Waterlines -- A Maine Sea Kayaking Journal

The following is part one of a two-part guest blog by Leslie Gregory of Swanville, Maine.   Paddling with Leslie, I am frequently reminded that when seeking adventure or beauty, it is not always necessary to look far from home.
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2/28    A  few miles north of town, there flows a river.  It drops out of a lake and winds exhaustingly around muddy bends, startling out pairs of ducks and groupings of geese.  Other days, the river is frozen, and on a good year offers a week of skating for miles and miles.  Some years, I can ski on snow along the river’s edge that reminds me of confectioner’s sugar.  The river runs parallel to a road, and while the length of the road is 7.3 miles, there are dozens of miles of kayaking and canoeing, hunting, fishing, skiing, snowmobiling, biking, ATVing and hiking within a few miles of the river’s edge.    The word paradise comes to mind.

I only made it up to Sugarloaf once last year for its epic winter of downhill skiing.  But at least 50 times in the 2011 winter, I put on my skis and journeyed out my back door for another adventure.  Depending on the wind and conditions of trails, I would ski on the river’s edge or find vantage points to visit.  Then came the ice. That’s when the groomed snowmobile trails really came in handy.

My son spent many Saturdays zipping over to the pond on his snowmobile, dragging the jet sled behind, loaded up with a tent, heater, sandwiches and iced tea.  I’d ski over to say hi and check on them, then follow the river’s curves south. He almost always got a fish or at least a flag, and in the spring, he’ll be back in his canoe, bobbing for bass.

4/8  Whitewater has had my attention these last few weeks which has kept me out of the hood, but it’s time to run across the street and check on my kayak, and see if the river is open at my neighbor’s put in. No whitewater here, though I’ve seen this river billed as class 2 or 3.  Only if you count the drops over the beaver dams!   I know there are a few lingering ice shelves, but it won’t be long til I can run down my neighbor’s driveway and launch my kayak for a quick sunset paddle.  The geese will be there, the ducks will be hiding in the grass.

4/14  Sure enough I did go for a paddle this afternoon.  The days are getting longer so I was out before sunset.  The river is flooded, the grass and cattails a study in muddy banks.  I’ve been out a few times a week to see the different stages of spring.  Eagles and osprey fish from tall pines, and the geese and ducks rise off the water, always startled and vigilant.  The river is narrow and wooded in parts but opens into floodplains and ponds.  It is wetlands along much of its shore, so a tumble into the water could result in some pretty nasty recovery work.  Mud mud mud — I’ve felt it claim my neoprene boots, sucking and schlucking me deeper.  The river was carved out in its banks and very full today.  It made me feel full in my chest, happy, delighted.

   I paddled with the wind and current til I got to the gusting pond, circled around and paddled up against the wind and current, both of which were thankfully mild.  Over the scattered beaver dams, a few weeks ago I couldn’t get through without portaging.  I could come here every day, and it would be different each day.  Some days are still and cold, others raucous and windy.  The sky is ever changing, a marmalade of blue and white, greys and purples.  In a few months, the river will be overgrown at my put in and difficult to navigate.  Then it will rain a few days, and it will be brimming, nudging at my kayak to launch.

6/7   When approached from the shore, the river is uninviting, and inaccessible, a small ribbon of wet amongst blowdowns and grass clods.  But there is something compelling about it.  I’ll think of it as one might a dear friend, “I wonder how so and so is doing?”  My thoughts are punctuated by musings of how the river is doing, is it full and flooded, can you see the huge clumps of mud, are the redwinged blackbirds back?

I rode my bike across the street just to check.  The level was going down fast.  My feet were caked with mud getting in the boat.  The ducks harbored in the deep grass, the males darted out to divert my attention from their young, switchbacking around curves until they skimmed across the water’s surface, launched into a golden afternoon, and then circled back around. Mayflies lifted on a curl of breeze, and the mosquitoes gathered in the cooling afternoon.   Rippling a glass surface, bass and pickerel surfaced on the sunlit pond for feeding.

June 18  Here’s one of my favorite little workouts in the summertime:  we drive down to the lake to my folks’ house where Baxter will mow the lawn.  I hop in River Runner, my whitewater kayak, and charge the stiffening southwest breeze, paddle nonstop 3 miles to the dam, portage the dam to the river on the other side, and ride the twisting shallow waters, swatting at horseflies, mosquitoes and swampbrush.  I navigate the beaver dams, sometimes portaging, sometimes directing my boat off to the side with my hands grabbing at branches and sometimes just riding my boat over the neatly woven branches that further diminish the flow of water below. I arrive, bugbitten and briar scratched, take out at my normal put-in, run the long driveway and up the hill to my house, take 5 minutes to drink water and regroup, hop on my bike and head back to the lake, where Bax is just popping open an iced tea on the deck to take in the view.  A few days later, I do it in reverse, leaving my house to go up river, ride the southwest breeze down the lake, rejuvenate on the deck and then bike home.  Life is good in the summertime.

