Students relish river lessons

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Canoes still sat on their racks. None of the 100 or so assembled sixth-graders had yet decided that a dip in the chilly Penobscot River would qualify as an enlightening educational experience. Lunch was hours away.

And already, concern – panic, perhaps – had arisen among a few of the assembled Brewer Middle School students.

“This is the girls room over here,” Penobscot Salmon Club member Lou Horvath said, gesturing toward a solitary portable toilet. “And that is the boys room over there.”

Eyes followed his pointing hand … and saw nothing.

“You mean the trees?” a high-pitched male voice exclaimed. “The trees?”

Actually, no. Horvath was pointing toward an outhouse surrounded by trees … though few in the post-outhouse generation probably recognized it as anything more than a suspiciously smelly ice shack.

That moment, greeted by laughter, was a fitting way to begin Friday’s daylong cooperative educational venture between the Penobscot Riverkeepers, the Penobscot Salmon Club, and the school.

History, the assembled groups agree, matters. It’s worth exploring … experiencing … embracing.

And all around the nation’s oldest salmon club, energetic sixth-graders took full advantage of the opportunity they’d been given.

Inside the club, fly tier Ron Newcomb told stories about the king of game fish, and showed students how to tie Atlantic salmon flies.

Elsewhere, Mike Maybury showed paddling basics before taking groups onto the water in massive 28-foot-long war canoes.

David Edwards, the president of the Riverkeepers, told stories about logging and the lumber boom that turned Bangor into a bustling port city.

Fly casters gave lessons. Students learned.

And no matter where you looked, Charlie Colburn held court.

Colburn is a senior member of the Penobscot Salmon Club. He wasn’t around when the club was formed in 1894, but he does admit to more than 50 years of membership.

And he’s as proud of the club – and as passionate about salmon and the outdoors – as anyone you’re likely to find.

“There’s a lot of stories here,” the talkative Colburn said before the students arrived. “Everything has a story.”

If that’s true, you quickly find out, then one other thing is equally factual: Charlie Colburn knows the story … and would be glad to tell it.

“That antique bench has been there for years,” he said during a quick tour of the club. “People don’t know that. They think it was built yesterday. But it would tell a lot of stories if it could talk.”

Friday’s event was a school trip for the sixth-graders. It was supposed to be educational.

Rest assured, it was.

Many of the students grew up on or near the river. They see it nearly every day. And they – like many of the rest of us – take it for granted.

“The main thing, I think, is that there are so many kids that don’t know anything about this river that the live right beside,” Penobscot Salmon Club president Steve Campbell said.

Edwards said the Riverkeepers run close to a dozen such programs each spring, and another dozen or so each fall. A few summer events are also planned.

The goal is to give students the chance to experience the river in ways they never have.

“Kids today don’t know that Bangor used to be an exporter of bricks. They don’t know that Bangor was the lumber capital of the world. We try to connect them with that,” Edwards said.

“Kids at this age are very hands-on,” he said. “They want to be connected. It gives them the chance to get out of the textbooks and into life.”

The students took advantage of that chance – and then some – in ways you’d have to be a sixth-grader to truly appreciate.

War canoe trips up and down the Penobscot? Fun. Even as some complained of sore shoulders … and others were periodically doused by the novice paddlers who surrounded them.

Put 10 sixth-graders in a boat, you find, and some predictable things will happen. They’ll paddle. They’ll joke.

And eventually, they’ll race. Every … single … time.

“Stroke … stroke … stroke,” they chanted, four boats abreast, churning upriver, the beach in sight.

“Stroke … stroke … stroke.”

Ashore, again (some more gracefully than others), spare time turned into playtime. Where there’s water, there are rocks. And where there are rocks, there are more than a few that are worth skipping.

Twenty or 30 students lined up on the bank of the river and skimmed their stones across the surface. Some stones skipped. Some didn’t. And others – four-pound mini-boulders, generally – were tossed not as “skippers,” but as depth charges designed to splash the unsuspecting … and (one might suspect) to test the limits of their adult chaperones.

Every so often, the groups switched tasks. Canoe-racers became stone-skippers. Fly-tiers became lumber experts. And those in need of a certain natural kind of relief became … truly educated.

The lesson: Indoor plumbing is pretty cool.

“Do not go in the boys bathroom,” one boy exclaimed, eyes wide, staggering away from the outhouse.

Why? What happened? Are there animals in there?

“No!” he said. “It stinks!”

Teacher Don Stanhope said learning about one’s surroundings- not necessarily the surroundings cited above – is the goal of the yearly event.

“With the Internet and television and radio and all the things the kids have access to, they don’t have access to local information,” Stanhope said. “They have to dig deeper to find that. And to come here and learn about what’s right here in their backyard [is worthwhile].”

Stanhope said learning about nature, the environment and local history in one setting can change the way students look at their surroundings.

“We have a large percentage of kids that this is the one thing that sparks an interest in them,” Stanhope said. “We do all sorts of other things with science and language arts and that kind of thing, but this may be a lifelong thing. And if it sparks [that interest] in one kid, it’s worth the trip.”

Down on the river, a group of students showed that there’s more than one way to learn a lesson.

With no official session to attend, a group of girls splashed in the shallow water and watched as the tide steadily encroached upon their perch.

“[This lesson was] water-fighting and wading,” joked sixth-grader Elizabeth Kilroy.

Kilroy, like many of her friends, wound up getting a bit soggy. One good splash deserved another, you see, and one girl wading to her knees led to others heading into waist-deep water.

Afterward, while drying off near the clubhouse, Kilroy admitted that her initial goal for Friday – one shared by sixth-graders everywhere – was to enjoy a “school” day without going to school.

At some point, that changed.

“First, I thought we were just gonna play,” she said. “But all of a sudden it turned out to be learning and math and stuff. It’s good.”

John Holyoke can be reached at jholyoke@bangordailynews.net or by calling 990-8214 or 1-800-310-8600.