Men's Journal
  • 19 hours ago
A feature look at a wild yet accessible overnight Maine adventure, canoeing a classic Northern Forest Canoe Trail section across Flagstaff Lake and down the Dead River to Maine Huts & Trails' Grand Falls Hut.

Read the full feature at http://www.canoekayak.com --
candk.me/Maine_ep1
Transcript
00:00The natural world is in constant change, even though when you visit it, it can feel a bit,
00:24it can feel static, as though the island is ageless, you know, the trees are ageless, right?
00:33You recognize that you're part of a much larger system, weather systems, hydrological systems,
00:41feel that change happening, and that moment it happens, you know, very rapidly. You need to have
00:47your wits about you, you can't take it for granted, and that was one of those moments where you're
00:51pulling your hood up over your eyes and hunkering down, feeling the gumball-sized rain drops on your
00:58shoulders, and starting to think, yeah, you know, I could be in Alaska, I could be in Norway,
01:04but I am in Maine right now, and I'm feeling the wilderness on my shoulders.
01:21Time in the wilderness is time well spent. Canoeing sets itself apart for a couple of key ways, and
01:28one of those is the ability to come into a campsite, to come into an island or a point of land,
01:35and really, really treat yourself well. To all set up, to go in and move through,
01:44I think we spent four hours in a five course meal to cook up lobsters.
01:52There's some elements of the canoeing mentality that really lends itself to living well.
02:05A nice afternoon swim, a sunset paddle, bake some dessert, have a big roaring fire. It's living well.
02:22On a big lake, my first thought every morning is, all right, we need to get moving, we need to start moving.
02:34This morning, when I rolled over and looked at my watch, that relentless
02:38march of necessary tasks, it sort of evaporated. The wind was already up.
02:51One of the things that sets Flagstaff Lake apart in my mind is the fact that the Bigelow
03:09Range looms directly over the lake. When you can bring large bodies of water and a sharp skyline
03:18ridge into close proximity, you're going to end up with some pretty incredible scenery.
03:23It's just a special spot because you have lakes nestled amongst the mountains.
03:30Some of the reasons why I love the Flagstaff Lake-Dead River route is that it gives you a
03:36variety of different tastes of the trail, a variety of different tastes of paddling in Maine.
03:41You've got open lake travel, you've got camping on islands, you've got river travel, a few riffles.
03:48It's a moving water. You get to see a variety of different styles of paddling. You get to throw the
03:54canoe on your head and walk for a couple hundred feet and then you get to come down here, see the
04:00falls, hit a few of those different really key features and a couple of different types of paddling.
04:18There's a funny thing about late afternoon portaging. In your mind, you hope or anticipate
04:30that it's going to take 45 minutes or an hour. It's going to be 500 yards. We get there. Where
04:36does the portage start? Where does it end? It then draws out into a two-hour process. We're all
04:41sweating. We've all sweat through our shirts. We're all tired. We probably haven't drank enough or
04:47eaten enough throughout the afternoon. And then down around the bend of the trail, there's this
04:52hut. There's the Maine Huts and Trails Grand Falls Hut. A place for us to recharge, to replenish, to
05:01clean off the sweat and the grime.
05:09You know, one day in the outdoors with a group of people you've never met before, that's got to be
05:14worth a few weeks back in that other life where, you know, we find a lot of reasons why not to get
05:21close to one another, why not to rely on each other. But when it's another person providing
05:26your food or providing your shelter or helping you make a decision about a rapid, it's pretty
05:31hard not to get close to them. It's hard not to move into that space of, you know, giving a damn
05:38about that other person becoming a better person. We did this for 400,000 years. We looked into
05:45into campfire coals. We talked to one another and we worked in small teams in adverse conditions
05:51in the outdoors. There's something elemental about it.