Taking the Kenduskeag challenge> Reporter experiences spills chills and thrills

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KENDUSKEAG — Sometimes story ideas don’t always work out. For two weeks I had tried to get a partner for the Kenduskeag Stream Canoe Race, but by the morning of the race I had resigned myself to a spectator’s role, rather than a participant.

So I dressed for the sidelines with lug sole, suede shoes, a button-down woolen shirt and chinos.

But once I got there I gave another try and asked a race official if he could point out potential partners to me. When nothing panned out, I went to the race announcer on the bridge and asked him if he knew of anyone. He turned to his microphone.

“Excuse me,” he said over the loudspeaker. “There’s a lady here from the Bangor Daily News who would like to enter the race. Does anyone need an extra paddler?”

I was joking with NEWS photographer Marc Blanchette during the announcement, certain that a half hour before this nationally known race no one would want to take along an extra paddler, let alone need one. So, I didn’t see the man near the stream waving his arms.

But the announcer continued to play the role of fate and called my attention to Mike Estabrook.

He and his younger brother, Rich MaGuire, lost their third paddler at 3 a.m. when the fellow chose not to race a second year. The two men from Boothbay Harbor to whom I introduced myself were brothers with different last names. The younger Rich was adopted by their mother’s second husband after Mike was on his own.

“And a name doesn’t matter anyway. We know what counts,” said the 40-something Mike who is Rich’s senior by about eight years. So I told them to call me “Dee” rather than “Deirdre,” which I prefer. Only my family calls me Dee but, I figured, I was putting my trust in these two who looked as carefree and amused as my own older brothers, so I left the formalities on the bridge with the announcer.

“We have a cousin named Dee,” Rich said.

So the familial feeling fit.

In truth, Mike and Rich’s demeanor and caution put me at ease as they said to me that they were inexperienced and that I would go swimming, hence the wet suit and gloves they gave me.

I smiled back. Broadly. I was in the race. Yiipee-yaaiiiieee, as Mike liked to say. Ignorance is bliss.

I had no worries. We had three hours of paddling to get acquainted in a party-style sunny, Saturday canoe race. I even neglected to put sun-block on my Irish face, not thinking I’d be on the stream. But details were unimportant — like how to swim in white water, a lesson none of us thought to review.

Just a joy ride

While the kayaks continually zipped by, the first 10 miles of flat water was one big block party of canoes.

We witnessed the launch of the race’s Founding Fathers, Lou Gilman and Sonny Colburn, paddling together for the first time in the race’s 30-year history. Then I saw the legend himself, Zip Kellogg, getting ready. Gumby was there too, just like in the family photographs I’d seen, except, uhh, this year Gumby was pregnant.

As the race unfolded, I felt like a daughter-in-law who had just married into it all. I didn’t even know whether to sit or kneel in the canoe. My new brothers just told me to get comfortable and not to work, though they razzed me plenty.

“Nice life,” one paddler yelled to me across the river.

“What’d he say? Nice WIFE?” Rich yelled back from the bow.

Mike said, “Naw, she’s just a journalist we picked up on the way.”

I took it all as a sign of acceptance. I told them I was from outside New York City, and they didn’t mind I was from away as they told me about themselves.

The Skipper, as I dubbed Mike, won our respect. A John Deere mechanic, he sported his company hat like a team uniform and tied a yellow John Deere flag to the boat.

“Deer can run, but they can’t swim,” was the ominous greeting we heard only about 12 times.

Of course, it was also Mike’s masterful idea for the blind to lead the blind, bringing me into the fold and making a party of it.

“Are we having fun yet?” Mike asked every paddler who passed.

How could you not?

It was beginning to feel like “All in the Family.” But talk of “Gilligan’s Island” would prove to foreshadow my doom.

Dee is for Doomed

People who spent much of the day watching canoes capsize at Six Mile Falls tell me there were a lot of paddlers who didn’t know how to swim in white water, with your legs pointed downstream, rather than your upper body. Well, I was one among the unknowing.

As we approached the falls, Mike kept saying how terrified I would be. I didn’t really think we’d flip, and if we did, I didn’t mind getting wet. But I had never seen Six Mile Falls, having only moved to the area in September. So, I didn’t know when we were upon it. And then, everything went wrong.

NEWS photographer Michael York told me later many canoes chose to take the calmest water routes along the side, but ours came right down the middle. As we approached the falls and started to get sucked in, Rich, in the stern, realized the error and he and Mike tried to correct it. But things only got worse.

“This isn’t the way we want to go, but it’s the way we’re going,” were Mike’s last words.

As they turned the canoe, the water pulled it along by its side. When they tried next to go over the falls stern first, we all dumped out.

The only thing I knew about white water flashed through my mind: if a canoeist gets caught between a rock and a canoe they can be crushed. Then panic quickly took over.

When I came to the surface I gulped for air but I sucked in water. Panic was choking me.

I started to swim toward a patch of trees known among racers as Indian Island. I grabbed some roots, praying they wouldn’t break, and caught a rock with my foot. Those stupid lug sole shoes I felt foolish wearing grabbed the smooth surface like they were made to do just that.

