How a fascination with Thoreau and a passion for the “renegade routes” through the Maine woods brought Bob Henderson to the dreaded Mud Pond Carry ...

First ... the Inspiration
Where in North America can you paddle between three major rivers in four days of solo canoe tripping?

One of my recent destinations was Thoreau’s Maine woods. Henry David Thoreau, most famous for his reflections on society from his retreat of Walden Pond, also sought out the wilds of Maine and Quebec, and chronicled his trips in The Maine Woods published in 1864. His routes are a researcher’s dream, aptly combining the exploration of libraries and waterways.

Yet Thoreau’s inspiring works, however excellent, do not stand alone. The Maine woods also had a rich native presence, with peoples such as Abenaki and Penobscot, whose river in part I meant to travel. And I spent hours reading the classic books of eloquent “sports” of the 1880s, as adventurous fishermen of their day were called, such as T.S. Steele (1880) and Lucius L. Hubbard (1883).

His routes are a researcher's dream, aptly combining the exploration of libraries and waterways

Today the “North Forest Canoe Trail” (NFCT) initiative is re-establishing a 740 mi. (1190 km) historic waterway which celebrates these routes. (See KANAWA, Winter 2001.) The trail ends at Fort Kent, Maine near the Allagash River on the American-Canadian border. Like the famous Adirondack hiking trail, however, which now continues through New Brunswick into Gaspé Bay, Quebec, this water system continues to interior New Brunswick waterways and to the ocean via the Saint John.

Some lucky folks have paddled great stretches. In the library and on the trail, I took delight not only in Thoreau and his fellows, but also in Donnie Mullen’s modern account of his 50-plus days paddling from Old Forge, New York to Fort Kent, Maine. Like Hubbard, Thoreau and the others, Donnie paints a full picture of the woods and waters, and understands what North Forest Canoe Trail organizer Rob Centre calls “these renegade routes.”

What’s a renegade route?
In the 1800s, the main waterways through the north woods region included the Allagash / Saint John rivers, the Lake Champlain / Richelieu route, the Connecticut / Rivière St. Francois and the Chaudière / Kennebec route used by the notorious Col. Benedict Arnold. (Arnold’s ill-fated military expedition was certainly one of the continent’s great disastrous canoe trips, but that’s another story. See Suggested Reading.) Many other rivers, however, connected to these larger navigable systems. Rivers such as the Missisguoi, Moose, Saranac, Penobscot and many others served as local trade routes for native groups and also were likely used as renegade routes when the fear of raids on the mainlines was great.

Five days with the renegades
I had only five days or so to travel, yet I wanted to add first-hand experience to my library explorations, and taste as many rivers as possible. I chose a three-watershed route beginning at Moosehead Lake on the Kennebec, to Penobscot to the northward-flowing Allagash. My short solo trip would be dominated by the two height-of-land carries which figure prominently in the literature.

I started on the Kennebec, but well upstream from the point at which Benedict Arnold left the river to make his way to the Chaudière. I began at the massive 40-mile (64 km) long Moosehead Lake, which serves its region in the same way that Lake Winnipeg serves its watershed. Moosehead is big, beautiful and daunting as a paddle. I opted to follow the ways of the sports of the 1880s who usually travelled the lake by steamer with a stop at Mount Kineo.

Call a cab!
Since the Daydream Steamer is long gone, I used a water taxi for the
20 mile (32 km) trip from Rockwood. We stopped at Kineo. Mount Kineo, which rises 254 metres (763 ft.), was once a gathering place where native people collected the highly valued flint stone for arrowheads. It was a choice meeting place, the scene of at least one famous Iroquois battle and the site of America’s largest inland water hotel.

Even by today’s standards, Mt. Kineo House was massive in scale. Constructed in 1844, it burned to the ground in 1882 but was immediately rebuilt with two hundred rooms capable of housing five hundred guests. In its heyday before World War I, the complex had a dining hall that would seat 500, a 350-acre (140 ha) farm to serve its guests, more than 400 employees and 60 registered canoe guides. Most guests stayed two weeks to fish, canoe and golf (as early as 1900 here). Times changed and today all that remains is a big open space, some cottages and yes, a golf course. (The flint still makes excellent arrowheads.)

