The riches of Maine’s natural resources must include tales of the mighty sons and daughters who lived a generation past. Louis E. Nice of McKinley was one of the special breed. He was a a river driver, hunter, trapper, guide and free-wheeling adventurer.

His experience as a woodsman and river driver is legendary in an era when men risked their lives floating thousands of logs down the Penobscot. In a single jam at Cooper’s Brook, 40 log drivers were catapulted every which way when the key log was loosened, dooming one of the men beneath the avalanche of timber.

Nice was an extraordinary individual. In the summer, he operated a retail produce business on Mount Desert Island, and wholesaled pecans and citrus fruits out of St. Petersburg, Florida.

He was born, the son of a sea captain, David Nice. His father followed the sea more than 40 years and twice sailed around Cape Horn. Once his father skippered a three-masted schooner that collided with a two-master on a foggy night, cutting the smaller vessel in half. Only one sailor on the smaller craft survived the collision when he made a blind leap in the dark and landed on the deck of Captain Nice’s schooner.

Louis Nice’s father was known in the sailing world as the praying skipper. He opened each new day at sea with a prayer, and during a bad storm, he would kneel on deck and ask the Lord to guide his ship to safety. Once, two of his sailors were rowing him to church on shore when the dinghy became stuck in a mud flat. Captain Nice took hold of the craft with one hand and pulled it to shore. Skipper Nice attended church with his sea boots plastered with mud, but that did not interfere with the fervor of his prayers or his gospel singing.

When son Louis was 4 years old, his parents moved to Brewer, and in later years, the youngster got his first job as a bell hop in the Windsor Hotel in Bangor. His boyhood career included stints at the Bangor House and Penobscot Exchange hotels, where he earned a very few dollars as a porter and bell hop.

He later shifted careers, taking to the Maine woods. For 15 years he labored as a river driver on, and north, of Moosehead Lake. One of the biggest drives involved 25 million feet of logs headed for Norcross. The drive was full of danger and Louis had many narrow escapes.

One day he was walking along shore when he spotted a flat rock and spurted, “This is going to be my gravestone.” Two hours later the logs jammed on the top of a roll dam below Crawford’s Pond, and about 40 men climbed on top of the jam in hope of finding the key log. Suddenly the jam broke with an explosion, like the roar of a cannon going off, and drivers were tossed in every direction. One was said to have been tossed 40 feet into the woods. He lived. Another did not. He went down under the logs and drowned.

Two hours after the jam broke, Nice spotted the body and got it out of the river. Remembering what he had said about the flat rock, he placed it over the grave when the driver’s body was buried in Millinocket.

Louis Nice had a longing for life in the woods. He initiated another career change by taking over sporting camps at Northeast Carry, the very tip-end of 40-mile long Moosehead Lake. This afforded him an opportunity to guide, trap and exert his inner lust for adventure. Nice soon became the black bear’s worst enemy.

The bruins never yielded, however, without a fight.

Nice was on Moosehead Lake one time when three bears were swimming toward his boat. Apparently a 400-pound sow and her two cubs chose to board ship with Nice. With a snarl, the sow started to come aboard, only to meet Louis’ home run swing with an oar. A half-dozen wallops on the bruin’s sweet spot, the nose, and Louis had another dead bear. He then secured the cubs with a rope and pulled them aboard. They were testy little beasts, leaving their claw and teeth marks on Nice’s huge hands and thighs.

He often had brushes with death, like others enduring those long, hard days on Maine waters and in the richly endowed, green belt. One of his closest calls occurred while trapping at Lobster Lake. He was working 125 miles of trapline, a trail that took him over Spencer Mountain.

While shuffling along on the edge of a precipice, Nice tripped over a log and fell about 100 feet to the bottom of the cliff. Luckily, he landed in deep snow, though he was momentarily knocked unconcious. When he regained conciousness, Louis found he’d lost his rifle and one snowshoe was hopelessly broken. He wallowed and staggered eight miles to find a lean-to he’d used several nights earlier. He was still 25 miles from the main camp at Lobster Lake. When he arrived at camp, still without a bite to eat, Nice discovered that a bear had raided his few provisions.

Another time he was chasing a wounded bear and exhausted his supply of rifle ammunition. He caught up with the bear and finished it off with the butt of his rifle. Louis wasn’t long realizing that he was lost. He dug down in the moss and noted the direction in which the swamp was flowing. He followed that direction, and in a few minutes, stumbled onto a familiar trail.

His memoirs include a single brush with a moose. He was traveling at night through an alder swamp with a flashlight. He heard a commotion and the light’s beam struck the eye balls of a bull moose. The great animal began pawing, and, without hesitation, started straight for the light’s beam. Louis doused the light and fled through the alders. The moose followed, but Louis succeeded in out-running the bull.

Louis E. Nice was married twice. His first wife was Angine Plourde of Green River and his second was Anne Kelly of Rockwood.

He was a legendary figure in Maine’s great outdoors; one of a kind – fearless, powerful, clever and the black bear’s mortal enemy.