A Day Kayaking on the River
A person will do many things to find a calm spot in their lives, a place where the tyranny of the job, the burden of family responsibility, and the terror of an unrealized future are left behind for a few brief moments of serenity and quiet.
People have been known to go to extreme lengths to achieve that pinnacle of soulful clarity. They might stop eating and fast for days on end, hire a professional masseuse, have long conversations with a priest, or even learn to meditate.
I’ve tried all of these.
But lately I’d found that sense of balance more difficult to achieve. Maybe it’s because of gas prices forcing me to trim the family food budget, or the cost of fuel oil rising so fast and so high that next winter we’ll have to use all the blankets in the house to keep ourselves warm enough to sleep through the night. Or maybe it’s an environment of fear where I’m surrounded by danger on all sides, whether it’s from bird flu dropping from the sky, Osama Bin Laden blowing up my homeland, the NSA charging through my door because I spoke to my Aunt Tilly the other day about her oatmeal cookie recipe, or gay couples conducting gang warfare with evangelists in my back yard.
I don’t know.
All I do know is that sometimes I feel a little fuzzy around the edges and I occasionally need a quiet spot.
So last weekend I and my buddy decided to kayak the St. John River in Northern Maine.
My friend was the one with experience in a kayak, whereas I was just some shmoe from Texas, where rivers are about as common as rattlesnakes are in Maine. But even so, neither one of us had ridden the namesake of the St. John Valley.
Early Sunday morning we caught a ride with some friends who were on their way to Allagash for some fishing and fiddlehead picking. We rode up to Walker Brook, about 10 or so miles northwest of Allagash.
We hauled our boats to the river and we sat in them with surprising ease for a craft that wiggles around more than the head of a two-year-old when you’re trying to give him ear drops. Then we scooted along the surface of the mud until the current lifted us and carried our boats downstream.
Our friends hollered, “Have fun! Be careful!”
A kayak, I soon discovered, is like a hummingbird.
Within 30 seconds of leaving the shore I was paddling like crazy as my little boat seemed to skate along the surface of the water, picking up speed in a rather startling fashion. The current rapidly swept us down the river. Within a minute I’d gotten soaked a couple of times, and blessed the insight of our lawmakers that they require boaters to wear lifejackets.
Now the trip down from Walker Brook to Riverside Park in Fort Kent took us about 9 hours. The first three hours were exciting as we navigated through a range of rapids that never seemed too dangerous (except for a brief moment at a spot called Rankin Rapids that certainly caught my attention).
But soon after Rankin Rapids the river widened significantly and the water slowed and there wasn’t anything to do for miles and miles. Sometimes we’d paddle to keep our kayaks pointed downstream, but other times we’d just drift along, not moving a muscle and watching the world swirl and swing by as we seemingly sat still.
For a period of time I didn’t think about the world and the world declined to think about me. And that was just fine.
While I was in that quiet spot, I was filled with a renewed sense of purpose and a healthier perspective on the little hassles with which we must all deal, and a better understanding of how much I should allow my concern over terrorist attacks, the distraction of a gay marriage amendment, the illegal scrutiny of Homeland Security, and rising gas prices affect my everyday life.
But like all things, the advance of time and the five senses forced my little alpha-wave head trip to come to an end and we knuckled down for some serious paddling.
At a point in the river just east of St. Francis we came across some birds that had dug little holes into the clay wall of the shoreline. There must have been a hundred of these miniature cliff dwellers, like winged Anasazi Indians, which came scrambling out of their modest holes to circle around our kayaks and soundly scold us for having the temerity to paddle by their part of the river. I later learned from one of our helpful librarians that people call these birds bank swallows. They are the smallest swallow in North America, and form large communities along some of the rivers in Maine.
Along with the bank swallow, we saw hundreds of Canadian geese that would float quietly ahead of us until we came too close. Then they would take flight from the river, sometimes sloping towards us before zooming off in one of those National Geographic moments of picturesque avian grace and self-induced slow motion that eventually end up on commercials to sell you investment portfolios.
But that really didn’t matter.
The physical effort, the beautiful scenery and the active wildlife reminded us that, as urban as our world can seem, we have some of the finest opportunities for outdoor recreation in the world. With barely any planning at all, any one of us can borrow a canoe, or load a backpack, or just throw a fishing pole into the car and within a few minutes to a couple of hours be engaged in activities that only the wealthiest people can usually afford.
When we finally slid to shore in Fort Kent it was with the knowledge that we had traveled nearly 40 miles or more and seen some of the most beautiful land on this amazing and precious planet.
