Despite rain gear, we're drenched by the time we paddle to Loon Bay, four miles and a couple of hours away from where we had camped. Wet, shivering and hungry, our clothes sticking to our skin, we trudge uphill on the Canadian side to a lodge that holds the promise of a roof and maybe a warm drink.

No such luck. The lodge is closed, but the owner lets us dry out under a log-sided picnic shelter. We eat. The rain eases. We feel better. We get back in our canoes.

But the dark sky brings more rain, and the downpour resumes. We bail the canoes to keep them from filling with water. Everything is soaking wet. Wet and cold. Rumbles of thunder and an occasional lightning streak add to our discomfort.

This can only get better.

For three weeks, these waters will carry us 130 miles down the St. Croix River and over the lakes and streams of eastern Maine. My companions are John Patriquin, a photographer for The Portland Newspapers, and Amy Sinclair and Don Couillard, a reporter and a cameraman for WGME-TV. We'll traverse forest portages. We'll move through watersheds. And if we close our eyes and imagine, we will span time.

For these are the same waters that have been highways for Indians, footholds for settlers and sluiceways for logs.

The team of canoeists makes camp at Kendrick Rips on the St. Croix River in heavy rain. By the next morning all their gear was soaked. The torrential rain also brought out another challenge - lots of bugs. The four journalists are exploring waterways that once provided transportation to American Indians and carried timber for the logging industry. Staff photo by John Patriquin.

For more than a thousand years, the watery web of lakes and rivers etched across Maine's forested landscape was the equivalent of today's highway system. With the advent of birch-bark canoes, native people were able to move about the state along these travel routes.

In the 20th century, paved highways and logging roads eliminated the need for these historic water trails. But many still exist, largely unchanged. Now, these trails are being rediscovered. One route - the one we are traveling - connects the St. Croix River on the New Brunswick border with the Penobscot River north of Bangor. This 130-mile route has been dubbed the Eastern Maine Canoe Trail.

Organizers see the trail as a prototype for a more ambitious idea - a 700-mile water route stretching from New York state to northern Maine. They envision the day when canoeists will be able to follow a series of ancient Indian waterways and portages from Fort Kent to Old Forge, N.Y. It would be called the Northern Forest Canoe Trail.

There are challenges. In northern Maine, for instance, timberland owners are leery of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail proposal. They fear private property rights would in time lose out to the public's desire for a wilderness-like experience.

Still, efforts to establish water trails are under way on rivers including the Penobscot, Androscoggin and Kennebec. People are learning the history of ancient water routes and trying to gain and preserve access to them for modern recreation travel.

Journey begins in Vanceboro

We begin in Vanceboro - where Larry Doyle can turn the St. Croix River on and off. Doyle, a dam attendant for Georgia Pacific Corp., controls the flow of water at seven dams in the St. Croix watershed. His job is to provide enough water for hydroelectric power while keeping appropriate levels in the lakes behind the dams.

Larry Doyle stands by the dam he turns off and on in order to produce the correct amount of hydroelectric power. Staff photo by John Patriquin.

On this day, he has 700 cubic feet per second of water coursing through the garage-door-sized gate - enough water, he tells us, to float our boats. I ask Doyle, only half in jest, if he can give us another 100 cubic feet, to give us a nice boost.

He smiles. No way. He's waiting for us to move on, so he can cut the flow by two-thirds, because highway workers are set to tear out an old bridge pier that has been replaced downstream, at the Vanceboro border crossing into St. Croix, New Brunswick.

Below the dam, the St. Croix is narrow and fast. Roads are close by, but the river is lined with cedars and largely undeveloped. It retains a wild feel.

The St. Croix is an exciting river. A dozen rapids in the first 20 miles keep canoe paddlers paying attention. That's especially true 10 miles below Vanceboro, at Little Falls. We hear the roar of the water and take out on the right bank.

That's where we meet Tony Reader, a volunteer for the St. Croix International Waterway Commission. With the blessing of Maine and New Brunswick, the 10-year-old group is carrying out a management plan for the river to determine what the water flow should be to generate power, where campsites should be located and how the river should be used for recreation.

Reader is traveling by canoe this day, inspecting campsites for fire safety. ''Little Falls is a disaster area,'' Reader says, surveying the campsite, which has been trashed by teen-agers partying there. ''We have a lot of work to do here.''

Fortunately, he's getting help from a group of teen-agers who are rebuilding the fire pits.

