kethrai's Diaryland Diary

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keep On Paddling.

Let me tell you about one of my heroes.

His name is Zip Kellogg. And he's a librarian, from Portland, Maine.

Many years ago, I attended college at the largest of the state colleges in Maine. It was up there--way up there--and we tended to have two seasons, winter and one month of piss-poor sledding. I have never been as consistently cold as I was going to school there. Four years, I went, and four years, I froze, and each year, heading into not-quite-spring, I was about ready to expire from the awful grayness of a Maine winter. The school itself was not quite in the back of beyond, but if you stood at the end of the last athletic field, the signposts marked "Beyond, Back of" were clearly visible.

College was an interesting time for me. Arriving there as a very head-young 18 year old, I can't say as I took away everything from the college experience that I would have liked to--issues of dealing with First Serious Boyfriend and Living Away From Home rather consumed me--but I did enjoy being there, except when it got to the greyer, earlier parts of spring where you're just waiting and waiting and waiting for something resembling warmer air, and the slush on the ground is always 1/2" higher than your boot tops and nothing is pretty and white, but is dingy and discolored and waiting for something resembling springtime.

And it is at this time of year--the end of April, to be precise--that right near where I went to school, they hold the Kenduskeag Canoe Race.

The Kenduskeag Canoe Race is several decades old, now. I don't know what originally kicked it off, but I suspect it was other Mainers who were just as fed up as I was with all the godawful weather and wanted to do something to shake themselves up after the freaking doldrums of winter. It's a multi-age, multi-craft race down 16 miles of river, ending in downtown Bangor, Maine (yes, that's where Stephen King lives) over some fairly flat water and a rather nasty patch known as Six Mile Falls that regularly dumps even the gungho-est of the kayakers in the latest of gung-ho-ey kayak gear in the drink. Since it's held at the end of April, the water tends to be high and fast from meltoff, deadly cold, and there is always the possibility that it might snow. And this--this is the weather that the race is almost always held in. But the Race Day is sacred, and the show must go on.

(Yes, I'm getting to Zip Kellogg. Give me a minute.)

Being where we were meant that TV reception had the vast range of the three signals actually accessible in the area. And since, well, the Kenduskeag Canoe Race is big local news, they would broadcast every gory detail...on all three channels.
So one gray Saturday in the alleged Maine spring, I wandered down to the TV room in the dorm, flipped on the boob tube, and was confronted with the exhaustive coverage of the Kenduskeag Canoe Race.

And there I stayed. For four hours. Riveted.

It's not just a canoe race, you see. After a winter cooped up with their nearest and dearest, anyone would go a little wonky, and Mainers, despite the depressing regularity and severity of their winters, are as prone to going wonky as anyone else. And since the first hoo-ha of spring is the Kenduskeag Canoe Race, they go a bit wonkier than usual in the first rush of "OHMYGODOUTDOORSATLAST!"

Each boat was better than the last. I adored the grandfather-granddaughter team who were paddling doggedly along--he looked a little shaky and she looked terribly small, but they were clearly having the time of their lives. I admired the dedication of the kayakers: they had some of the real rubbery-looking zippetydoodah gear and they had really shiny kayaks, and they bobbed along like particularly zippetydoodah-ish corks, hunched over and paddling like mad. There was one big canoe that was some kind of family group--a couple of middle-aged guys going soft in the middle and thin on top, and their equally fluffy wives, paddling along and giggling and shrieking like children. There were a few earnest teens in their very own First Kayaks or First Canoes, bolting along and looking green when Six Mile Falls hove into view. There was one group that were all dressed in teal, and had a blow-up Gumby strapped into the back of the boat. The banks of the Kenduskeag were lined with spectators, stamping their feet and blowing into their hands to stay warm, and the local Fire and Rescue had guys strung out in wetsuits (I hope they all got Irish coffees afterward, because the water was killingly cold) along the more dangerous parts of the course to catch those who ditched and ended up in the water that was still half snowmelt. If you ditch in the Kenduskeag during snowmelt season, you don't just get wet--you get hypothermia. The spectators came out to see the race in the same spirit that you stop to stare at a car accident, although they had enough grace to cheer the teams that became my especial favorites as well.

Six Mile Falls is an ugly switchbacklike set of rapids in the river, populated by a bunch of huge old boulders and hidden snags. There's some easier and harder ways to get down the falls--there's the fast-and-furious way, going straight down, or the switchback way, threading through a number of the boulders, but depending on the water levels, both are treacherous and neither one is a guarantee against getting dumped in. The local news stations, being interested, of course, in High Drama, had crews stationed at Six Mile with gleeful body counts of those who ditched, and were fished, dripping and chastened, out of the water by the Fire and Rescue guys in wetsuits--typical Mainers all, either skinny and stringy, or going soft in the middle and thin on top, and about as strong as your typical bog oak in their shiny black wetsuits. I watched team after team confront the falls, clearly working out their strategies in their heads...take the slow switchback, and risk tipping over sideways, or the straight down the chute, and go end over end? It was always a surprise as to who actually ditched or not. The Boy Scout troup and the grandfather/granddaughter team made it, and the way their faces brightened and lost their green tinge when they were actually through was...illuminating. Some of the more hoo-hah-ey of the kayakers tried the fastandfurious and ditched, and their more cautious buddies then slithered down the switchback and made it through.

