55.4° 
This River is Rated R
Dust swirls in the parking lot as an endless cavalcade of cars and trucks wheel in and disgorge the party-goers. Wearing T-shirts that say "So many lures, so little time!" and other slogans unprintable in a family magazine, they tramp back and forth to the river's edge, lugging their riotous goods: coolers, tents, tarps, stoves, fold-up tables, barbecues, vodka and lawn chairs and Cheez-Its and toilet paper, cases of water, cases of beer, boom boxes and tiki lights, charcoal and margarita mix, duffel bags on their shoulders and canoes on their heads and inflatable palm trees towed behind.The so-called Pirates of the Can 'O Beer, nineteen rowdy guys who all attended Inter-Lakes High School in Meredith, New Hampshire, load up their ten canoes. From the stern of one canoe flies their flag, a skull and crossbones topped by a frothy cool one; another boat sports a huge set of plywood moose antlers. With gear tightly packed and piled above the gunwales, they clamber in, two to a canoe. The one beefy solo rider squeezes in with towering bundles of firewood; his canoe dips perilously low in the water.
This is Jamie Bertolino's sixth reunion, or "rodeo." He has come from Florida, he says, "to observe the 'wildlife' — literate women in bathing suits." The essence of the trip, he carefully explains, is "canoe-tia. We try to do as little paddling as possible."
"You ready, princess?" a cohort calls, and they shove off from shore, backwards, fast, straight into another canoe. Amidst expletive-laced shouts of "Other side! Other side!" and "Okay straight, straight!" they pull out and catch the current.
"Look for the fireworks!" Bertolino yells back to the shore. "You'll find us."
Hovering noisily and giddily midstream, the Pirates lash their canoes together with several bungee cords. Some of them engage in a brief water fight with another group of canoes stuck on a nearby sandbar. Then they drift, sombreros bobbing, about fifty feet downstream. There they tie up, cackling and whooping and throwing bags of homemade Cap'n Crunch trail mix from boat to boisterous boat.
Bertolino is right. You can find them, easy.
The Saco River flows 134 miles from Saco Lake in New Hampshire's White Mountains to below the city of Saco, Maine, where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Except for occasional rapids and a string of hydroelectric dams in its midsection, the river drifts gently over pristine sandbars and past hardwood forests, a paddler's paradise if ever there was one. In Maine, the river winds eighty-five miles through some of the state's most populated areas. En route, it provides power and water to hundreds of thousands of people.
Remarkably, the Saco remains one of the cleanest and best-protected rivers in the country. But it is also one of the busiest. Each summer weekend, thousands of revelers threaten to transform the tranquil river into what has been called a floating barroom, a zoo of party-hungry, bumper-to-bumper canoeists who bring their own deejays, happily moon each other, and drown the sounds of birds in the relentless blare of boom boxes and clink of beer bottles.
In the summer of 2001, the party bottomed out with several violent incidents. In response, concerned landowners, law enforcement officials, and other river advocates formed a task force. The changes they instituted — increased education, better trash removal, weekend police patrols on the river — have improved conditions, they say. Still, most admit that the task of preserving the Saco, while also allowing people to enjoy it, remains what Fred Westerberg calls "an uphill battle."
Westerberg is a task-force member and owner of Saco River Canoe & Kayak, Maine's largest so-called livery company. Of drinking and partying on the river, he says, "You can't stop all that — we'll never be done with it. But we've got a handle on it." The excesses of the past have been largely curtailed, he says, and once-wary families are returning to the Saco. Still, he recognizes the necessity of balancing disparate needs on a river that is just three hours from Boston.
"This is a recreational river," he says. "It is not wilderness."
In an account of his family reunion in 1882, one Llewellyn A. Wadsworth sang the praises of a "winding and silvery Saco" whose "majestic cataract makes endless melody as its bright waters roll onward to the sea."
Long before Europeans were rhapsodizing about the river, it was home to Native Americans. Historians say the river was named for Western Abenakis called Sokokis, or "people who separated." From the early 1600s, Indians worked as guides for European explorers and traded with them. In his account of a 1767 trip to the Indian village of Pequaket or Pequawket, now Fryeburg, Joseph Knight describes "a great many Indians . . . who were perfectly peaceable."
