I jetted down to Wiscasset today to pick up our boat, a gorgeous Old Town Penobscot 18', and a variety of other smaller gear. The Chewonki Foundation in Wiscasset helped us out with organizing some of our gear purchases -namely our canoe- for which we are very grateful. All too soon Ben and I will smash a bottle of Pabst over her bow and give her a name.
We are going for a little paddling trip, with the help of an Otis Fellowship. It is our intention to paddle the entirety of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail, 740 miles from Old Forge, NY to Fort Kent, ME in one fell swoop, and we start a little more than a week from now. I think often about all the things that happened so that Ben and I could do this trip. To begin with, a man named Phil Otis died attempting to rescue an injured climber on Emmons Glacier on Mt. Rainier. It was August of 1995, and he was one term away from graduating from Bates. His passion was for the outdoors, the 'world of nature' and all of the environmental and spiritual connections inherent in it. He was a NOLS grad, a student ranger on Mt. Rainier, and my guess is that while he was at Bates he did a lot of the same things that Ben and I do today. A few years after the accident, his mother and stepfather established a number of programs in his honor, among them the Otis Fellowship. Here is a little more about the Fellowship, from the Bates website:
"The purpose of the Otis Fellowship Program is to encourage among Bates students the kinds of concern for and interests in the worlds of nature that Phil Otis '95 demonstrated. These concerns and interests focused on the consequences for other living things of human pretensions to dominion over the rest of nature. Phil was interested in studying and reflecting upon new and innovative ways to understand, appreciate, and express our interdependencies with the earth. He was especially interested in reflecting upon how diverse cultural perspectives, especially moral perspectives, might contribute to the transformation of attitudes toward nature. Phil trusted new adventures and new personal experiences as occasions that might provide "new beginnings" for appreciating our places within the natural world."
Now we are the beneficiaries of their generosity, and of Phil's spirit of adventure and principle. Still, I often fall on the fact that someone died, and in some way that has allowed us to do this trip. The conflict here is sublte, but noticable to me. I realized at some point that if I were to not come back from a trip, the way I would want my family to honor my memory would be the same way that Phil's family did. I then came to the conclusion that Phil's family did just what he would have wanted to in creating a fund for education and facilitation. I think that, if I had known him, I might have liked Phil a great deal.
I hatched the idea for this trip over the summer, while leading trips for Darrow Camp in Grand Lake Stream, ME, and fleshed it out on the long flight from New England to Washington state, and the drive to Glacier NP, where my brother and I were doing a backpacking trip. On the drive back to the Spokane airport after the trip, things settled in my mind and my final plan formed, interestingly enough only a few hundred miles from where Phil spent his last days. The moment I returned to campus I pitched my idea to Ben. It didn't take much convincing.
More about the boat. She is a big, beautiful black tripping canoe with a gold racing stripe. She needs a bit of outfitting and modification, but for the moment she is damn fun to look at. One of the three seats needs to come out and be replaced by a portage yoke, the boat needs to be rigged with skid plates, bailers, painters and various other line, and that silly racing stripe needs to be transfered to my car, as recommended by my cousin.
Old Town doesn't make the Penobscot in an 18' length anymore, but it still comes in several shorter lengths. We got one of the last boats they had in stock, it seems. Her lines are clean and symmetrical, and she is quite light in comparison to the boats I work with in the summer. The thing just looks fast.
These are her specs:
Length: 18'6"
Width: 37"
Depth: 14'5"
Weight: 74 pounds
Hull: Roylex ABS
Trip prep is always an exciting time. First comes the idea, then the map sessions, route meetings, gear discussions, and so on. At some late point, you buy your fresh vegtables and then there is no turning back, and we're buying our vegtables in a little over a week. That last onion we buy won't have been the first thing we've spent money- the first thing were the maps, lots and lots of maps.
Maps are dangerous things... they make you want to DO things and go places. They are addictive. Some people can stare at them for hours as their imaginations run across the landscape, imagining trips. I am one of those people, for better or worse, and I've found that during finals week (this week) it is better to hide the maps or leave them at home, because otherwise, that paper just won't get done. On that note, I'm going to stop looking at online weather reports, put the maps away, and start on that term paper that's due tomorrow...
Links:
http://www.bates.edu/Otis-Fellowships.xml
http://www.chewonki.org/
http://www.northernforestcanoetrail.org/
http://www.oldtowncanoe.com/canoes/
