Just for reference: The last syllable of Passadumkeag is pronounced like the beer container, but the accent falls on 'dum.' Nicatous is pronounced Nick a Tawas. I feel a little guilty giving away one of our Maine shibboleths, but there it is, accent on Tau (like the first syllable of the word 'tower').

Whenever the bow's stem slips the bank there is a sensation of well-being. To be on the water is to be set free, no matter what responsibility might bring you there. Into the three canoes we have fitted every object six people will require for ten nights' camps. They were packed low and with attention to the distribution of their weight, bagged and boxed to let them be carried. Their gathering took days' planning. But they have passed out of mind now. The paddles in our hands are all we need.

The movement of our muscles and response of the canoe teach the rhythm. We have all done this enough to have educated our shoulders and hips. You sit in the car and just drive, that's all; we steered and paddled like that once we were reminded. After a few minutes it became automatic. It freed me to pay attention to the river.

It was August 10th in Maine, still high summer. Wild blackberries and early blueberries were ripe, even some huckleberries had ripened. By the end of our trip on the 20th, the blueberries would be ready for hand picking in thick clusters. Cardinal flowers, of a flag red, raised their little starbursts up to gleam against the dark greens, because we were in a wooded section. We heard a raven and watched a kingfisher move from  perch to perch.

I saw signs that there were beaver. The beaver is the ally of canoeists. He wants to maintain a certain minimum water depth for his own purposes, and it's the same depth a canoe needs. Without them, very few streams will float a canoe this late in the season, but in beaver water, streams are highways. As we moved downstream, we slid the canoes over many of their dams.

The drive to No. 9 Camp was not quite two hours; we were on the water by midmorning. The west and east branches have joined above us, and its name will be Passadumkeag River right through to its mouth on the Penobscot. At No. 9 Camp, though, it is only a stream in size and flow. Both banks were intimately close.

In August the water moves slowly in the upper Passadumkeag. Current won't help us much, and the trees keep the wind from making any difference. We went entirely as our paddle strokes pulled us. We were fresh from town that morning, grinning to be afloat and confident. The river wound in tight curves. In the stern I had also to remember that the channel winds even more. The deep part is close to the outside of each bend. Part of my mind was given the job of steering to follow it.

Our boat had fallen behind. I had slowed to a crawl to allow Justin to fish and the other two had passed. After catching a chub or two he took up the paddle again and we moved swiftly to catch them. Each new corner revealed another pool, but the Barrows family wasn't fishing and had sped along before.

We surprised a merganser. She took to the air complaining with a series of muted quacks. We pushed her downstream twice before she turned to fly upstream behind us.

Around the next bend we could hear wood snapping. We'd caught up with the others much sooner than we'd imagined we would. Both canoes were stopped before a blowdown across the stream, and Mark was crouching on the trunk of the fallen tree. It had certainly been dead long before it fell. It was without bark and bleached to a pale bone color.

Ian, Mark's eleven-year-old, was full of news for us. He told us the wood had shifted and trapped the saw blade, pulling it out of its slot. Crosscut saws like Mark's need the blade's tension to hold their shape. Mark was folding away the bows and the brace, the rod and turnbuckle, to keep from losing any pieces to the river. He straightened and called for his short ax, but I offered mine.

I took no saw along, but I had the heavy ax in the party, ready to hand. I sent the canoe closer and unwrapped the steel, and it was passed forward to Mark, who chopped and tugged until he had opened a way through for us. Besides all the beaver dams, there were three such obstacles. One was a pine tree, still carrying all its needles, fallen in the prime of health and two feet and more in diameter, which forced us to carry the loads and canoes around it by the bank or pass them over the trunk in the middle of the stream. Further downstream, the river widened and trees ordinarily didn't completely occlude it.

In a place in Washington County known as T3 R1 NBPP, just north of the Hancock County line, the Passadumkeag enters from the north. It is joined by the waters of a tributary, Taylor Brook, which my grandfather Everard used to fish for trout. There the stream widens and deepens, almost deserving the name of river. It is flatwater still, with little current, tea-colored and cloudy with brown-black silt.