By the 1800s, though, the Indians were disappearing. In 1821, the Reverend Amos Cook wrote of finding "several mounds of earth left by the natives, of singular aspect." With no survivors to enlighten him, he said, "Whether they were ancient burying grounds, fortifications, or encampments cannot be ascertained."
Today, Native Americans endure in the region primarily through the curse they are said to have left behind. It began at a white settlement near today's Saco, where English and Sokokis co-existed peacefully thanks to the efforts of Squandro, a respected chief.
In the summer of 1675, English sailors on the river came upon an Indian woman with her baby paddling a canoe. Taunting her, the sailors asked if it was true that Indian children could swim at birth. They tossed the baby in the river. The mother dived in; some stories say they both died, others say only the baby died.
The baby was Menewee, the son of Squandro. For three days and nights, Squandro mourned. Then he stood on the banks of the Saco and commanded the river's spirits to take the lives of three white men every year until they were driven from "Saco's hemlock-trees." For centuries, mothers did not allow their children to swim in the Saco until three drownings had occurred; the curse was fulfilled until the 1940s, when a year passed safely, but wary memories of it remain.
Curse or no, Europeans kept flocking to the Saco. The Industrial Revolution arrived in 1811 when William Pepperrell built the Saco Iron Works. It was followed by cotton mills, a railroad, lumber mills, and textile mills that harnessed the river for power (and dumped waste until the practice was halted), and more settlers.
In 1886, a history of Fryeburg by George Varney describes "a pretty village" of thriving businesses — leather, carriages, tinware, cheese — with four watermills, two steam mills, and a growing throng of tourists. Each summer, he writes, "Many from the cities . . . find rest in its pleasant hotels and boarding-houses."
Today, the pleasure persists. The Saco is the second-most-popular river east of the Mississippi, behind only the Delaware, welcoming an estimated 3,000 to 7,000 people per summer weekend. The sometimes-raucous presence of those visitors leads supporters of the river to worry that, in the words of one, "People want to love it to death."
Most of the recreational pressure is focused on twenty easy-to-paddle miles from Swan's Falls, the busiest put-in, to Brownfield. Along that stretch, the river winds gently at three to five miles an hour over a sand and gravel bottom.
Elsewhere, the Saco remains largely untouched. This is in part thanks to the Saco River Corridor Commission, which has regulated development on the river since the early 1970s. The only industry remaining is Biddeford's Maine Energy Recovery Company, which uses water to cool its trash-incineration process, and a series of twelve hydroelectric dams, most from Bonny Eagle in Hollis to Biddeford-Saco. They are run by Florida Power and Light, which bought them from Central Maine Power in 1998.
As a result, the Saco is one of the cleanest rivers in Maine, second only to the St. John River. This despite the fact that it traverses Maine's three most populous counties: Oxford, Cumberland, and York. It supplies drinking water to an estimated 250,000 people in more than thirty-five Maine and New Hampshire towns.
To Stefan Jackson, director of the Nature Conservancy's Saco River Project, the quality of the Saco's water is matched by the ecological richness of New England's largest floodplain. The Saco River basin, the river's 1,700 square-mile watershed, is fed and scoured clean each year by spring flooding. The result is fertile hardwood forests, wetland habitats, and vernal pools. They, in turn, are home to wood ducks, pileated woodpeckers, turtles, snakes, moose, and rare plants and dragonflies.
Jackson says the Saco offers many people "their only chance to connect with the natural world — it has the potential to sow a seed." After hundreds of years of human interaction on the river, he argues, "the issue is not whether to engage with it, but how. We don't want to take the party out, just make it a different kind of party."
Westerberg has been working on that task since he began Saco River Canoe & Kayak thirty years ago with his wife, Prudy. Today, they are one of eight livery companies that operate on the river. All primarily rent canoes, because they hold more gear. The largest, Saco Bound in Conway, New Hampshire, offers boat rental, trip planning, shuttle service, and youth, corporate, and family rates under its slogan, "Leave all the work to us!"
