Crossing the Kennebec

I crossed the Kennebec River Sept. 9. Kennebec is an Abenaki tribe word meaning "long level water without rapids."

The river is the biggest unbridged river on the AT. In the 1980s a woman attempting to ford the river drowned, and shortly thereafter a free ferry service took hikers from one shore to the next.

The canoe even has a white blaze on it. When I went across, at about 2:30 p.m., the river was flowing high. The rower steered up along the south bank and then shot into the middle, with me paddling in front, and angled the boat so that it was pointing upstream and we were drifting down and to the right towards the landing.

As it happens, had I arrived about a week earlier I might have been in a news story in the Bangor Daily News about the ferryman, who told me to call him "Hillbilly Dave."

Here's the story. In the pictures you'll see why "Hillybilly."

BTW, the hikers rowing in one of the photos are Slapshot and Raddlephoot.