(HOST) Commentator and Editor-emeritus of Vermont Life Magazine, Tom Slayton, recently took a canoe trip that was unexpectedly challenging – and rewarding.
(SLAYTON) Perhaps the Abenaki name of the river should have given me a clue that we were in for a day of canoeing that would definitely be out of the ordinary. The English translation of that Abenaki name – Nulhegan – means "deadfall trap river." That alone should have told me what to expect. But, of course, I paid no attention.
The Nulhegan was a blank spot on my mental map of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail, a blank I needed to fill in.
And so I recruited a paddling companion and set out to explore the upper reaches of the Nulhegan. The little river flows from near Island Pond eastward to the Connecticut River. It drains a huge wild basin of boreal forests, swamps, and tea-colored streams inhabited mostly by deer, moose, bear, and blackflies. Geologists suggest that the Nulhegan Basin’s crater-like configuration may be the result of a huge meteorite that smashed into the earth eons ago. Today, though it has been heavily logged, it is undeveloped, rugged, and wild.
I had decided to paddle the upper Nulhegan – the twisty, meandering, mysterious part.
It was hardly eight feet across where we clambered into the canoe, grabbed our paddles and headed downstream. It took us about 10 minutes to get stopped by the first beaver dam. We got out of the canoe, then dragged the boat over the dam, stepping on the mass of alder saplings and hopping back in, paddles in hand, on the downstream side. We could see the next dam about 100 feet downstream, waiting for us.
More dams followed, more clamberings out of and into the canoe. Before our long day was over we would drag our canoe across 15 beaver dams, wading through innumerable riffles and paddling around dozens, scores, perhaps hundreds of U-turns, as the Nulhegan wandered out into a complex and extensive wetland, then meandered its way past groves of cedars and marsh grass, twisting this way and that. Our epic journey just went on, and on, and on.
Finally, late in the afternoon, we spotted the bridge where we’d left the truck. We were wet, bruised, muscle-sore and completely tuckered out. Those 15 beaver dams had pretty much done us in.
And yet the day was not without its charms. There were moments, paddling along, far out in the marshes and bogs, when I felt about as far away from the everyday routine of town life as you can get in Vermont. And, truth to tell, the little tea-colored river did lead us (painfully) through some really beautiful stretches of wild, grassy marshland.
It’s nice to know such places exist – that they are out there, "holding the world together." Through seasons of growth and sleep, warmth and cold, deep green chaos, and blank snowy emptiness, the river flows – and, with luck, it will flow that way forever.