Canoeing in Maine - Exploring - or Through-Paddling - the Riverine AT

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Outside Magazine July 2000

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Exploring - or Through-Paddling - the Riverine AT
Canoeing pioneers unveil the new 700-plus Northern Forest Canoe Trail

By Christopher Shaw

ONE WARM MORNING EARLY LAST JUNE, we carried our canoes at the shore of Brighton Pond, deep in Vermont's boreal Northeast Kingdom, and carried them over the narrow divide separating the Nulhegan and Clyde River watersheds. It was a fairly short portage, a nearly level stroll on a well-beaten path under tall white pines. Not five minutes later, we came upon the tracks of the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad and followed them 200 yards to a tea-colored tamarack bog—perhaps the shortcut we were seeking to the Nulhegan. We put in and drifted toward a narrow blue horizon throughaisles of balsam and spruce.

It was National Trails Day, and my wife and I had joined six members of Native Trails Inc., a nonprofit outfit dedicated to identifying and preserving precolonial and preindustrial travel routes, on a scouting detail. With us was one of its founders, Ron Canter, a cartographer at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as Maryland-based computer expert and waterman Randy Mardres, and Mike Krepner, a Maine guide.

Our goal that day was to check out the portage route and then run the Nulhegan 15 miles to the Connecticut River. It was the latest in a decade of outings Native Trails has led as the group has pieced together the 700-plus-mile Northern Forest Canoe Trail. The NFCT, a (mostly) fluvial Appalachian Trail, includesthe storied and popular canoe waters of the Adirondacks and Maine at either end, but its interior connections, such as the Nulhegan, have attracted little use since the days of log drives in the late 1800s. We wanted to make sure nothing besides a few short portages and beaver dams blocked the way.

As you might expect, creating the NFCT has been a long haul, but the vision Native Trails outlined ten years ago, based on colonial records and maps, is nearing reality. To promote and maintain the trail, a separate nonprofit named the North Forest Canoe Trail was formed in 1999. The organization is run by Kay Henry and Rob Center, former executives of Waitsfield, Vermont-based Mad River Canoe who view the trail as an opportunity for increased economic vitality and historical awareness. The seasoned managers have already won corporate and foundation grants, and have organized a network of volunteers to maintain waterways, campsites, and information centers.

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