For Westerberg, the Saco represents not just a livelihood, but a life. A Maine guide, conservationist, and fisherman, he says, "This goes further than a dollar." Westerberg helped form the task force after the 2001 summer that saw an ugly confrontation with police, an assault, and a drowning, all reportedly alcohol-related. The task force bought a shallow-water boat for the Fryeburg Police; the town bought another. They also bought an airboat, which can travel even on ice, for search and rescue missions. The police presence "made a monstrous difference," says Westerberg. "Know how fast news spreads? Like a disease."
Today Westerberg supervises the Saco River Recreational Council, made up of liveries, landowners, game wardens, and other officials. Each summer week, he sends river runners out to clean up trash. He estimates that 90 percent of the earlier abuses have stopped. "You'll always get that 3 or 4 percent who have no respect for you or me or the river," he notes, "but we fight 'em."
Families who once shunned the river are now bringing their kids and grandkids back to it, says Westerberg. And a quiet Saco can still be found on weekdays, in the fall, south of Brownfield: "There's a time for everybody on the river."
Unfortunately, the clamorous reality is that most people turn up on the weekends, in July and August, at Swan's Falls — a place Jon Hoyt calls "Mardi Gras, a feeding frenzy."
Hoyt is caretaker for the Swan's Falls campground and visitor center run by the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC), which manages the site for the state. The center is a small shed where posted rules urge "Pack it in, pack it out" and where visitors can buy river maps, life vests, bug dope, waterproof matches, and T-shirts saying, "Respect the river."
Hoyt manages the 150-car parking lot, hands out fire permits and fishing licenses, and answers questions from where to camp to how to get a ride back from downstream. Friday afternoons, there can be hundreds of people lined up in cars to put in canoes. He estimates 20 percent are from Maine; many of the rest come from Massachusetts. By Thursday, he swears, he can hear the sound of them rinsing out coolers and packing beer, sleeping bags, and other essentials for a wild weekend.
More essentials are piled down in the dusty parking lot, where vacationers in bathing suits and baseball caps haul them in endless trips from truck to river. As livery vans with racks of canoes swing in and out, they yell, "Lisa, does this stuff belong to you?" and "Who's got the chips?" amidst the whir of pumps blowing up tubes, rafts, giant turtles, and Aqua Rocker Fun Floats.
They pack the canoes with grills, coolers, water guns, garbage bags crammed with clothes, a box of donuts in the stern, Gatorade in the bow. Then they take off, many perched on lawn chairs set up like thrones above their watery kingdoms.
Richard Dabrowski, 72, of Cooperstown, New York, loads a barbecue with its legs cut off and a bag of charcoal before heading out. Having come for thirty years, he is unfazed by the tumult and echoes Westerberg: "There's enough river for everybody."
But Dennis Dickerson of Wilmington, Massachusetts, who has been coming for just as long, says he's "too old for all this excitement." He heads downstream "to avoid the crowds."
Most, though, revel in them. Almost all twenty-something couples, they drift down the river in raucous groups, chattering about music and roommates and sports, their radios booming. Around one bend, a group of guys splash in knee-deep water, tossing a football and yelling, "Dive! Dive!" Around the next bend, same scene, with a Frisbee.
On the river, the AMC suggests on its map, "Let nature's sounds prevail." On a weekend, this can be tough. Radios blast from almost every canoe. People shout from canoe to canoe, their voices bouncing off the still water. From the sandy shore, guys with beer in cups strung around their necks yell to the people in canoes. Common topics of conversation are beer, football, parties, bikini-clad young women, and beer.
Still, the river is lovely. It winds past steep sand bluffs and overhanging trees, shallow and so clear you can see the neon green of floating grasses underneath. You can also see an occasional beer can, golf ball, or red plastic cup — but not many. And in the occasional lull between football games, a gentle breeze whispers.
The first free campsite — landowners post many of the sandbars with yellow "No Trespassing" signs — is about two miles from Swan's Falls. Today it has been claimed by Scott Scopetsky of Clinton, Massachusetts, his girlfriend, and two other couples. They lounge in six lawn chairs in a few inches of water next to their campsite, a tidy cluster of tents, packs, coolers, grill. "We bring our own party," says Scopetsky. "Ah, happy Saco."
