Beaver lodges both old and currently occupied appeared at frequent intervals. In the water at the margin stood pickerelweed with its spikes of purple flowers, the succulent stem always knee deep in swamp water, and clusters of dark straight triangular reeds a meter high, some with a curly flourish of wheat-color, the flower, on the point of the needle, and arrowhead, some in bloom, blue and white. There comes intermittently the smell of mint on the air, but the weeds of that sort were further up the bank.

I could recognize yarrow and queen-anne's-lace, skullcap and goldenrod, and smell the mint among the grass. There was another plant which looked a good deal like goldenrod, and was far more common, but instead of gold, the flower cluster was pink. Pinkrod! No, even a botanist would have thought of something better than pinkrod. A taller pink-crowned one had its flowers arranged fanlike.

The two lead boats saw two moose, but when we fishermen arrived they had gone, and Caitlin's boat saw an otter. Blue herons were quite common this time through, and ducks, even bitterns, but the many harriers we'd seen on the Passadumkeag trip two years before never showed themselves.

I decided to take a sample of the pinkrod and check it in the weed book Caitlin was carrying. While ashore, I finally saw the mint. It was shorter than the grasses and the pinkrod, invisible from the water. The pale pink flowers hugged the stem and were never without bees. I took one of those, too; I could never tell one kind of mint from the next. The smell of the mint came up around me as I walked, and the two weeds made a nosegay in the stern of the boat behind my back when we moved on.

A ridge appeared to my left and the river circled around, edging us toward it. The trees came right to the water's edge in a welter of big boulders. It was the only truly shady spot for a couple of miles. I recognized it from the other trip two years before. We'd had lunch there.

Justin had caught chub, sunfish, and pickerel, even a small brook trout. "The others will be there, where those trees are," I told him. "It's tradition."

He put away the rod and we moved faster. When we'd packed at Maple Grove, our canoe had the lunch box, so they'd be waiting for the food. I pulled in by the other two canoes and brought my weeds up into the shade along with everyone's lunch.

Shade! There had been breeze in the open Heath, but we were all being broiled out there. Mark looked up my woody-stemmed pinkrod in the weed guide and Justin went down to the water to fish. Sherrie took the lunch box and began distributing.

Shade on the water raises the chances of catching trout, and so do deep pools with cold water. Just downstream was a beaver dam, and Justin liked the look of the pool behind it. It was good to sit in the merciful shade and watch it all.

Pinkrod is a better name than the one the botanists give it. Hardhack, it's called, or steeplebush for the shape of the flower cluster. The mint was even more disappointing. The book blandly pronounced the specimen to be Wild Mint.

Yeah, well. I already knew that much. But that's all the name it has. Maybe I'm too romantic, but I'd wanted more.

Justin caught a fourteen inch trout from his pool. We cleaned it and put it in a cooler. Ian had objections. He knew they were irrational ones, too, since he wears leather and eats meat, but there had been a death. We had caused it in order to eat. Eating our eggs and pepperoni, bacon and cheese, we had a discussion about the morality of fishing, and of the hunt. We talked about moral vegetarianism and the Jains. The subject was clearly too large for us to resolve right there, so we proceeded across the Heath toward Pistol Green.

Pistol Green is ill-defined. Pistol Stream flows into Nicatous Stream, and then Nicatous Stream into the Passadumkeag, all within a relatively small area. Somewhere in there we needed to find a place to camp. Our route was to the mouth of Nicatous, and then up Nicatous to Nicatous Lake. We stood in the canoes and searched the banks for a decent place to put four tents. A boulder shaped like the Pyramid of Cheops lies not far upstream of the mouth of the Nicatous, and we began looking soon after that.

This is at the confluence of Nicatous Stream and the Passadumkeag, looking back upstream:

And into the narrower Nicatous from the same spot:

No more moving downstream. We will travel up against the current to the lake now.  We swung the canoes upstream, feeling through the seat of the pants, looking carefully at the submerged lobelia and eel grass. Is the current strong? Is the water different?

All this before us now was new country, with the exception of two hundred-meter sections we’d scouted from the road. A kingfisher paced us, just ahead. Many times, the approach of a big object like a canoe will push fish out of their hiding places. We had many times seen fish jump ahead of the boats. She was ready to take advantage.

The water in Nicatous Stream was indeed different. It still had the color of weak tea, but it was not turgid with silt and mulm like the river. Instead, it was clear. We could see every rock and log and every clump of water plants. We could watch fish moving through it and hovering in the eddies. The flow was palpable here. The narrower banks were deeply undercut; spring flows must have been powerfully hydraulic.

Looking ahead, we could see that the stream flowed out of woods. Rotten-bark smells overlaid the scent of the marsh and raised peat bog, confirming the nearness of ridges with trees. Tamaracks, beeches, alders, cedars; shade in the groves and with any luck a campsite.

The water looked so fast-moving and so clear, and the sun had been so harsh. The kids demanded a swim break.

We called the place Pistol Brown and claimed it for the King of Spain. If de Balboa and Colombo could do it, we could do it.