Zip comes home to ‘take a stand’ in canoe race

BANGOR – Zip Kellogg, something of an institution in Bangor for negotiating the Kenduskeag Stream Canoe Race year after year while standing up, dressed in suit and tie, has always liked water.

When he was a kid, his parents, Julie and Robert Kellogg, lived on Kenduskeag Avenue, and he and his brothers and sisters used to frolic in the stream.

That was before the interceptor sewer was built, and, yes, he admitted, the water was “pretty disgusting – but kids like to get into mischief.”

In high school, he was, naturally enough, on the swim team. He persuaded his mother to pay $3 to buy a canoe from a friend who was cleaning out the family garage.

His mother had the canoe fixed up so Kellogg and his swim coach, Mark Michelson, could paddle it in the 1967 Kenduskeag Stream Canoe Race. That race didn’t end well.

“We crashed on rocks and the canoe was destroyed,” Kellogg recalled.

When he went off to Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, there was a hiatus in his canoe career, but after he returned to Maine, he definitely had the bug, and has canoed “with a passion” ever since.

The weekend of April 19-20, Kellogg will be coming to Bangor from his home in Portland, where he works in the library at the University of Southern Maine, for three reasons, all water-related.

On Friday, April 19, he will give a slide show on waterfalls in Maine, starting at 7:30 p.m. at the Fields Pond Nature Center on Fields Pond Road in Holden.

The nature center is operated by the Penobscot Valley Chapter of the Maine Audubon Society, and its director is Judy Kellogg Markowsky, sister of Zip Kellogg.

On Saturday, April 20, he will compete once again in the Kenduskeag Stream Canoe Race, dressed to the nines and standing at least part of the time.

After finishing the 16-mile canoe race, he will participate in the annual cleanup of the Penjajawoc Stream, which runs through the Bangor Mall and gets its share of litter. The cleanup is sponsored by Audubon, in observance of Earth Day.

Over the years, Kellogg has paddled most, if not all, of the rivers and streams in Maine.

“I’ve been in some very, very beautiful places, where roads don’t go, that I’ve been fortunate enough to see and visit and carry my canoe around,” he said.

In the process, he’s amassed quite a collection of pictures. Some will show waterfalls that can be reached by road, others will show waterfalls that are less accessible, that involve some work to reach, or “lots of work.”

“Maine is a watered and mountainous state, so there are lots of waterfalls,” Kellogg pointed out.

Those who come to the slide show on Friday night and who plan to race the next day can get tips from Kellogg on technique and water levels in the Kenduskeag.

Kellogg professes not to be worried over very low water levels caused by the drought.

“It’s always a gamble what the water’s going to do,” he said. “It could change dramatically right up to the race day.”

He also is not losing sleep over the possibility of spilling in the race. “If I get dunked, I get dunked,” he said philosophically.

Standing while canoeing is not as hard as it looks, he said, because the paddle serves as the third leg of a tripod. He learned the technique from a friend, Don Fletcher, who used to stand to look over the rapids.

Kellogg also sits and kneels, but gets a better view standing. Sometime in the 1970s, Kellogg thought to put on a suit coat and tie. One year he wore a tuxedo, and he often wears a hat – “always something a little on the fancy side.”

Last year he wasn’t in the race because he was on sabbatical in Washington, D.C. But this year the familiar figure will be back, coolly assessing the best way to tackle the rapids at Six Mile Falls – from a standing position, elegantly dressed.

“Maine’s Waterfalls” will be presented at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 19, at the Fields Pond Nature Center in Holden. Admission is $5 for Audubon members, $6 for nonmembers. For information, call 989-2591.

The Penjajawoc Stream cleanup is 2-4 p.m. Saturday, April 20. Park at Shop ‘n Save or Borders at the Bangor Mall.

Wear gloves and boots and bring a plastic bag.