The Rapids at Churchill Dam

Being far north in Maine and towards the Eastern end of the time zone, concurrent with the summer solstice, the sun starts turning up the dimmer on the world earlier than I’ve experience before, starting somewhere in the middle of the 3 o’clock hour. While I can’t pinpoint the exact time as I never actually looked at a clock or my phone, I knew it because being in a tent, everything starts getting lighter and I start waking up, my circadian rhythm in tune with the sun completely. I finally looked at the time well after I had begun waking and it wasn’t even 4 yet, so I lay as long as I could, tossing and turning till I couldn’t take it anymore and evacuated my tent. While I might have expected the sun, I was treated to a thick fog so dense that I couldn’t see the dam a 100 yards off, though I could hear the constant thrum of the waters rushing through. The black flies had luckily died off the week before, but the gnats were vicious. I put on an extra jacket and my head net and needed to walk in order to keep them at least somewhat at bay. Even then, I felt like they were crawling through the head net and before long I had close to half a dozen bites on each exposed hand. While they were a nuisance, they paled in comparison to what could have been a nightmare with the black flies, so I shrugged them off, dealt with the itch and the bites soon dissipated more quickly than their larger cousins’ bites would have.

After making coffee, I waited for the rest of the camp to arise and packed my gear in the meantime, the fog dissipating slowly, revealing the world it had blanketed so completely. By the time everyone was up, the fog was almost gone and soon after breakfast, think we had oatmeal, we packed up our gear and brought it to the road across the dam for the ranger to drive it up ahead for us. This was a big relief as it meant we wouldn’t have to worry about the gear weighing down the canoes as we ran the rapids. As the ranger went over the rapids with us and what to expect, their was a palpable touch of anxiousness in the air as none of the scouts, nor myself, had actually run rapids on a river in canoes before. We got a crash course in reading the river, how to spot submerged rocks, how to avoid the snags along the edge, and to aim for the arrows in the current pointing downriver, not up. Couple all that with an increase in water flow from 700cfs to over 4000cfs, and our rapids were a mixture of class II and III. Helmets on, we decided the order in which we would run them, went over hand signals again, and put our canoes in and gathered in the water making ready. I was sure at least one canoe would flip.

Our guide went first and every boat after tried to follow her lead, myself and another adult in the rear to extricate anyone who had issues or got marooned up on a rock. It was way more fun than I anticipated and I only heard shouts and screams of joy from the scouts. Nobody flipped their canoe, but on more than one occasion, we had to pull a canoe with lighter scouts off a rock they didn’t see and careened right on top of. There was even one time I got out and started to walk up the edge of the river to pull one canoe out of a jam when, as I was almost at its bow, they became loose and floated past, leaving me to walk back to my canoe. It was a blast, the scouts smiling from ear to ear, and everyone getting a little wet from the waves splashing over our sides. I also learned that my canoe partner, well into his 50’s still had trouble with left and right, but had almost no issue with port and starboard when being warned of impending rocks in the river. So I called out both left and port or right and starboard when announcing issues ahead.

The rapids ended too fast. I would have liked an entire day of running them, but alas, we had a campsite to make and our gear to load back into our canoes. We pulled off at an old washed out bridge where a whole lot of gear was stacked, waiting for their respective crews to gather and load back on. We managed it all in short order, the sun finally managing to break through the fog and low lying clouds and making its presence felt. It was turning into a beautiful day and with it only being late morning, we were already halfway to our campsite and had another 5-7 miles to paddle which was expected to take no more than a couple hours. The next section of river to the head of Lake Umsaskis was absolutely gorgeous. Tall fir and cedar trees came right down to the river, marbled blue sky speckled and streaked with airy clouds held steady above, and a gentle breeze took the low heat of the sun down river. We meandered around the turns, running a few small rips and rapids here and there, every corner seeming to beckon us further into the wilderness, the only sight of humanity being a handful of other canoes making their own trek down the Allagash. While we didn’t see an moose, there were plentiful bald eagle sightings along with song birds galore.

We could tell we were approaching our campsite as the river began to widen and slow, our canoes naturally reducing speed and increasing the need for human power to get us where we needed to go. With the hills rising up in the distance, we spotted our campsite off on the right of the river, Chisholm Brook. We pulled off to the side, unloaded our boats, and lugged our gear up to the clearing where we formed our pack line and the scouts went to work setting up tents and and the dining area. We scoured the surrounding area for dry wood to make a fire with and in the process found plentiful moose droppings, ranging in size from what I would expect to be a yearling all the way to a full grown bull. Yet, despite evidence of them having come through, none of the massive elusive cervids were spotted.

The scouts got a fire going, a few of us took a canoe back out to explore the waters around the small islands at the beginning of the lake, and before long, a scout who had smuggled a football along got a game of catch going in the field along the river. One scout, who was tending the fire, annoyed at the wind direction and the smoke constantly blowing in his eyes, pulled out his blue swim goggles and wore them almost the rest of the day, tending the fire and playing catch. It was a humorous afternoon and before long, dinner was upon us and the sun began to set. It turned out to be a great first day on the water and everyone was waiting in anticipation to the next. There was some rain in the forecast, but that far north, you can never be sure what will happen as just the week before the forecast called for rain almost every day but so far there had been minimal rain fall and way more sun than I expected. Memories were being created that would last a lifetime.