From their perches they greet the passing parade of canoes. Their radio blasts a jingle for Reliable Wireless: "We never stop working for you!" Soon, they will fire up the grill and play a little Texas Hold'em. The next day, Scopetsky says, they will head downstream and "let the river take us where it goes."
Past them, meanwhile, more parties float by. A canoe with an inflatable palm tree in the stern, a canoe with two dogs and a large log for firewood, more radios, more sombreros. On shore, more campsites. Burgers cook, towels dry on trees.
Canal Bridge, a four-mile, two-hour paddle from Swan's Falls, hovers into view. From here, some will go on as far as Brownfield, or even Hiram, where the river is deep and quiet. But many will pull in at Fiddlehead Campground, just downstream from the bridge. At its beach, a group of guys sit in their canoes, loudly arguing about whether or not they stayed there last year: "Name your bet, dude."
Fiddlehead is owned by Rob Rose, a physician, and his brother-in-law, Eric Root. Rose says they created the 1,000-acre campground to provide family camping and to reclaim control from "the lawless few." They have rules about noise, trash, music. Rose says he doesn't understand the party scene, particularly its edict that, "Wherever the picnic table is, it has to be moved."
The presence of the police, says Rose, "dramatically changes the tone of conversation on the river." Still, he describes the Saco as "a river you can float down in an intoxicated state, and not drown."
Fryeburg Police Chief Wayne Brooking concurs, at least when it comes to the troublemakers: "Most everyone we deal with on the river is intoxicated to one degree or another." Last summer was particularly tough. Police faced manpower shortages, what seemed like worse intoxication and belligerence, and increased trash from disposable camping gear. Nonetheless, Brooking says things are slowly improving. "You have to expect some hitches," he says. "The river is still in transition."
Major Gregg Sanborn, deputy chief warden for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife, agrees that progress, however slow, is being made. Thanks to education, people are learning to follow "leave no trace" rules, he says, and develop a sense of stewardship. Born and raised in Fryeburg, with the river in his backyard, he cherishes it, noise or no. "For lots of people, it's their outdoor experience," he says.
Back at Swan's Falls, people are still putting in. At the water, one group of guys is building a plywood raft, topped with grill and Oriental rug, onto their canoes. In the lot, another group is packing a mountain of supplies — eight coolers, a stove, a grill, a multitude of bags, a stack of tiki lights — into three canoes. Then, heaving and panting, they shove the loaded canoes through the dust to the water.
Their leader, Billy Armour of Braintree, Massachusetts, is ready for the river.
Says Armour, "I'm looking for some peace and quiet."
This is Jamie Bertolino's sixth reunion, or "rodeo." He has come from Florida, he says, "to observe the 'wildlife' — literate women in bathing suits." The essence of the trip, he carefully explains, is "canoe-tia. We try to do as little paddling as possible."
"You ready, princess?" a cohort calls, and they shove off from shore, backwards, fast, straight into another canoe. Amidst expletive-laced shouts of "Other side! Other side!" and "Okay straight, straight!" they pull out and catch the current.
"Look for the fireworks!" Bertolino yells back to the shore. "You'll find us."
Hovering noisily and giddily midstream, the Pirates lash their canoes together with several bungee cords. Some of them engage in a brief water fight with another group of canoes stuck on a nearby sandbar. Then they drift, sombreros bobbing, about fifty feet downstream. There they tie up, cackling and whooping and throwing bags of homemade Cap'n Crunch trail mix from boat to boisterous boat.
Bertolino is right. You can find them, easy.
The Saco River flows 134 miles from Saco Lake in New Hampshire's White Mountains to below the city of Saco, Maine, where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Except for occasional rapids and a string of hydroelectric dams in its midsection, the river drifts gently over pristine sandbars and past hardwood forests, a paddler's paradise if ever there was one. In Maine, the river winds eighty-five miles through some of the state's most populated areas. En route, it provides power and water to hundreds of thousands of people.
Remarkably, the Saco remains one of the cleanest and best-protected rivers in the country. But it is also one of the busiest. Each summer weekend, thousands of revelers threaten to transform the tranquil river into what has been called a floating barroom, a zoo of party-hungry, bumper-to-bumper canoeists who bring their own deejays, happily moon each other, and drown the sounds of birds in the relentless blare of boom boxes and clink of beer bottles.
