March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Native Trails looks to preserve old travel routes

A couple of years ago last May I met Mike Krepner of Waldoboro. I had been invited to paddle along with the Penobscot Riverkeepers on Birch Stream in Old Town with students from Orono High School. Krepner, who’s a longtime Riverkeeper and registered Maine Guide, lives in a canoe, I think, when he’s not making packs.

He and two friends from college in the ’60s, Ron Canter, a cartographer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Randy Mardres, a computer system designer for the Department of Veterans Affairs, are practically obsessive about canoes and their role in shaping history.

So it’s no surprise that their interests led to exploring ancient travel routes of native Americans and others, and eventually to the formation in 1989 of Native Trails Inc., a nonprofit geographic organization “whose prime interest is the identification, documentation and, where possible, the preservation of pre-mechanized travel routes.”

In 1900, Krepner’s newsletter says, the organization began “sponsoring a series of expeditions to study the pathways of classic Maya trade routes across the Yucatan Peninsula.” They cataloged navigable rivers, lakes and portages.

Native Trails “began researching the old canoe routes [in this country] back in 1976 … portaging along roads and railroad beds, through towns and cities, around mill dams and waterfalls. They found that there was still a viable water route connecting the Adirondacks and northern Maine,” the newsletter says. In 1992 Native Trails began working on making the water trail a reality.

This route has since been named the Northern Forest Canoe Trail that is about 740 miles long, connecting Old Forge, N.Y., with Fort Kent. Native Trails’ newsletter says it follows “ancient Indian waterways and portages and is easily connected to every major watershed in the Northeast and Eastern Canada.”

The trail is a first of its kind in America. And while the trail in its entirety is not necessarily a route traveled by American Indians, all the segments of the trail are traditional and historical routes. What Krepner and his organization have done, according to their newsletter, is to stitch “various parts of routes together into a Frankensteinian canoe trail.”

When we last talked about the trail, Krepner called it a “700-mile linear classroom” in which travelers can learn more about American Indians, the French-Indian War as well as current-day influences in our lives. Along the trail you can see “the entire creation of New England.”

You can paddle it today, if you feel up to the strenuous physical challenge, have the canoeing skills necessary and have two months or longer to do it. Along the way you will draw on all of your canoeing skills from flat water to white water, portaging to poling, upstream and downstream.

So far, only one person has made the complete trip. Donny Mullen of Camden began his journey on May 1 in Old Forge, paddling a classic wood-canvas canoe he built from a Jerry Stelmock design. Fifty-five days later he arrived in Fort Kent.

Krepner and his friends have done the whole trail in parts, but not as one continuous trip.While the trail is primarily a water course, the Northern Forest Canoe Trail can be followed on land by automobile. The intent of Native Trails is not to make it a park with buffer zones and governmental interference like the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, the Boundary Waters Canoe trail or the Appalachian Trail.

Eastern Maine Canoe Trail

Another outfall of Native Trails’ research is another water trail, the Eastern Maine Canoe Trail, which links Vanceboro to Passadumkeag, a distance of 130 miles.

Maine was once “crossed by an extensive network of canoe trails. Established by the ancestors of the indigenous Abnaki peoples, these trails gave access to all parts of the state and beyond, linking watersheds with short overland portages. The canoe trail network was pivotal to later European exploitation of Maine’s inland resources. Loggers, trappers, missionaries, even armies, traveled along, and carried their boats from watershed to watershed on this network,” says another of the group’s newsletters.

The Eastern Maine Canoe Trail combines sections of several old routes and crosses some of the “most scenic canoe country in Maine. It passes through the watersheds of the St. Croix, Machias, Passadumkeag and Penobscot Rivers.” There are 7 miles of portages on the 130-mile trail. It begins on the St. Croix in Vanceboro, descends to Grand Lake flowage and west through the town of Princeton to Big Lake with a 2.5-mile portage around Grand Lake Stream. After winding through the West Grand lakes to Sysladobsis Lake there is a 1-mile portage to Fourth Machias Lake. At the south end of the lake is a 2-mile portage to Gassabias Lake. After descending Gassabias Stream to Nicatous Lake and crossing to Nicatous Stream, the canoeist can descend to the Passadumkeag River and on to Passadumkeag Village.

Anyone who wants to spend some time camping along the way could stop at the 22,500-acre Duck Lake Management Unit or at one of several campsites on Nicatous Lake, now publicly accessible thanks to a conservation easement agreement worked out between the state, the Forest Society of Maine, and Jenness and Jim Robbins who own much of the undeveloped shoreline of the lake. Gassabias Stream, which connects Gassabias Lake and Nicatous Lake, is included in this agreement, as are most of the islands in Nicatous Lake.

For information on Duck Lake or any of the other 28 other state-owned public reserves, contact the Bureau of Parks and Lands, 22 State House Station, Augusta 04333, or call 287-3821 and ask for the Outdoors in Maine Brochure. It will give you a thumbnail of state parks and historic sites as well as public reserve lands and a complete list of state-sponsored and state-assisted boat access sites, contacts for learning more about snowmobile and ATV trails, and other outdoor recreational opportunities. For more information on Native Trails, contact Mike Krepner, Native Trails Inc., P.O. Box 240, Waldoboro 04572. There is a Web site at www.nativetrails.org.

Hot showers!

Are you looking for a nifty gift to give that special someone in your life who spends too much time paddling or sailing our coastal waters? (Maybe yourself?) I’ve got an idea for you. Why not pick up a copy of Lee Bumsted’s latest edition of “Hot Showers (Second Edition),” Audenreed Press, Brunswick. It’s a handy (and updated) guide with detailed information on 152 bed and breakfasts, inns, hotels and motels, and another 30 campgrounds on the coast.

Even if your intended recipient isn’t a kayaker or sailor, it’s a great way to know what lodging is available, what services are offered, what to expect for prices and meals, and whether pets are allowed.

Bumsted, an avid paddler, has been to all but three of these places and provides you with all the information you’d need to pick suitable lodging.

Why stay at on-shore lodgings? If you subscribe to Leave No Trace Ethics you know that camping on an island can accelerate erosion or otherwise degrade the fragile ecosystems on islands. So if you reduce the number of nights you spend on the islands you’re doing your part to preserve them.

And being able to have a warm shower, sleep in a comfortable bed and have a meal served to you are reasons enough for many to ditch the camping idea, especially after the second or third day.

Or how about combining camping and inn-to-inn visits. You could use this book to plan a multiday trip that would put you ashore at whatever interval you wished.

Bumsted’s guidebook is divided into seven regions and each section gives you an overview of onshore facilities and regional highlights, off shore islands, area launch sites and parking areas, public moorings (for the sailors) and a detailed description of each of the lodgings (meals, rates, access and what services or attractions are within walking distance) or campgrounds (number of sites, rates, access, address). In the Deer Isle area, for example, you’ll find a dozen lodgings and three campgrounds.

To help you locate facilities described there are small sections of nautical charts (complete with latitude and longitude) in the appendix with a number that corresponds to the numbered listing in the book.

And if you have a particular place in mind, just check the index to find it quickly.

Jeff Strout’s column is published on Thursdays. He can be reached at 990-8202 or by e-mail at jstrout@bangordailynews.net.


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