Kennebec River guide book tells all
Copyright © 2001 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
SKOWHEGAN — A new guidebook to the Kennebec River is much more than a mile-by-mile directory of put-in points, paddling conditions and portages.
"The Kennebec River: A Guide for Paddlers and Friends" also tells canoeists and kayakers where to find the nearest ATM, what types of birds they can expect to see and how to fish the various types of water.
It tells how to journey from Jackman to the sea on one of Maine's mightiest rivers and provides a trip through time with articles about the Kennebec Valley's lengthy history. 
Staff photo by JOE RANKIN David Larkin, of Skowhegan, a former president of Kennebec Valley Trails, poses with the 221-page guidebook, "The Kennebec River: A Guide for Paddlers and Friends." The book, more than a mile-by-mile map directory of the Kennebec, tells canoeists and kayakers many other tips, like where to find the nearest ATM.
The 221-page guidebook, in a packable 4 1/4-by-11-inch size, is published by the nonprofit Kennebec Valley Trails.
The book, which carries a suggested retail price of $14.95, is expected to make its way into outdoor shops and other outlets up and down the Kennebec over the next few weeks.
"We really focused on highlighting the great attributes" of the clean Kennebec that emerged from decades of industrial abuse, said David Larkin of Skowhegan, a former president of the trails group who coordinated the project.
"The guidebook has qualities in it to appeal to the armchair traveler and dreamer, as well as the person who's on the water who needs to know where the access points are and what the prevailing winds are like," said Larkin.
As Larkin writes in the preface, the Kennebec's story is "a story of many peoples alive in a living, changing landscape — a landscape living out its own story.
"As such, this is as much a guide for navigating a place as it is a guide for traveling through time," Larkin wrote. "For such travel, there is hardly a better 'time machine' than a canoe or kayak."
The guidebook was several years in the making.
The trails organization is an outgrowth of the Kennebec Tourism Council, founded in the early 1990s to find ways to promote the Kennebec Valley area.
Kennebec Valley Trails always had plans for a guidebook, but work on other trails and outings projects slowed progress on it.
The descriptions of the river sections are based on notes made by Donald McKenzie during a trip down the Kennebec sponsored by the Kennebec Valley Tourism Council.
Larkin said the first attempts to produce a book using U.S. Geological Survey topographic maps didn't work. It was only after the trails group began working with the state's Geographic Information System that they found a way to "create a very clear map with concise information."
The book includes 23 maps covering the entire Kennebec and its upper tributary, the Moose River.
"We also realized it could become more than a basic guide, that it could do justice to the area in a more complete way," Larkin said.
The book includes excerpts from Madison native Mary Calvert's histories "Dawn Over the Kennebec" and "The Kennebec Wilderness Awakens," features on fishing from the upper, middle and tidal portions of the river by three prominent fishing guides and articles on everything from birding to the Popham Colony.
Skowhegan lawyer and environmentalist Clinton Townsend's eloquent and poetic essay, "Kennebec Memories," sets the mood for the book and serves as an introduction.
In it, Townsend writes of a lifelong love affair with the river, of eagles on the ice, golden-eye ducks and otters, of cursing mosquitoes in the "gathering dark while trying to change a fly as a brook trout cavorted and splashed thirty feet away."
Townsend remembers watching the Kennebec nearly die and of seeing it come back to life. And in his essay, originally published in the Maine Audubon Society's Habitat magazine, he calls for vigilance against latter-day threats to the Kennebec.
Townsend this week called the new guidebook a "tremendous effort" on the part of Larkin and others who worked on it.
He said he likes the tone of the book, of the way it melds history and practical advice.
"The sensitivity to the natural world really comes through," he said.
"I think it will do a lot for the river in a positive way, That is, for low-key traveling, not disruptive of the fish and wildlife of the river."
Townsend, who has traveled the entire length of the Kennebec, added: "It's all beautiful. Most anywhere on that river, you're going to find something interesting and exciting."
To reach Joe Rankin
Phone: 474-9534