Seeking the holy creel For years, Milford man has journeyed to find ways to make a better pack basket

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Bill Mackowski grew tired of wearing out a pack basket every year, so the avid trapper decided to learn how to make them himself. That was about 12 years ago.

Since then, he has sought out at least 50 expert pack basket makers, including several Indians, from Tobique, New Brunswick, to Quebec’s Gaspe Peninsula to the Adirondacks of New York and all the way to Wisconsin. He makes pack baskets, snowshoes and fishing creels.

Mackowski will share his talents for making creels at Millinocket’s Wooden Canoe Festival, which will be held Aug. 17-19 in the Kermit Crandall Park along Millinocket Stream. The Milford resident will hold a workshop from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 18. The class size is limited. People should preregister by calling 827-7273.

“That one is going to Vermont and this one is going to Pennsylvania,” said Mackowski, pointing to a few of the many fishing creels and pack baskets scattered on shelves and the floor of his workshop near the shore of Sunkhaze Stream.

He grabbed a half-woven creel and began pushing down the narrow weaving strips. “You have to remember never to chew your fingernails because you will need them,” he said with a chuckle. “It just takes time. It’s a process you just keep picking away at.”

Mackowski weaves a little, pushes the strips down again and again, keeping a very tight weave. A fishing creel can take about eight to 10 hours to make, but that time is spread out over at least a two-week period.

The Milford man says he was fortunate to have met a lot of people who were willing to share their basket-making talents with him. His first lesson came from Willard Tilton of Passadumkeag, whom he described as a real old-time woodsman. “We proceeded to make a basket that night,” he recalled. “The whole process really fascinated me and one thing led to another.”

Mackowski said he owns some “beautiful” pack baskets made by Fred Nicola, the late Irvin Ranco and the late Eugene Loring, all residents of Indian Island and members of the Penobscot Nation. “I started looking at the different styles and made it a point to seek out basket makers,” he recalled.

He became friends with Larry Hurd of Bangor, a man in his 90s, whom he described as the dean of basket makers in Maine, and with Jack Ludley, a highly regarded pack basket maker, who has sold his baskets to such celebrities as Microsoft founder Bill Gates and actor Peter Coyote.

Mackowski loves to work with brown ash, which has pliable properties that make it an excellent choice for basket weaving.

“I love the smell of it; it smells like no other wood,” he said. “It’s the feel of it when you are working with it. It’s the creativity and the whole history of it. There was never a self-respecting woodsman in Maine or New England that ever went into the woods without a pack basket.”

But finding the right tree isn’t always easy. Mackowski, who also owns the Dawn Til Done Farm, says the tree must have certain growth rings that are of almost veneer quality. “It’s not very abundant anywhere,” he said. “Out of 200 logs, you might find three or four that are suitable for basket work.”

Brown ash has an outer layer of white sap wood, which is used by many of the fancy basket makers, but Mackowski prefers the darker, deep-brown heartwood of the tree.

He soaks his logs in a pond for about a year before using them. He strips the bark from the soaked log and then pounds every inch of it until the growth rings begin to separate.

For years, Mackowski pounded logs with the back of an ax, but not anymore. He now uses a machine he calls a “pounder” developed by the late Ted Bear of Tobique, New Brunswick, a member of the Maliseet Band. Bear, a commercial potato basket maker, worked with the University of New Brunswick to develop and produce the machine.

The pounder has about a 10-foot-square frame made of heavy steel. The log sets in a trough. It has a set of three rotary hammers that travel up and down the length of the log, pounding every inch of it. When his neighbors hear the loud pounding sound, they know Mackowski is making more materials to weave pack baskets or fishing creels.

Once the growth rings are separated, he peels off the long strips of wood, which vary in width and thickness. He likes to use strips that are at least the thickness of a quarter and likes to work with narrow strips that are about one-eighth of an inch wide.

Then, it’s a matter of laying out a pattern with the “standards,” the strips that will run up and down in the creel. Using other strips of wood called weavers, he begins weaving through the standards one row at a time. He pushes each row together tightly.

Mackowski doesn’t use a mold but shapes the creel as he weaves. “I never end up with two that are exactly the same,” he said as his fingers quickly weave the strips around and around. He shapes the belly of the creel and continues weaving. At the top, he rolls the standards down over a top piece and anchors them into the weave. He places a heavy piece of splint inside the rim. Taking a weaving strip, he stitches a finished edge along the top of the creel. He reinforces all of the bottom corners. A friend cuts all of the tops from cherry or bird’s-eye maple, and he completes the creel by attaching the leather harness.

He will make about 40 creels this year. Most of them are sold to people all across the country. A man from Eagle River, Alaska, ordered one the other day. The cost is $125.

Mackowski says fly and trout fishermen keep their catch of the day in the creels, but many of the creels he makes never get used. “About 75 percent are just for collectors,” he said.

MILLINOCKET ? Wooden canoe displays, art, music, food and numerous water-related activities will all be part of the fifth annual Wooden Canoe Festival. The three-day event begins at 4 p.m. Friday, Aug. 17, and runs through Sunday, Aug. 19, in Kermit Crandall Park, located on Congress Street along the banks of Millinocket Stream.

?Our goal is simple: to provide something fun to do which celebrates the wooden canoe and its heritage,? said Karen Beale, co-chairman of the event. ?We want to remind our local people about why it is good to live here and we want to show those from away what they are missing,? she said.

For more information, call the Katahdin Area Chamber of Commerce at 723-4443.

Among the events planned are:

Friday, Aug. 17:

4-8 p.m., pork tenderloin meal, hot dogs, drinks, dessert

6-6:45 p.m., music by Matthew Heintz, The Northwoods Balladeer

7-9 p.m., bluegrass music by Evergreen

Saturday, Aug. 18:

9 a.m.-5 p.m., wooden canoe show

10 a.m.-noon, in-water paddling lessons

10-10:30, Annette Daigle?s basket making demonstration

11 a.m.-2:30 p.m., Taste of the Katahdin Region, featuring food samples from area restaurants

Noon-1:30 p.m., canoe poling demonstration by Warren Cochrane

2-2:30 p.m., canoe judging to be completed by participants and people?s choice voting to be completed by 3:30 p.m.

2-3:30 p.m., Bur-Nur-Warb-Skeg singers of the Penobscot Nation in concert

2:30-4 p.m., canoe and kayak slalom races for all ages

3:30-4 p.m., Annette Daigle?s basket making demonstration

5-7 p.m., bean supper

6:30-8:30 p.m., Music by Portland?s Wicked Good Band

Sunday, Aug. 19:

9 a.m.-4 p.m., wooden canoe building display, business booths, artifacts and items from the history of canoeing and fishing; an all-day art show, with the theme of ?Woods, Water and Wildlife?; children?s art activities

10 a.m.-12:30 p.m., registration for canoe-in and boat parade

11 a.m.-3 p.m., pig roast by the river

11 a.m.-noon, 50-50 rubber duck race

Noon-12:30 p.m., Annette Daigle?s basket making demonstration

12:30-1:30 p.m., Maine woods stories by Chris Drew, chief district ranger at Baxter State Park

1-2 p.m., canoe-in and boat parade from Stearns High School to Kermit Crandall Park

3-4:30 p.m., auction of Wooden Canoe Festival original artwork by Millinocket artist Jean McLean; sealed bids will be accepted before the auction