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May/June, 2005
How Newt Gingrich Saved My Life
or Why Joining the Penobscot Paddle and Chowder Society Might be a Good Idea
By Kyle Duckworth
It was an unseasonably warm, wet November day in 1994. Being a self-employed peckerwood carpenter with no inside work, I was in my truck, taking a tour of Mount Desert Island. It had been raining hard for a day or so, and there was a lot of water running everywhere. A lot of water. And just as the rain was ending, I was out riding around, scouting it.
I drove down Route 3 toward Bar Harbor, and pulled off the road just before the ferry terminal, where Duck Brook completes its steep descent from Eagle Lake to Frenchman’s Bay and passes through a huge culvert under the road. Normally a trickle cascading over rocks and boulders at the bottom of a steep hollow, Duck Brook was raging in full flood. And, I reckoned, navigable.
I had heard rumors of kayakers who had run Duck Brook. I had seen it from Route 3 hundreds of times. That’s all I knew about it. A quick scout up the bank for a quarter mile confirmed that there was enough water to float a boat, and so I headed back to my truck. Had I scouted up another quarter mile or so I would have come to the swimming hole locally known as Bare-Assed Depot, a popular skinnydipping spot where a ten-foot waterfall plunges into a pool. But this information, however useful in my decision-making process, was behind me, and I was walking away from it.
I had just the craft for such a trip - an Old Town Discovery 169, barely a month old. A 16-foot-nine-inch, eighty-five pound shredding machine! My wife had encouraged me to buy it because she was tired of seeing me beat my home-made stripper to smithereens on rocks. It was just the tool I needed to quench my raging, budding thirst for whitewater. Kneeling behind the center thwart, snug inside a truck inner tube lashed to the gunwales, L.L. Bean vinyl rain jacket and pants keeping my blue jeans and hooded sweatshirt dry, I was geared up, and I was good. Duck Brook didn’t scare me - it was a straight shot. Not that I knew how to do an eddy turn if there had been any.
Those who have paddled with me in more recent times know that I sometimes fear less than I should. But you should have seen me back then, before I had even heard of the Penobscot Paddle and Chowder Society, before I had been taken under the wings of its wizened elders of whitewater. Everything I knew about whitewater I got from the little pocket-sized DeLorme Maine Rivers books. I knew just enough to be dangerous to myself.
But not to others. None of my limited circle of local paddling friends was up to such a descent as Duck Brook (lacking the skill and judgment necessary for the task), so this had to be a solo trip. All that remained was to scout the put-in and go home to get my boat. It was a short run, less than two miles, so I figured I could walk the shuttle. But when I attempted to turn onto the Duck Brook Road that leads to the put-in, the gate was closed! I was denied!
Then I remembered the big news of the day. Like I said, it was 1994. Newt Gingrich and his gang had just swept into Congress and proclaimed their Contract with America. The showdown in Washington ended up shutting the government down for a week or so when a budget could not be agreed upon. Acadia National Park was the government, and it was shut down on that November day.
The last ten years have been good ones for me. I have a happy marriage to a great woman who encourages my paddling habit and makes more money than me, good health, two cordless drills, a house with a beer fridge in the basement, and a woodstove to keep me warm in the winter. I did in fact start paddling with the Penobscot Paddle and Chowder Society in 2000, and have learned the right way and the wrong way to approach the sport of whitewater, while experiencing great, wild places, rewarding friendships, and many campfires. Life is full - I’m a lucky man. And I have Newt Gingrich to thank for it all.
Kyle Duckworth is President of the Penobscot Paddle and Chowder Society, formed in Bangor in 1969 and now numbering nearly 200 members in Maine, MA, and NH. Check out the PPCS at www.paddleandchowder.org.
Email nick [at] noumbrella [dot] com with your questions, comments and concerns.
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