BETHEL – While traffic zipped along Route 2’s asphalt highway overhead Saturday morning, 25 canoes and kayaks below quietly slipped into a watery freeway.

Saturday marked the start of the eighth day of the eighth annual 21-day Androscoggin River Source to the Sea Canoe Trek.

The Trek, which is coordinated by the Androscoggin River Watershed Council of Bethel and Gorham, N.H., is a moving-river festival that celebrates the river’s rebirth from its polluted past.

The day’s sojourn drew 42 participants who left from Bethel Outdoor Adventures Campground into a world free of highways.

“I’ve done it several years and this is one of the prettiest runs on the Trek,” said experienced kayaker Sylvia Ridley of Jay.

Prior to the trip, section leader Stephen Wight of Newry provided an overview of the day’s journey before doling out tips on reading the river’s surface, currents and Class I and II rapids.

“When we get into the rapids, the kayak girls will show us how to paddle while upside down,” he said, setting a lighthearted tone for the coming 10.5-mile ride.

Participants then paddled out into the calm, glassy surface that initially reflected overcast skies left over from Friday’s downpours. Wight said the all-day deluge had caused the river to rise several inches.

Lush green, forested banks lined both sides of the river as swallows darted through the air, skimming the water’s surface before returning to nest holes carved into the river bank’s dirt walls.

Patches of blue sky and warming sunlight accompanied by downstream breezes intermingled with numerous bird songs, delighting the senses.

Throughout the trip, the ochre-colored river bottom – often lined with cobblestones of varying size, sporadic boulders, loads of sand and patches of current-flattened vegetation – frequently rose to meet the vessels’ hulls or dropped away out of sight.

Some paddlers saw fish swim by while others floating lazily, almost serenely in front of the pack, watched adult bald eagles flush from trees, flying ahead downstream.

Those up front following Wight’s canoe also enjoyed his occasional humor.

“A little further down and we come to the Sunday River and the swirling vortex of death,” he said, heightening apprehensions of beginning canoeists while experienced paddlers laughed aloud.

The “swirling vortex of death” turned out to be Class I rapids at the confluence of the Androscoggin and Sunday rivers.

Once the obstacle was cleared by all, the trip resumed taking a left fork in the river that was now lined with more woody debris.

As blue-colored damselflies zoomed over the water joining several mayflies, Jeff Varricchione, a stream and river biologist with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, said, “There’s a lot of life around you if you just slow down and look for it. Look at all these mayflies! I’m surprised the fish aren’t going nuts, but they’re probably off laying eggs.”

After negotiating through the Class II Bear River Rips rapids at the Androscoggin’s confluence with the Bear River, members of the Mahoosuc Land Trust and Stony Brook Recreation provided a riverside picnic at the newly-created Moran’s Landing parking lot beside Route 2 in Bethel.

After lunch, Varricchione, who heads MDEP’s Stream Team Program, conducted a short biology lesson, introducing the group to a variety of aquatic insects from which biologists can determine a water body’s water quality.

Then it was back into the river under a sea of fluffy cumulus and building cumulonimbus clouds for a winding ride through a stretch of narrow glades and cultivated farmlands to the Hanover Boat Launch take out and day’s end.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

Copy the Story Link