Another paddler, John Stookey, 79, of Sheffield, Mass., has canoed the entire route in about eight trips over the past year. His goal was to finish the trail before his 80th birthday in January, and he completed it recently with his 51-year-old daughter.
“It’s amazing to me the number of people in a community who can’t wait to help you,’’ says Stookey. “I’ve had people who’ve driven me back and forth when I’ve needed a shuttle, and have refused to take any money. And they’ve been so full of local lore.’’
About two dozen people (“through paddlers’’) have done the entire route in one fell swoop.
The first was Donnie Mullen, 37, of Hope, Maine, a former Outward Bound instructor, who did it in 2000 before the trail was officially mapped out. He used a homemade wood-and-canvas boat and hand-drawn maps that he transferred onto US Geological Survey maps.
“I wanted to have a Daniel Boone, days-of-old experience,’’ says Mullen, who is writing the Maine section for the trail’s guidebook to be released next spring. “One of the great aspects of the trail is that you can never have paddled in your life and still be appreciative of the water and the scenery.’’
The trail takes paddlers on a journey through time. We spotted old pylons and other remnants of the area’s once-thriving logging industry and giant granite boulders deposited by glaciers during the last ice age. The trail also passes important Native American sites, historic homes, and heritage museums.
The idea for a long-distance canoe trail was hatched in the 1990s, but it wasn’t until 2000 that Kay Henry and Rob Center, former owners of Mad River Canoe in Waitsfield, Vt., took the idea from conception to reality when they established the nonprofit trail. They spent the next six years working to get people in local communities on board, get permission from landowners for public access - about 90 percent of the trail passes through private land - and create an invaluable set of standardized maps that includes not only route-finding information but also interesting historical facts. We learned, for instance, that just beyond the take-out point at the end of our route lay an old paper mill, a World War II camp, and natural springs that the Abenakis believed to have healing powers.
The Northeast’s waterways have been well documented and charted, but still invite the true spirit of exploration.
Kari Bodnarchuk can be reached at travelwriter@karib.us.
