Canoeing the Croix with Kids

Max and I on Little Falls on the St. Croix

A couple weeks ago I spent six days on Spednick Lake and the St. Croix River, which run betweeen Maine's eastern border and New Brunswick. It was a wonderful trip, the third year in a row that I've done a multi-day trip with kids and another adult, Tim Woodworth. My son, Max, and his friend Paul (Tim's son) were 11 years old this year, so they began at age 9. This year we brought along Paul's sister Fran, age 8, for the first time.

It is an absolute joy watching these kids gain paddling skills and the sense of accomplishment that comes with them. The boys have become quite competent paddlers -- far better than most adults I see on the water -- and Max and I make a good team. Maneuvering in Class II, we're in good sync (generally), and there are few criticisms or recriminations when mistakes occur.

It is a time for us to play together, to talk about anything with no interruptions other than the occasional stretch of whitewater that requires our attention, or to remain silent and simply enjoy the notion that we are working together, doing something that we both love.

When we camp, the kids set up their own tent and keep themselves fully occupied with what they find at hand -- skipping stones, making up games -- they seem to miss their Nintendos not at all. Sleeping in tents is becoming natural to them, and they're getting into a good habit of making and breaking camp without too much prodding (some exceptions apply). More competence, more self-reliance. Tim and I do essentially all the cooking still, but the kids do most of the meal cleanup, again with less prodding as time goes by.

By the way, Max took his first canoe trip at the age of three weeks. His Mom wasn't too pleased, but I thought it would be good to start him early. Looks like I got it right for a change!

Two years ago, toward the end of the first year's trip, also on the St. Croix (year two was on the Allagash), Max asked me if we could do it again every year. What a thing to fill a father's heart!

The photo at the top of the post was taken by a woman whose name I don't know. She kindly offered to shoot us going down Little Falls on our official trip camera.

The photo below shows Fran and me on an extraordinarily windy day on Spednick Lake. It was taken by her father, Tim Woodworth. With my control hand so high, I'm using very bad form. Later on, I got the hang of using torso rotation to put more power into paddling

Bark Canoe Observation

I had the good fortune to paddle a birchbark canoe a few weeks ago at a rather odd event called the Spring Running in Augusta, Maine. The event,which celebrates the annual return of herring to the Kennebec River (i.e., they "run" up river), is a rather sorry affair overall - uninteresting displays and events, dusty and inconvenient layout - but it did have one nice feature this year.

In the small waterfront park just below Old Fort Western, the Maine chapter of the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association had a display with many beautiful boats, mostly canvas-on-cedar. Burt Libby, of Burt's Canoes in Litchfield, Maine, had a lovely display of large-scale canoe models (3-4 feet long?), showing the stages of the construction of a cedar/canvas canoe. The association had also borrowed a bark canoe belonging to the Penobscot Marine Museum, and allowed people to paddle it.

The Penobscot Marine Museum had the canoe built for it within the past few years as part of a demonstration that occurred on its grounds in Searsport, Maine. I'm sorry that I don't know the builder's name, or have any info. on its "type" -- i.e., the cultural/historical style upon which it's based. It looked to be very nicely built and it was in apparently fine shape. The sheathing appeared to be very regular beneath the frames, which had surprisingly high cross-sections, which I imagine would have been rather difficult to bend. The seams between bark sections were very neatly done; I believe they were sealed with some kind of plastic sealant rather than a more traditional material like pine rosin.

I paddled the boat for only a few minutes, kneeling in the stern, with another paddler in the bow. The river at that point is flatwater, with a bit of current; I had very little opportunity to get a feel for the boat's performance or capabilities, but the impression I got was that it felt and behaved very much like any other wooden canoe of its size and design. It felt quite stiff in a structural (as opposed to a hydrostatic) sense. The high profiles of the frames made them rather painful to kneel on, but that's certainly no fault of design or construction -- it's indicative of the paddler not having a proper pad. Having been in storage for a couple years, the canoe leaked a bit, but not excessively, and I expect that the leak would swell itself shut with more frequent use. If not, then it's no great matter to seal it. Lifting it from the water onto the floating dock, it felt not particularly light -- comparable to what a heavily-built fiberglass boat of the same size would weigh.

Although the opportunity was very limited, it was still a thrill to paddle a fairly authentic bark canoe. Thanks to the Penobscot Marine Museum and the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association for making it possible.

Nice Boat Blog

I came across a nice new boating blog that often addresses primitive boats of both western and nonwestern traditions. It's called "70.8%," which, says the blogger Thomas Armstrong, is the percentage of the earth covered by water. Take a look.