Little Falls is a party place, accessible by car. Overuse is a problem. Kids come here, from both countries, to sit on the rocky bluffs and watch canoeists negotiate the moderate (Class III) rapids.

After carrying our gear out of the canoe and around the falls, we take a wild ride through the white water. The ride lasts only 30 seconds or so, and it goes by in a blur. We're not so much enjoying it as trying to keep the bow facing downstream so we don't crash.

We get through the white water fine, put our gear back in the canoe and continue downriver.

The St. Croix is so clear today that it's hard to imagine it choked with logs. But below the surface, piles of sunken pulpwood tell the tale: Every winter for about 100 years, until the early 1970s, loggers piled logs on the ice-covered river, and in the spring the logs floated to mills downstream. Some of them sank along the way.

We steer the boats into an eddy and hike upstream. At the end of a narrow path is a clearing and a gravesite surrounded by a black railing. Inside are a small cross and grave marker. It reads: ''Child found in the river burried here June 29, 1899.'' This site, we have been told, has been maintained by loggers. No one knows anything else about it.

Back in the canoe, we're anxious to find a campsite at the end of our first day on the water. We've been paddling for 15 miles - all day - and we're getting hungry and want to call it a day.

We make camp near Albee Rips, on the Canadian side. It's a sunny, warm evening, so we bathe in the river and wash our clothes and relax.

Day two brings downpour

Not any more. Instead of a shower, we get that miserable, daylong downpour - and then some.

As daylight fades on day two of our trip, we reach a campsite at Kendrick Rips, near the Grand Falls Flowage. Beneath a dripping tarp, we fix supper and hope the torrent will let up. It does not.

By now, it is almost dark and the mosquitoes are swarming. Out come our tents, still soaked from the downpour when we broke camp in the morning. Assaulted by rain and bugs, I carefully place my foam mat and sleeping bag on the wet tent floor. Within minutes, both are wet. Soon, I'm in darkness, my body enveloped by water, curled in a fetal position.

After a day of drenching rain, the team's gear dries on a line. Photo by Don Couillard.

It rains all night. At dawn, it's still pouring, so no one moves. Besides the relentless rain, there are still too many bugs around for us to dare step out of the tent.

By mid-morning, the sky brightens. We gather up our soggy gear and head downstream. With glimpses of blue and a clearing wind pouring out of the west, we cross Grand Falls Flowage and pull up on the beach in Princeton.

By now, the sun is shining and we empty all our gear onto the town beach. The tents go up, sleeping bags are spread out, fences become clothes lines and every piece of soggy dunnage is open to the air. Local kids come by and gawk. The place appears as if L.L. Bean has set up an outdoor showroom. Within hours, everything is dry.

We head across Lewey and Long lakes and through the narrows at Peter Dana Point, a focal point of the Passamaquoddy community at Indian Township. Past the narrows, on the shores of Big Lake, we see Wayne Newell's 17-foot runabout tied up at his dock.

Newell is a tribal councilor, educator and preserver of Passamaquoddy culture. When we double back to visit him the next day, he sits with us by the lake and talks about the historic importance of waterways to his people.

In his own life, Newell says, he feels the connection. Sometimes, he will take his boat out into Big Lake and drop anchor. Largely undeveloped and tranquil, the lake appears as it did centuries ago. So he will sit at anchor and try to imagine small fires along the shore and his people catching bass to smoke over the flames.

''There was a tranquility I can only imagine,'' Newell says of this scene. ''It's a way for me to get closer to my ancestors and what they did.''

But Newell's stories would wait for us, because on this glorious, wind-swept afternoon, with the sun setting behind fair-weather clouds, we are pressed for time to make camp. Newell had told me about a beach past the township, on Governor's Point, a heavily wooded area with big red pines and a panoramic view of the lake. We have it all to ourselves.

That night, as a quarter moon glides west past a million stars, we slide into our sleeping bags, warm and dry. With the prehistoric laugh of loons echoing across the water, we fall asleep.

More stories and links

Maine is leader in effort to create new water trails But some large landowners fear that designating such routes could lead to a public takeover on private land.

Glacial melt, birch bark gave people means to travel To prehistoric people, the development of the birch-bark canoe was as important as the invention of the wheel.

Many names reflect canoeists' point of view

Book Excerpt: Tales of the Passamaquoddies and their land

Book Excerpt: The mythology of the Passamaquoddy Indians

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