucet beach, or actually the marsh which sits behind Broken Faucet beach. Two parents and four younger ones. I understand they take the family once through all the migration routes before the young ones are on their own.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/nicatous/Nicatous67-SixGeese-BrokenFaucet.jpg

 

[CharleyH]

Incredible trip, Cant. I read alot more, (thanks ) which just tweaked my imagination, and the photos confirm it, although you know what stood out for me! Breakfast, thunderclouds, and heavy portaging aches! Not to mention your total desription of every sort of naure that made one almost feel the oars dip quietly... prehistoric (untouched by humans).

 

[cantdog]

Thanks for the kind words.

The canoe is a kinesthetic thing, a feeling in the bones.

The feeling when you first come away from the land and are afloat, the feeling of the current under you, or balancing the wind that wants to turn your prow with a flip of the paddle, gauged by nothing but the feel of it. Like dancing. Deftness has its own interior sensation.

It's all right, meeting force with mechanism, but there is something especially fine about mastering counterforces with muscle. Sailing partakes of that, too.

Canadians who are not hopelessly urban have the same incredible good fortune as I do in Maine, to have real woods. Rob Graham tells me he has canoe camped, too. You also know the ambiance of the natural, being aware of the movements and forces, the other lives of animals and plants each striving. I'm glad to think that the emails and photos have evoked those memories and sensations for you.

 

[LadyJeanne]

Amazing. Amazing words, amazing photos. Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

 

[cantdog]

bumping-I need some of this

Took a couple minutes to find this thread on the dial-up at work.

I'll be posting one like it of the Mexico trip in a few days.

 

[Guest]

Took a couple minutes to find this thread on the dial-up at work.

I'll be posting one like it of the Mexico trip in a few days.

They're beautiful, cant.

Can't wait to see the Mexico pics.

 

[shereads]

Who says we don't pay you? You always cash my virtual checks for thousands of virtual dollars, don't you?

Keep posting.

 

[starrkers]

Beautiful country there.

Wildlife question from a dryland creature : are beavers nocturnal?

 

[cantdog]

Beautiful country there.

Wildlife question from a dryland creature : are beavers nocturnal?

No, they are out during the day. We see them often enough. But we also hear them in the early evening, usually 'complaining,' that is, thrashing their tails in warning because we are present.

Imagine a sound made by a rock the size of a child's head which was thrown out into a lake. As a cartoonist, I would have written KA-STOOZH! to describe it. That's the sound the beaver tails make. But they leave off doing that, an hour or so after sunset.

 

[MagicaPractica]

Oh, lovely. *sigh*

 

[starrkers]

No, they are out during the day. We see them often enough. But we also hear them in the early evening, usually 'complaining,' that is, thrashing their tails in warning because we are present.

Imagine a sound made by a rock the size of a child's head which was thrown out into a lake. As a cartoonist, I would have written KA-STOOZH! to describe it. That's the sound the beaver tails make. But they leave off doing that, an hour or so after sunset.

Oh, good. Thanks for that.
They have a cameo in my Earth Day story and I suddenly got worried that I'd stuffed up their lifestyle when I read about you hearing them in the evening.

 

[cantdog]

Nope. They're daytime creatures, all right. I love 'em right to death, man; but then I canoe!