The notorious Northeast Carry
For Steele and Hubbard and so many other travellers, Mt. Kineo House was an important stop en route to the two-mile Northeast Carry along the West Penobscot River — a flattish, comfortable height-of-land carry that once had small communities at both ends. In the past, it has seen moccasin traffic, a railway and a tramline for hauling logging supplies. Most travellers stayed at the hotel, used the wagon service and had a meal or two before they would rely on the three Bs (bread, bacon and boiled potatoes) on the Penobscot.

Today, the Carry is part wagon trail, part road. I visited with Ray Vancloloski, whose1890's cottage once had a view of a 1000 ft. (300 m) wharf for the Daydream Steamer. We sat with his friend Ralph Burnham in the “oldest among the oldest” houses looking through a scrap book of old images of the town, wharf, the last caribou in the area (1898) and lots of big fish. I had lunch at the portage-side coffee shop and carried only my canoe. Ray and Ralph provided the portage ferrying services for my pack and wannigan. A fine tradition at Northeast Carry preserved, I thought!
The Northeast Carry figures centrally in the surveying of the region. In 1761, Montresors paddled up the Chaudière from Quebec crossing to the West Penobscot and the Northeast Carry over to Moosehead Lake and down the Kennebec. Thirteen years later, the American Chadwick followed the same route in reverse as did the raiding Benedict Arnold.

What Thoreau did
West Penobscot River flows quickly and wide, and when I reached it, the day was bright and a gentle breeze kept the June bugs at bay. I had notes on Thoreau’s activities on the river right down to where he stopped for a bath (July 26, 1857 at Ragmuff Steam). I stopped there to commemorate the spot thinking perhaps I had too much information!

I would be on the Penobscot for only a short distance before reaching the Allagash River flowing north. When Chadwick travelled the area in 1764, his Penobscot guides would not allow the surveyor to draw a map and they denied him any information about his close proximity to their most revered and navigable route to the ocean: the Allagash / Saint John river route.

Feasts — literary and otherwise
I breezed down the river to Chesuncook Lake where Thoreau was excited with his visit to the wilderness pioneer farm of Ansel Smith. I, too, was excited to visit the 1864 Chesuncook Lake House standing on the site of Ansel’s original farm house. Its fine view of Chesuncook Lake is made grander still by the stunning view of Mt. Katahdin, the destination of Thoreau’s first Maine trip.

Chesuncook Lake House

Amazingly this beautiful house has not burnt to the ground (perhaps thanks to the tin plated walls and ceilings) and now stands as a noble heritage site and guesthouse owned and operated by David and Louisa Surprenant. The house that would once sleep forty to sixty loggers now sleeps eight guests. The office still has the chalk boot (spiked boot) marks forming a triangular pattern on the floor between the door, desk and cabinet. Behind the house, back in the woods, is a town cemetery where Ansel Smith and family are in residence.

I can still picture the Chesuncook cheesecake desert and in the morning, I digested all I could from the library rich in local history. It was hard to leave. But the Allagash was calling and Mud Pond Carry, I reckoned, would be best not done in the evening light.

Miscalculations on Mud Pond
I’d read the literature. The Mud Pond Carry was once one mean, two-mile, height-of-land portage. But my information was mostly from a previous century when Ansel Smith’s son and others operated a horse and wagon portage service through the wet, swampy trail. Surely now there would be boardwalks, and I would chuckle comparing my carry with the experiences of Thoreau and his partner, who got misled in the swamps. The error more than tripled the distance of the walk through knee high slop.

Surely there would be boardwalks... Wrong!

One very interesting, century-old travelogue is a mother’s take on the remote Maine woods. J.C. Hoyt’s “Babes in the Woods: Through Maine to Canada in a Birch Bark Canoe,” appeared in Scribners Monthly, Vol. 14, 1877. The family with its two children — twins — travelled the Moosehead to Canada route. By the by, Jack and Jill and Mom and Dad camped half way over Mud Pond Carry. This I can hardly imagine. When the family reached the Saint John River at Tobique, the mother expressed her regret. “All our party felt more sorry than glad when we met at dinner in the garb of civilization, and bade goodbye to the pleasures and hardships of our forest roaming.”