Lost in Maine
By Jack Mitchell
“We are now at the second-to-last lake we will be paddling here in Maine,” the staff man and trip leader, Josh, told the other group of campers on my trip. This was our fifth day in the Rangeley Lake region and the Maine Wilderness, with only the coyote howls, squirrel scurries, and loon cries for bedtime music and only tarps and tents for shelter and—no offense to Mother Nature—I couldn’t wait to go back to the main campground in Vermont the next day. So here I was, with seven other kids and two staff men on a lake somewhere in Maine waiting to begin the paddle. I quietly waited in my canoe until water splashing off other paddles hit me in the face. We were starting the Rangeley Trip Day 5 Saga.
“Carter,” I said as I kicked up a conversation with my bowman to make the four-mile paddle go by shorter. “I’m so glad we are doing a truck portage today. All we have to do is walk and the truck takes all our canoes and gear.” The other portages we had done on the trip were the old-fashioned canoe over the head and gear on your back portages, and although my mind didn’t remember them too well, my neck sure did.”
“Yeah,” Carter replied, that God there are no more real portages lef—“
The bow of Lex and Jake’s canoe had just slammed into our stern, turning us around. Those rascals were fishtailing us!
“Let’s get ‘em,” I yelled at Carter.
“Okay,”
“Forward padded, hard,” I commanded. We picked up a steady pace and were slowly overcoming Lex’s boat.
“Draw! Draw! Draw!” I yelled to Carter. Our canoe cut theirs off in the nick of time and we finished first. After several more minutes of racing we stopped paddling and let our canoes become parallel so we could talk.
“Look at Josh taking out the map to find the truck portage, with the spot in plain sight. Are you kidding me?”
“What an idiot,” I agreed. Carter and Jake nodded from their boats. Then we paddled in to raft up. Even Gustavo, the other staff man on the trip, and 18-year-old Venezuelan, shook his head in disbelief.
The hours went on with a highlight every once in a while. Trail mix breaks, the beautiful surroundings, a loon about five feet away, and a majestic bald eagle perched in a tree; these were the good things. But how long can good things last?
“Everybody get your canoes on the canoe rack,” Josh commanded. We obeyed. Put your gear in the van,” Josh ordered. We did that too. Some boys wandered off to explore Rapid River and a big pile of rocks. One, a young, perky boy named Peter, returned with a snakebite from catching a snake—luckily a harmless black rat sname. So, with snake catching already done, we went over to Josh.
“Can we just stay here and play poker while we wait for the truck to pick us up?” I asked Josh.
“Of course not,” Josh said.
That would be too much fun, I thought to myself.
“You know that spare time not doing anything only leads to rough-housing and I don’t want anybody hurt,” Josh explained. “Instead we’ll walk, as you probably did in previous trips. This is a much longer walk, so we will just walk for a couple hours to kill time, and on the way back from unloading the canoes the driver will pick us up.”
We started walking up the long dirt road the truck had gone up. The sun shined constantly and my tongue was dry. I panted and tried to keep up with the staff men. How bad could this be, I asked myself. We trudged along the dirt road, sometimes plotting how to kill Josh, sometimes stopping for water breaks on the edge of the thick forest. I drank a sip of soothing water from my Naglene bottle. It felt sticky going down my hot and parched throat. I saw in the distance a fork in the road and sure enough, out it came, Josh’s trusty boating map of the general Rangeley Lake Region, a perfect map for finding out which back road to take.
“Let’s turn here,” Josh said. He had a whole amazing sixth sense, a great sense of direction, as I had found out a long time ago.
“Are you sure?” I asked Josh. He nodded with an I’ve-got-the-map-and-you-don’t-so-shut-up kind of nod.
My bones were really starting to ache as we continued another mile up the road, only to find out it was the wrong road and we had to turn back.. Four miles, no big deal, right? I thought. So we continued.
“Shouldn’t the truck have picked us up by now…unless they passed while we were up the wrong road?” Lex asked Josh. He responded with the usual defensive answer.
Instead of waiting for the SUV to pick us up, Josh made sure the group and I continued walking, all the time stopping and turning and zigzagging until somehow the group was in a very weird place. I looked around and saw hundreds of freshly cut pines and the intoxicating smell of the sap filled my nose. Huge tracks were on and off the road, made from giant bulldozers and logging trucks. There was a giant metal pipe lying on the ground and bits of machinery here and there. I sat down on the pipe and banged my long-empty Nalgene on it. I heard the ringing of metal.
“Let’s just wait here,” Josh told the group. Ya think? I said to myself. What else could we do? Luckily, after several hot, sunny, dusty, dry minutes, I smelled the exhaust fumes from a Nissan Pathfinder.
“Hop in,” said the friendly, slightly pudgy lady from the canoe-moving place. All eight of us crammed into the back of an undersized SUV while Josh (from now I’ll call him “the Doofus”) sat comfy in front, telling stories to the lady about when the campers were bad and he saved the day. Maybe then she wouldn’t question him for getting eight kids seven miles lost in some logging district with no med-kit and at least three miles without water. I sighed, caught my breath, and took in the experience. The lady then slammed her foot on the gas pedal and we went flying over potholes, rocks, puddles and logs, bonking my head on the roof and losing the feeling in my legs. I choked on the dust floating in the car that filled my throat and nose and got me covered in dirt. After a very long, very bumpy car ride, all the campers piled out of the car to the new campsite.
“Boy, what a ride,” we commented. The others were just a rattled and just as mad at the Doofus. Was I really that mad at the Doofus? Was I maybe not only mad at him, but also at the logging district, and after seeing bald eagles, loons, and beautiful Maine lakes and forests, felt a little different about it all being destroyed. Yeah, something like that, but still, Josh was a complete jerk.