To the river's west, on the right generally as it winds, lies a ridge capped with pines. The ridge is geologically an esker, and knife narrow. This esker divides the broad marsh and bog through which the river runs from the wider boglands of the Thousand Acre Heath.

In T3 R1 NBPP, the river makes a great turn to flow westward, being joined by another stream at that corner. This one, perversely, is known as Lower Taylor Brook, even though it does not connect to Taylor Brook at all. Moving west now, by twists and switchbacks, the river passes the esker's southern end and crosses into the Thousand Acre Heath region.

It was at the southern tip of that esker that we made camp that first night. As the day progressed, the river had passed out of the woods into open marshy terrain, but just where the esker meets it, it is closed in and woodsy. Bitterns and herons gave place to pileated woodpeckers and kingfishers, but the beavers were there as much as anywhere. We heard them at night.

We had spent some six and a half hours in the canoes to reach the place. This is a lot for a first day. We felt it in our weak points. The kids were merely tired, but I had back spasms. Justin felt it in his knees and back, Mark in his feet, Sherrie, Mark's wife, in her arms. There's a reasonably good swimming hole at the Maple Grove site, as it's called. We decided to spend a layover day here, and use it a second night.

This is the bosky section by Maple Grove. You see that it will open up shortly. It's like the light from a half-open door.

The fire wardens speak of Brown Brook as a campsite, but no one can have used it for a generation. We used it for a lunch stop, standing in the chest high weeds and ferns among the young evergreens and the mosquitoes. There was no fire permit for Maple Grove, so we used the Coleman. There's always fresh food the first couple of nights, while the cooler is still icy. We had pork chops and corn on the cob, a fresh salad.

A thunderhead had been building as we came through the open marsh, and we heard thunder now north along the esker as the supper dishes got done. All loose gear is stacked under the green suspended tarp in readiness, the canoes are overturned and hitched to trees, and the tents made tight. We were seated under the tarp when the first fitful showers hit, but real rain held off until the middle of the night. The rattle on the tent fly woke me up, but I knew it was all set, so I just rolled over.

One damp tent corner, the size of my fist, only, so I was content in the morning. The stove made us coffee, bacon, and French toast and we lazed around, swimming, idly boating, reading. I'd devoured White Butterfly, the Mosely book, already. I would do without a book the rest of the trip, but I somehow never minded that out there. We saw mergansers on the river, the woodpecker, red squirrels. Caitlin and Ian went canoeing together, which it warmed a woodsman dad's heart to see.

Justin and I went upstream. We had talked Taylor Brook the night before, to follow my grandfather, but it seemed too much to do. We went instead to Lower Taylor, which we fished the bejesus out of. Above the first beaver dam, though, we saw something I have rarely seen. Utterly fishless water. There were black ducks and beaver, and the darning needles wore an electric purple. The streamside was alive with insects. But we pushed on some distance, to the shallows, water so thin we slid the canoes in the mud. Through most of the last of this the water was glass clear. No feeder fish. No fish of any size or kind.

On Lower Taylor we also surprised six big Canada geese into taking to the air. They passed as close as fifteen meters and nearly directly over our heads, honking as they went, big wings beating.

We returned to camp for beef steak, pilaf, and carrots. The food boxes and the cooler would be very much less filled with all the fresh meat and the corn out of the way. After another rainy night and a breakfast of pancakes and sweet Italian sausages we struck the damp camp at Maple Grove. Our goal for the day was Pistol Green.

As we passed from the wooded esker streamside into the open Heath, mist paled everything. Tendrils in it showed it was rising off the river. The lead boat came upon six Canada geese, and all three boats saw them rise and depart into the fog, honking. Justin and I felt we knew the fellows.

Our mist burned off quickly. The river goes many miles through the Heath without dropping even two meters, and meanders lazily through reedbeds and weeds. Occasional mounds of higher ground support little clumps of trees. Nothing interferes with the random sprinkling of huge boulders all over Maine, so we passed those, too.