In the summer of 2001, the party bottomed out with several violent incidents. In response, concerned landowners, law enforcement officials, and other river advocates formed a task force. The changes they instituted — increased education, better trash removal, weekend police patrols on the river — have improved conditions, they say. Still, most admit that the task of preserving the Saco, while also allowing people to enjoy it, remains what Fred Westerberg calls "an uphill battle."
Westerberg is a task-force member and owner of Saco River Canoe & Kayak, Maine's largest so-called livery company. Of drinking and partying on the river, he says, "You can't stop all that — we'll never be done with it. But we've got a handle on it." The excesses of the past have been largely curtailed, he says, and once-wary families are returning to the Saco. Still, he recognizes the necessity of balancing disparate needs on a river that is just three hours from Boston.
"This is a recreational river," he says. "It is not wilderness."
In an account of his family reunion in 1882, one Llewellyn A. Wadsworth sang the praises of a "winding and silvery Saco" whose "majestic cataract makes endless melody as its bright waters roll onward to the sea."
Long before Europeans were rhapsodizing about the river, it was home to Native Americans. Historians say the river was named for Western Abenakis called Sokokis, or "people who separated." From the early 1600s, Indians worked as guides for European explorers and traded with them. In his account of a 1767 trip to the Indian village of Pequaket or Pequawket, now Fryeburg, Joseph Knight describes "a great many Indians . . . who were perfectly peaceable."
By the 1800s, though, the Indians were disappearing. In 1821, the Reverend Amos Cook wrote of finding "several mounds of earth left by the natives, of singular aspect." With no survivors to enlighten him, he said, "Whether they were ancient burying grounds, fortifications, or encampments cannot be ascertained."
Today, Native Americans endure in the region primarily through the curse they are said to have left behind. It began at a white settlement near today's Saco, where English and Sokokis co-existed peacefully thanks to the efforts of Squandro, a respected chief.
In the summer of 1675, English sailors on the river came upon an Indian woman with her baby paddling a canoe. Taunting her, the sailors asked if it was true that Indian children could swim at birth. They tossed the baby in the river. The mother dived in; some stories say they both died, others say only the baby died.
The baby was Menewee, the son of Squandro. For three days and nights, Squandro mourned. Then he stood on the banks of the Saco and commanded the river's spirits to take the lives of three white men every year until they were driven from "Saco's hemlock-trees." For centuries, mothers did not allow their children to swim in the Saco until three drownings had occurred; the curse was fulfilled until the 1940s, when a year passed safely, but wary memories of it remain.
Curse or no, Europeans kept flocking to the Saco. The Industrial Revolution arrived in 1811 when William Pepperrell built the Saco Iron Works. It was followed by cotton mills, a railroad, lumber mills, and textile mills that harnessed the river for power (and dumped waste until the practice was halted), and more settlers.
In 1886, a history of Fryeburg by George Varney describes "a pretty village" of thriving businesses — leather, carriages, tinware, cheese — with four watermills, two steam mills, and a growing throng of tourists. Each summer, he writes, "Many from the cities . . . find rest in its pleasant hotels and boarding-houses."
Today, the pleasure persists. The Saco is the second-most-popular river east of the Mississippi, behind only the Delaware, welcoming an estimated 3,000 to 7,000 people per summer weekend. The sometimes-raucous presence of those visitors leads supporters of the river to worry that, in the words of one, "People want to love it to death."
Most of the recreational pressure is focused on twenty easy-to-paddle miles from Swan's Falls, the busiest put-in, to Brownfield. Along that stretch, the river winds gently at three to five miles an hour over a sand and gravel bottom.
Elsewhere, the Saco remains largely untouched. This is in part thanks to the Saco River Corridor Commission, which has regulated development on the river since the early 1970s. The only industry remaining is Biddeford's Maine Energy Recovery Company, which uses water to cool its trash-incineration process, and a series of twelve hydroelectric dams, most from Bonny Eagle in Hollis to Biddeford-Saco. They are run by Florida Power and Light, which bought them from Central Maine Power in 1998.