July 26  The summer days have been filled with lake paddling and ocean ventures.  This afternoon I helped with a tour on the bay, and we paddled up to the mouth of Goose River where the dam holds back a lovely pool of green sparkles.  The rising moon was almost full as it played hide and seek with the horse tail clouds.  I contemplated the up-river –how it is overgrown and shambling over dead branches and muddy compost, alongside balled clumps of tall rivergrass.  It’s been awhile since I’ve biked across the street, and my river kayak is enjoying early retirement at the lake.   It’s nice to see the river spilling over the mossy green rocks here, splashing white moonlight into a waning sunset.  I always think of the river winding aimlessly through woodlands and grasslands, rarely do I see this convergence where the eels and seaweed rush in with the rising tide.  I linger in this zenith, holding the moment.

Many people have put in at the boat landing on Swan Lake Avenue and paddled Upper Mason Pond.  Some  have followed the winding course of Goose River south from Swan Lake.  Others have kayaked to the dam on Goose River at the place where it spills into Belfast Harbor, looked upstream, and wondered.  We had done all these things. Many times.  A curiosity about connecting the dots, an ethic of “paddle lots, drive little,” and a penchant  to spend the good part of the day on the water were all part of our decision-making.  A November day of sunshine and temperatures in the fifties sealed the deal.

Could we paddle Goose River from Swan Lake to the sea?  The question was there.  The idea of a backyard-style expedition was born.

It was a somewhat outlandish proposition.  After eight miles of mind-numbing meandering, we would face five dams in the space of the last two miles, and a portage around each. We had never heard of anyone running the lower section and had never scouted it from its banks.  Why would anyone attempt to run  it, we conjectured, unless it was part of a bigger trip. The idea seemed just crazy enough to give it a try.

After planting a car at the far end, within sight of the ocean, we put in just below the dam at the south end of Swan Lake and paddled 50 yards north through the culvert to get as close as we could to the lake.  Then we turned south toward the sun and the sea and headed south.

Ahead of us, though we didn’t fully appreciate it yet, were ten or more miles of river.  Roads cross or touch the river only a half dozen times in those ten miles.  For the vast majority of the distance, Goose River is hidden away in a private valley, visible only to those moving along it.  Along the way, we would sight muskrat, eagle, ducks, and heron.  And for the first eight miles, at least, not any people.

The ten miles of river have three distinct personalities.  From Swan Lake to Smith Pond, the river is shallow, muddy, and rife with beaver activity.  It winds through alder thickets and has a closed in feeling.  South of Smith Pond to Upper Mason Pond, the river deepens and and weaves through a broad grassland.   It becomes a home for geese, duck and muskrats.  The forest shrinks back, and the sky opens up,   The next stretch, from Upper Mason Pond to the sea alternates between flat reservoir and pitched stream, with each of the reservoirs being held back by a dam.

As we had anticipated, the water level upper section of Goose River was low, and the flow was minimal.  This section of the river is best paddled in the spring or early summer — or after a period of heavy rainfall. The river here meanders without much sense of direction.  We pushed over a beaver dam that held back about three feet of water.  Below that, the river depth was shallower still.  We paddled hard to keep some momentum through the many turns, well aware of the miles still ahead.

The deeper water of Smith Pond was a welcome relief.  We shared an energy bar there and pushed on.

The river meanders interminably between Smith Pond and the Smart Road — and even more so after that.  We had paddled this section many times and in many seasons.   On this day, the bright sunshine and the subtle hues of the grasses and distant hillsides created a quiet kind of beauty.

By the time we reached Upper Mason Pond, the sun was moving with purpose toward the horizon.  It hastened our purpose as well.   We portaged the first dam, got back in our kayaks, and paddled the narrow channel that opens into Lower Mason Pond, which was still lit with golden sunlight.

We had hoped to eat a late lunch there along a sunny shoreline, but daylight was becoming a scarce commodity.  We paddled on through the pond, portaged the dam, and then bumped down the shallow stream to where it crosses Swan Lake Avenue near Goose River Grocery.

Two dams and two quick portages later put us again in the flat water of the reservoir above dam #6.

By this time, long shadows had crept over the water, though the sun still brilliant lit the the red and orange-leafed trees above us.  We took out at dam #6 and portaged around  it, and then along a wide, rock-filled stream — only to find that stream levels there were too low for paddling.

After walking down along the stream a few hundred yards to confirm that it wasn’t getting any deeper, we left the kayaks in the woods, bushwacked up to the road, and continued our southward journey on foot.   By then that the sun had set, and a chill filled the darkening air.  I jogged the last half mile in an attempt to warm up.  The car was parked down near the bay, and it was dark by the time I reached it.

Dry clothes, heated seats, and lunch were a welcome find  and helped ease the disappointment of not being  able to finish the journey by water.  But our path on and along the river had taken us places we had not been before.  Success is never guaranteed; adventures are only adventures because you don’t know the outcome.    And now we get to return and try again, to run the lower part of the river — maybe after a big November rain, or maybe in the spring.