And then I saw him for the first time. My hero. Zip Kellogg.
In those days he was of the slim and wiry native type of Mainer. Dark hair and beard, not-young not-old in that way that Maine men sometimes have--that ambiguous skinny wiry frame and looks that say he could have been anywhwere between thirty and sixty. Not handsome, not ugly. Dressed in a full tux and tails. Pretty bouquet on the front of the boat. Corsage on the lapel. Coming down Six Mile Falls. In a canoe. STANDING. UP.

For those of you, dear NonScheduled Readers, whose sole exposure to canoes is the old political cry you learn in school, "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too", please be assured that they indeed are. I've paddled kayaks, and felt perfectly secure. A canoe pulled up at a dock is enough to make my non-motion-sick self turn faintly green. And if you remember countless movies and films, where the heroine is startled by something, and stands up in a boat, and goes over...well..yeah. You get the picture. Canoes are easier to tip than most craft, and the last thing you ever want to do on a boat smaller than, say, the QE II, is STAND UP.

But there he was. In a canoe. Extralong paddle. STANDING UP.

With gleeful anticipation of disaster, the news crews filmed him taking Six-Mile. With infinite grace, he slid slowly through the switchback. Not for him the fast-and-furous, but the canoe bobbed slowly down left...right....left, and he shifted his weight and handled his extralong paddle to shove off the snags and the frogmen stood utterly still and the spectators held their collective breath...and Zip Kellog danced slowly down Six Mile Falls.

I fell immediately, violently in love.

The last two and a half hours of the TV coverage had me watching to catch another glimpse of Zip Kellog, and yes, he made the entire race...standing up. When his canoe slid into the calm waters and under the bridges of Bangor, Maine, he got a standing ovation.

He bowed.

For years, I resisted the temptation to try and track him down. I didn't even really know his name. But whenever I was confronted with a rushing, bumpy, out of control life, fraught with boulders and snags, I would remember the skinny little Mainer in a tux and tails, dancing a canoe through Six Mile Falls, and remember two things--stay on my feet, and for the love of little fishes, keep on paddling. Depending on where I was, I would try to catch the news on Saturdays in April, hoping for a little coverage on the Kenduskeag Race, and occasionally through the years, catch a shot of my hero.

This year I was having a gray spring. Coming up on April, it was rainy, it was cold and wet, and I had my usual spring doldrums--despite living farther south in NH now, it was a particularly Maine-ish winter...and I dug around at points in time trying to find out if any of the local stations would broadcast the Kenduskeag Canoe race, and by the time I located one, it had already come and gone. So, needing my fix of giggling grandaughters and grandfathers, and oooh-wowish kayakers, and a glimpse of my skinny, graceful hero, I went searching on the web.

And I found him.


For the first time, I had a way to find out his name. I struggled with this--I didn't want to invade his privacy (practically a High Holy Religion, here in New England) but here he was. And I'd been telling people for years, simply years, about the race, and the skinny water-dancer, and telling them that he came down Six Mile Falls standing up, and...there he was.

So I looked him up. Turns out he's a librarian in Portland, Maine, and has been canoing for years. Standing up. Says he does it because he likes to see what's coming. Says the Kenduskeag race is a little hard, because in New England, he can really only start paddling in April, and he's never quite in shape yet.

Dear Nonscheduled Reader. Please realize I first saw the Kenduskeag race in about 1990.

Yes, he does it every year. From what I gathered from various news articles, he's only ever ditched once.

Because he hit someone else's canoe.

That was where I stopped in my researching. I knew enough. I didn't really need to know any more.

If you're ever in Maine, at the end of April, no matter what sort of vacation you're on, stay in your hotel that Saturday and tune in to the news for the best stories you'll see that year. You get to see the utterly prepared kayakers in their fabuspiff bright shiny kayaks and see if it is caution or boldness that carries them safely through this year. I'm pretty sure you'll see the Gumby boat, and more than a few teenagers trying to make their first race a memorable one. If you're really lucky, you'll see a stringy elderly Mainer grandpa type taking his umpteenth race with his granddaughter's first one, and there's always the drama of who will make it through Six-Mile Falls. You'll shiver in sympathy with the Fire and Rescue guys, and watch them efficiently fishing the less skilled out of the hypothermic water.

And you will see Zip Kellog. In a fine suit, a corsage, a bouquet on the nose of his canoe, gracefully minuetting his way down Six Mile Falls. He's a little older now, with wild gray hair, not as skinny, a big old beard. Times change, you know, and people grow older, and there's always a chance that this year--just this year--that Six Mile Falls may take him in...although it's unlikely. He's been paddling for over 30 years, after all.

And if you're lucky, you'll carry away from that race what I have, for nearly 20 years now, what you most need. Giggle. It's ok to crash. Someone will help you out of the soup if you need it. Finishing the race is just as important as winning. And most of all, stand on your own two feet, check out what's ahead of you, and keep on paddling.

Thanks, Zip.
If you wish to see more of the Kenduskeag race, go to http://kenduskeagstreamcanoerace.com and check it out. And order photos!

6:24 p.m. - 2006-06-21

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

previous - next