As a result, the Saco is one of the cleanest rivers in Maine, second only to the St. John River. This despite the fact that it traverses Maine's three most populous counties: Oxford, Cumberland, and York. It supplies drinking water to an estimated 250,000 people in more than thirty-five Maine and New Hampshire towns.
To Stefan Jackson, director of the Nature Conservancy's Saco River Project, the quality of the Saco's water is matched by the ecological richness of New England's largest floodplain. The Saco River basin, the river's 1,700 square-mile watershed, is fed and scoured clean each year by spring flooding. The result is fertile hardwood forests, wetland habitats, and vernal pools. They, in turn, are home to wood ducks, pileated woodpeckers, turtles, snakes, moose, and rare plants and dragonflies.
Jackson says the Saco offers many people "their only chance to connect with the natural world — it has the potential to sow a seed." After hundreds of years of human interaction on the river, he argues, "the issue is not whether to engage with it, but how. We don't want to take the party out, just make it a different kind of party."
Westerberg has been working on that task since he began Saco River Canoe & Kayak thirty years ago with his wife, Prudy. Today, they are one of eight livery companies that operate on the river. All primarily rent canoes, because they hold more gear. The largest, Saco Bound in Conway, New Hampshire, offers boat rental, trip planning, shuttle service, and youth, corporate, and family rates under its slogan, "Leave all the work to us!"
For Westerberg, the Saco represents not just a livelihood, but a life. A Maine guide, conservationist, and fisherman, he says, "This goes further than a dollar." Westerberg helped form the task force after the 2001 summer that saw an ugly confrontation with police, an assault, and a drowning, all reportedly alcohol-related. The task force bought a shallow-water boat for the Fryeburg Police; the town bought another. They also bought an airboat, which can travel even on ice, for search and rescue missions. The police presence "made a monstrous difference," says Westerberg. "Know how fast news spreads? Like a disease."
Today Westerberg supervises the Saco River Recreational Council, made up of liveries, landowners, game wardens, and other officials. Each summer week, he sends river runners out to clean up trash. He estimates that 90 percent of the earlier abuses have stopped. "You'll always get that 3 or 4 percent who have no respect for you or me or the river," he notes, "but we fight 'em."
Families who once shunned the river are now bringing their kids and grandkids back to it, says Westerberg. And a quiet Saco can still be found on weekdays, in the fall, south of Brownfield: "There's a time for everybody on the river."
Unfortunately, the clamorous reality is that most people turn up on the weekends, in July and August, at Swan's Falls — a place Jon Hoyt calls "Mardi Gras, a feeding frenzy."
Hoyt is caretaker for the Swan's Falls campground and visitor center run by the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC), which manages the site for the state. The center is a small shed where posted rules urge "Pack it in, pack it out" and where visitors can buy river maps, life vests, bug dope, waterproof matches, and T-shirts saying, "Respect the river."
Hoyt manages the 150-car parking lot, hands out fire permits and fishing licenses, and answers questions from where to camp to how to get a ride back from downstream. Friday afternoons, there can be hundreds of people lined up in cars to put in canoes. He estimates 20 percent are from Maine; many of the rest come from Massachusetts. By Thursday, he swears, he can hear the sound of them rinsing out coolers and packing beer, sleeping bags, and other essentials for a wild weekend.
More essentials are piled down in the dusty parking lot, where vacationers in bathing suits and baseball caps haul them in endless trips from truck to river. As livery vans with racks of canoes swing in and out, they yell, "Lisa, does this stuff belong to you?" and "Who's got the chips?" amidst the whir of pumps blowing up tubes, rafts, giant turtles, and Aqua Rocker Fun Floats.
They pack the canoes with grills, coolers, water guns, garbage bags crammed with clothes, a box of donuts in the stern, Gatorade in the bow. Then they take off, many perched on lawn chairs set up like thrones above their watery kingdoms.
Richard Dabrowski, 72, of Cooperstown, New York, loads a barbecue with its legs cut off and a bag of charcoal before heading out. Having come for thirty years, he is unfazed by the tumult and echoes Westerberg: "There's enough river for everybody."
