Canoeing

Flatwater Zen: The Lure of Adirondack Canoeing

by Mark Bowie

Under a torrential downpour Adirondack guide “Griz” Caudle and I launched our solo canoes from Rollins Pond state campground, bound for a hole in a railroad bed on the opposite shore. As the Adirondack Scenic Railroad snakes through the northern Adirondacks from Lake Placid to Utica, its tracks skirt the northwest shore of Rollins. At their base is a culvert, which corrals the outlet of Rock Pond to keep it from undermining the rail bed as the stream empties into Rollins. The culvert can also be viewed as a symbol: a portal between a popular campground teeming with hundreds of trailers, tents, and colorful tarps on one side, and pristine boreal bog wilderness on the other.

Griz and I carried our boats up and over the rail bed and put-in the stream on the other side. The downpour eventually dwindled to drizzle. We pulled upstream through a corridor of tamaracks and spindly spruce. As if in a motion picture, pitcher plants and sundew sprouting from floating sphagnum mats, slid by. They glistened with raindrops. White lilies decorated the channel, sprinkled amongst giant lily pads. Beaver dams blocked it; we scampered up and over half a dozen on our way upstream. We also passed several beaver lodges, one, was the tallest either of us had ever seen. Ours was a magical journey through a northern forest Eden and we relished the beauty in utter solitude. Unfortunately, due to time constraints we never reached the pond. Until our next trip, it’ll remain a tantalizing clearing deep in the woods.

Two aspects of canoe travel, I find, lend it its charm and appeal. First, it can take us to out-of-the-way places we ordinarily couldn’t reach, opening new venues for exploration. Paddling is one of the few ways Griz and I may ever reach the unfathomable treasures of Rock Pond. Lying just south of the St. Regis Canoe Wilderness Area, it’s remote and inaccessible to motorized craft. We could hike in, but there’s so much more to experience of a body of water from its back, not limited merely to exploring the shoreline. The canoe can reach beaches, for instance, unwalked by the summertime masses, and other spots maybe never before seen, or trod on, or photographed; places which have never had an adoring poem or a heartfelt song written about them. Water is no longer a deterrent to navigation, but a pathway to discovery. And extended trips are possible. One can load a canoe with a tent, sleeping bag, food and provisions, and paddle for as long as his supplies, his imagination, or his woodcraft hold out.

The second endearing capability of canoeing is a visceral one: it allows to us do something our bodies alone are physically incapable of doing – float on water without getting wet. It’s a supernatural act, an experience beyond our realm. We drift as if in suspended animation, floating over a hidden landscape, hints of which can be glimpsed along the shores, or by peering into clear waters. There’s a certain mystery and excitement in that. Often on flatwater paddles, time slows to Mother Nature’s pace. The dip of the paddle into quiet waters produces a smooth rhythmic glide, an efficiency of effort and motion where paddle, water, muscle and mind blend together.

Simple in form and design, the canoe can perform feats of mobility other vehicles can’t. Automobiles, for instance, can’t visit the 200-some islands in Lake George. Powerboats and sailboats can’t take us up the narrowest or shallowest reaches of the other 2,800 Adirondack lakes and ponds, or along the vast majority of the 6,500 miles of rivers, streams, brooks, and creeks. Yet a canoe, with its minimal freeboard and light weight, can. And it requires no fuel, only a paddler and a paddle for propulsion.

The canoe’s finest attribute may be its portability. In the Adirondacks, paddlers can travel hundreds of miles via interconnected waterways and short carries, following the traditional canoe routes of American Indians, early settlers, hunters and trappers. Author Chris Jerome and her husband, John, re-traced the 1883 trip of explorer George Washington Sears (a.k.a. Nessmuk), from First Lake, at Old Forge, to Paul Smiths and back. Canoeist Michael Brace of Buffalo recently carried a customized ultralight canoe up Mount Marcy to the ultimate source of the Hudson River, Lake Tear of the Clouds, then paddled downstream all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.

Unlike the Adirondack guides of the past, who shouldered 85-pound wooden canoes and guideboats through the woods, today’s canoeists need not be burdened by heavy, cumbersome craft. The newest models incorporate lightweight, high tech materials, like kevlar and carbon fiber, to make them evermore portable. My Lost Pond Boat, made by Hornbeck Boats in Olmsteadville, is 10-feet long and weighs 16 pounds. I can lift it with two fingers. For longer hauls, I mount it on an external frame backpack, freeing my hands to carry gear and provisions.

During a sunrise paddle on Minerva Lake, in Essex County, I found the surface like glass. Mist rose in gauzy shrouds. Mallards ran along the surface, furiously flapping their wings for take-off. The ducks rose slowly, and as their wingtips lifted off the surface, they created rings which radiated outward then dissolved. Water will also quickly wipe clean any trace of a paddler’s passage. Unlike hiking trails, which show with logarithmic progression the effect of feet trampling ground, the paths of canoeists are obscured by the plasticity, the reformation, of water. Michael Brace may have left footprints on his climb to Lake Tear of the Clouds, but the Hudson bears no trace of his journey. What a canoeist will leave behind, hopefully, is a reverence for what he has passed through. And maybe in his wake will come someone else who experiences the same.

Mark Bowie of Pittsfield, Massachusetts is a professional nature photographer and writer, concentrating mainly on the Adirondacks. For information on his upcoming public presentations, exhibits and photo workshops, visit: www.markbowie.com.

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