July 25th
Florence To Woodstock New Brunswick(26 river miles)
25 mile day. Camped on island offshore of Woodstock. Been hot and sunny all week
High 85- Low 55
Weather has been great, no wind and easy paddling. We haven’t been drinking the water but is seems o.k. for swimming.
We have the 6 miles portage ahead of us which we should reach in 2 days. The plan is to get to the take out early tomorrow in order to have some rest for the carry.
—Self sufficiency on trail- what you left with should be all you get. To get supplies along the way or not.
Another long hot day put is in the town of Woodstock N.B. which provided our first real chance at getting supplies that we didn’t bring, mostly beer and cigarettes. We had talked about it around Ft. Fairfield but I decided that we were an expedition and should act as such, meaning that once you start buying supplies along the way you are undermining the hard work you put in planning and preparing. While I stand by this ethic and will continue to hold to that belief, I am also a proponent of making good memories on trail and some times that means letting one member of your group wander through a river town looking (fruitlessly) for a convenience store to buy a few beers. We did “re-stock” later on the trip in St. Croix at the duty free liquor store, but that was a planned celebration. I think any time a long trip takes you close to civilization long thought should be given to whether or not to take advantage of those modern amenities.
What we didn’t know at the time was that the island we camped on off shore of Woodstock was an old (and now submerged) amusement park that was drowned about 50 years ago when the St. John was dammed downriver. I love these back stories of the places a trip takes you. Of course those stories exist in the back country but are often void of living history. On this trip we met many people who shared their story and the stories of the landscape and waterscape we were traveling through, stories that were both entertaining and enriching and also useful to the logistics of the trip.
One such insight involved the levels of pollution in the St. John. Before we had left for this trip we were advised not to drink (and even swim in) the St. John even after boiling and/or filtering due to industrial pollution. At one lunch stop we met a lady whose husband works at the McCain potato factory near Florenceville New Brunswick. She said one day on a tour of the factory her husband pointed out the outflow pipe, the waste liquids that were drained directly into the St. John and she noted how gross the water looked. He then showed her the pool of sludge that wasn’t supposed to get released into the river but that did occasionally at high water and she described it as a pool of “green goo.” I’m not citing McCain as the sole polluter of the St. John, but it does go a ways towards justifying our caution in finding drinking water and hesitancy to swim in the St.John for the 4 days we paddled the river.
This camp was the first time the wind blew strong from the south and caused us to circle up and decide whether to cut camp on the island or keep going. There is a list of questions you should ask yourself when deciding if your group should stop for the day (sometimes earlier than you’d like) or keep pushing on. Primarily I want to make sure my trip mates are safe, healthy and happy. If you keep pushing you are risking over-exertion if the day is long, exposure if the weather is tough, and a poor night’s sleep if the trail proves unfit for camping. Stopping early on the other hand can disrupt the flow of a trip, give your team too much down time, and can throw off the timing of a long expedition. Depending on my understanding of the risk of the moment and the performance of the group I will oscillate between telling and selling to participating (More on situational leadership). Flexible leadership is the name of the game; invisible yet powerful.
21 Days on the Road 