But Dennis Dickerson of Wilmington, Massachusetts, who has been coming for just as long, says he's "too old for all this excitement." He heads downstream "to avoid the crowds."
Most, though, revel in them. Almost all twenty-something couples, they drift down the river in raucous groups, chattering about music and roommates and sports, their radios booming. Around one bend, a group of guys splash in knee-deep water, tossing a football and yelling, "Dive! Dive!" Around the next bend, same scene, with a Frisbee.
On the river, the AMC suggests on its map, "Let nature's sounds prevail." On a weekend, this can be tough. Radios blast from almost every canoe. People shout from canoe to canoe, their voices bouncing off the still water. From the sandy shore, guys with beer in cups strung around their necks yell to the people in canoes. Common topics of conversation are beer, football, parties, bikini-clad young women, and beer.
Still, the river is lovely. It winds past steep sand bluffs and overhanging trees, shallow and so clear you can see the neon green of floating grasses underneath. You can also see an occasional beer can, golf ball, or red plastic cup — but not many. And in the occasional lull between football games, a gentle breeze whispers.
The first free campsite — landowners post many of the sandbars with yellow "No Trespassing" signs — is about two miles from Swan's Falls. Today it has been claimed by Scott Scopetsky of Clinton, Massachusetts, his girlfriend, and two other couples. They lounge in six lawn chairs in a few inches of water next to their campsite, a tidy cluster of tents, packs, coolers, grill. "We bring our own party," says Scopetsky. "Ah, happy Saco."
From their perches they greet the passing parade of canoes. Their radio blasts a jingle for Reliable Wireless: "We never stop working for you!" Soon, they will fire up the grill and play a little Texas Hold'em. The next day, Scopetsky says, they will head downstream and "let the river take us where it goes."
Past them, meanwhile, more parties float by. A canoe with an inflatable palm tree in the stern, a canoe with two dogs and a large log for firewood, more radios, more sombreros. On shore, more campsites. Burgers cook, towels dry on trees.
Canal Bridge, a four-mile, two-hour paddle from Swan's Falls, hovers into view. From here, some will go on as far as Brownfield, or even Hiram, where the river is deep and quiet. But many will pull in at Fiddlehead Campground, just downstream from the bridge. At its beach, a group of guys sit in their canoes, loudly arguing about whether or not they stayed there last year: "Name your bet, dude."
Fiddlehead is owned by Rob Rose, a physician, and his brother-in-law, Eric Root. Rose says they created the 1,000-acre campground to provide family camping and to reclaim control from "the lawless few." They have rules about noise, trash, music. Rose says he doesn't understand the party scene, particularly its edict that, "Wherever the picnic table is, it has to be moved."
The presence of the police, says Rose, "dramatically changes the tone of conversation on the river." Still, he describes the Saco as "a river you can float down in an intoxicated state, and not drown."
Fryeburg Police Chief Wayne Brooking concurs, at least when it comes to the troublemakers: "Most everyone we deal with on the river is intoxicated to one degree or another." Last summer was particularly tough. Police faced manpower shortages, what seemed like worse intoxication and belligerence, and increased trash from disposable camping gear. Nonetheless, Brooking says things are slowly improving. "You have to expect some hitches," he says. "The river is still in transition."
Major Gregg Sanborn, deputy chief warden for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife, agrees that progress, however slow, is being made. Thanks to education, people are learning to follow "leave no trace" rules, he says, and develop a sense of stewardship. Born and raised in Fryeburg, with the river in his backyard, he cherishes it, noise or no. "For lots of people, it's their outdoor experience," he says.
Back at Swan's Falls, people are still putting in. At the water, one group of guys is building a plywood raft, topped with grill and Oriental rug, onto their canoes. In the lot, another group is packing a mountain of supplies — eight coolers, a stove, a grill, a multitude of bags, a stack of tiki lights — into three canoes. Then, heaving and panting, they shove the loaded canoes through the dust to the water.
Their leader, Billy Armour of Braintree, Massachusetts, is ready for the river.
Says Armour, "I'm looking for some peace and quiet."
- By: Abby Zimet
- Photography by: Dean Abramson
