Wampanoag Historic Canoe Passage 1: Conception

I've always thought of myself as an adventurer.  As a teenager, I saved up for a frame backpack and kept it in my bedroom, provisioned for sudden needs.  --say, if the Soviets invaded, and I needed to hide out in the woods.  I did, in fact, use it for occasional overnights--including once or twice in winter--though always close to home.  I also sailed a little Styrofoam boat called a Snark, and later a Sunfish.  Half-a-dozen or so times I made sail camping trips in the upper part of Narragansett Bay, RI where I grew up.  As a college student, I walked home from URI to Warwick one Christmas break, camping out two nights.  Nevertheless, I always traveled farther and longer in more challenging conditions in my mind than ever in real life.  But I always felt there was an adventure in me, one waiting for me.  The wild Alaska of John McPhee's Coming into the Country, perhaps...

After many years and much real life intervening, I developed a touch of arthritis, and a year ago a bad knee.  I was accustomed to walking the dogs a mile or two, and my knee sometimes made this difficult.  In the grand scheme of things, I wasn't bad off, and physical therapy helped.  But I had to admit that setting off into real wilderness for a week or more with a pack on my back was never going to happen.  "Never had" became "Never would."

This was a shock to my system.  Possibilities are always before us, until they aren't.  I don't feel especially regretful, but do feel a bit sad that I will never do some things.  I suppose it comes with age. 

I began thinking about workarounds.  Long distance walking with a heavy backpack was out, but not boating.  (Most of my adventures in recent years has involved sailing the local inshore waters.)  I began looking at videos of canoe trips, searching out wilderness canoe routes.  I began to follow public radio in Alaska, trying to get a sense of everyday life there.  I watched videos of other peoples' canoe trips.  But all of these required travel, which in turn requires money we don't have--in the case of Alaska, lots of it.

Close to home, I looked up the Wampanoag Canoe Passage.*

The Passage begins near the mouth of the North River on Massachusetts' "south shore" inland into smaller and smaller streams, then hops over roads and cranberry bogs and among ponds and marshes to a tributary of the Taunton River, and thence down this river to Narragansett Bay--a total of some seventy miles traveled--about thirty miles as the crow flies.  It is supposed to have been a major waterway of the Wampanoag Indians.  I had already traversed about a third of it, in my sailing, drifting and paddling the Taunton River.

The more I studied the account of the Wampanaog Commemorative Canoe Passage, the more excitement I felt at an impending real adventure.  I pored over Google Earth images, following the track of the passage as well as I could, and trying to read the landscape and guess at conditions.  I found a blog by Nik Tyack, who has paddled the passage a number of times to raise funds for a local organization.  I found a Google Map with the passage pinned to it.  Finally, I created my own maps and a document that was meant to bring together details from these sources into one place.  I wanted to be able to decide whether I could accomplish the entire passage myself in a solo kayak.  

Before committing myself, I needed to know how much of the passage would be paddling, how much would be portaging, and how much would involve dragging my kayak and gear through knee-deep mud.  Nik Tyacks' blog promised all of this, but with little in the way of specifics as to where and when.  Adding to the uncertainty, the last trip his blog recorded was six years ago. Clearly, though, it would be an ordeal in some places.  Just as clearly, the river and stream levels would be a factor--especially in the smallest and shallowest streams, ponds and marshes.

My opportunity would come in July--perhaps the driest month on the calendar.  Could the trip be managed then?  Tyack's all seemed to be in spring or fall.  

I was going to find out.

Mouth of North River, and start of the Passage.

Stetson Marsh, and the first good campsites.

Route 3 to the confluence of the Indian Head River.

confluence of Indian Head River into Herring Brook

Herring Brook through rt 14 portage

Mountain Avenue portage through Great Sandy Bottom Pond

Great Sandy Bottom Pond to Stetson Pond.

Stetson Pond through most of Stump Brook.  The straight line from Chandler Millpond to East Lake shows my uncertainty over the course of any waterway through the marsh .

Stump Brook well into the Satucket River.

Satucket River into the Matfield River.

Matfield River into the Town River.

 Taunton River

This and the remaining maps are at half the scale, so that the map is about 3 miles from top to bottom.

(Half scale.)

(Half scale.)

The Passage ends here with Dighton Rock, but for completeness, the remainder of the Taunton River is shown below.  (Half scale.)

(Half scale.)

(Half scale.)

Mouth of the Taunton River, city of Fall River. (Half scale.)


*A hint at the age of this document--which I missed until just now--is the very dated description of pre-Columbian Indian life: "The tangled growth of great forests," and "Wampanoags lived in peace and harmony with nature."  (In fact, the Wampanoag cleared land for agriculture and burned forest to encourage the deer herd; harmony consisted mainly in having a low enough population density to avoid too much environmental damage.)  Age makes the description of the Passage less trustworthy.