September 18 - Kennebec River – Caratunk, Maine (Day 183 – milepoint 2008.6)

Another beautiful day but, well, that’s beside the point…

For a while now we’ve been playing a repetitive joke on Paka Bear by hiding our trash inside his pack so that he carries it without knowing. (Childish, yes, but Paka provokes.)

We continue to do it because:

1. we continue to get away with it.
2. it continues to amuse us.

So, today we were all enjoying lunch at Pierce Pond Lean-to. Cosmo and I were getting ready to leave and noticed Paka eating his lunch while reading down by the water. I pulled out my ziplock bag full of trash and began collecting others’ as well. As I stuffed the trash deep into Paka‘s pack, Cosmo and Redwood handed me two sizeable rocks to add to the loot. Then, Easy Walker handed me a large, hard-back Bible that someone had left in the shelter, and we added that, too. We know Paka hiked away from the shelter with the extra items in his pack, and, to my knowledge, he has managed to arrive here at camp next to the Kennebec River, unload his pack, tent and all, and at around 11 p.m., still doesn’t know.

We’ve been talking Bible all day, a ridiculous amount of Bible talk, and Paka thinks it’s just the usual weirdness. It is possible that he found the loot at some point and is cleverly playing his own little joke on us. If so, he’s earned it. But if we find that he still doesn’t know in the morning, it might be fun to see if we can get it all out of his pack without him knowing he ever had it.

Highlight of the day: Kennebec River crossing. Some local river folks provide a canoe shuttle for hikers twice a day (morning & afternoon). Paka, Redwood, and I were a little impatient and decided to “wade” across (without our packs). We also thought it would be cool. But high water and a swift current turned the “wade” across into a pretty tiring swim. Very good thing we weren’t wearing our packs. The canoe shuttle ferried across with our packs, arriving promptly as we crawled onto shore, and I didn’t feel quite as cool as I thought I would, only just a little cooler than everyone else.

We set up camp next to the river.

There’s a road nearby so a couple of us went into town for Chewy birthday provisions, which included several packages of bacon, which we wrapped around sticks and roasted over the fire along with hot dogs and marshmallows and popcorn…

Aquaholic