I stood up struggling for air, hoping I wouldn’t fall into the stream before I got any. As my lungs opened up, I turned to see Rich standing 6 feet away, looking horrified, no doubt at my helplessness. I gave him a thumbs up and turned back to the task of gulping air.

Then I reached for the small grove of trees that made up Indian Island and found myself a haven.

Stuck in a tree

I watched the seasoned paddlers going by, the hundreds of spectators on the shore, the orange-vested officials, and hoped I would be inconspicuously saved. But I didn’t mind, just then, going unnoticed. I was so glad to be out of the stream, despite how fiercely my body and jaw were shaking.

After some 10 or 15 minutes, Rich and Mike appeared on an island next to shore, 30 feet away. Rich asked if I was OK and I said I was. I asked if I would have to jump back in and float down the river.

He looked like he wanted to say, yes, but waited a long time before offering a more appealing option.

“They’ve got a helicopter coming in to get you,” Rich yelled.

“Really?” I asked.

“No,” he said sadly. “I wish it were that easy.”

Suddenly, from behind, I heard a call from a lean, efficient canoeist. He was Doug Thompson with Maine Bound, a white water instructor, he told me later. But that’s not what he said as he came to a stop.

“I’m your Knight in Blue,” he smiled in his sky blue windbreaker.

“Yes, you are,” I said.

After I gingerly stepped into his canoe, he said, “I don’t suppose it would reassure you to know I’m a professional?” I shook my head no, just to be honest. However, I made up for my lack of confidence when he dropped me off back with Mike and Rich. I walked up close to the Knight and jokingly offered the compliment that came to mind: “Can I have your first born?”

I then quickly dashed away without an answer.

Mike and Rich humored me. In fact, they left the options wide open. I could stop, I could continue, I could go a little ways and get out if I was scared. There was still a little more of the same up ahead. I told them Six Mile Falls was double what Mike called it earlier. But I wanted to keep going.

“Man, you reporters will do anything for a story,” Mike said.

No, this was personal. I wanted to finish the race with them.

“No, I have to finish. We’re a team,” I replied.

“That’s right, we are,” Rich said.

Homeward bound

I didn’t paddle anymore, not that I ever really helped when I did, but my battered presence, I knew, now meant something more. Along a quiet stretch when we all waved to a mother and children, one child asked Mike and Rich why they had a little kid with them.

“I’m NOT a little kid,” I said. “I’m 27. And I only look little because I’m sitting.”

“You stick up for yourself, Dee,” Mike said.

I was yelling at a child. And suddenly that was a victory? Yes, details, no matter how ludicrous, were beginning to matter.

When we reached the last portage near 14th Street Extension, Mike and Rich pointed out to me the rough waves where they swamped last year.

“There’s a good chance we’ll swim,” Mike said, listing again the ways I could get to my Jeep.

“Well, I want to make it to the finish,” I said, and then added, “and you guys have gotten a lot better.”

“I like having you along,” Rich announced. “I like your attitude.”

Just call me Dorothy with the Scarecrow and the Tinman.

As Mike promised, we did hit the three biggest waves, we did take on an enormous amount of water and the boat did go under.

Both Rich and Mike screamed at me to grab the canoe as it swamped. Rich took my arm in a death grip. I screamed at him to let go as I found the bottom of the canoe. He was pushing me into an oar that was being wedged into my stomach. I had to holler three times, but Rich only loosened his grip. He was horrified they would lose me again.

Quickly the workers on shore in those happy orange vests threw us multiple lines. I grabbed one and pulled myself to shore.

“OK,” I screamed at Mike and Rich as they followed minutes later. “Now I want to go home.”

They just smiled smiles that said we were almost there.

A race to remember

Taking our time, we paddled the last stretch of flat water, Maine’s version of Venice, to the finish line. Then we lingered over coffee.

Rich and I rode the shuttle back to get Mike’s truck and my Jeep.

As we settled into the 20-minute ride, he told me about his 10-year-old, Heather, who is eager to go along with him on the Kenduskeag race. Rich said he’ll take her someday and his entire family, but later than planned after seeing the terror on my face that day.

The ride up along the river was free of worry. Rich explained how low the Kenduskeag gets in the summer as we watched it through the window. He showed me Six Mile Falls where, in my mind, I nearly drowned. He pointed out Indian Island where I was stranded. “Dee’s Island,” he said, renaming it.

It was a nice ride.

After we got to Mike’s truck and Rich took me to my Jeep, I took my time and met them back near the canoe some hours after we had dragged it from the river.

When I finally said goodbye to Rich and Mike, they each gave me a brotherly hug, invited me to ride with them next year and I felt like I did when I graduated from college.

So, as they watched, I added to the lone Georgetown University sticker on my Jeep my 1996 Kenduskeag Canoe Race sticker, then honked an obnoxious yiipee-yaaiiiieee and drove away.

As I hit I-95 back to Orono, I thought about the things you learn in life and how remarkable some of the lessons are. How they say you can never go home.

But, so long as they have the Kenduskeag Stream Canoe Race, and I believe they always will, once a year I can meet up with Mike and Rich and spend a day with that wild, old mother stream. And that’s about the next best thing.