Such a scene would have been hard to imagine 40 years ago.

Back then, thousands of four-foot logs choked the cove and obscured the water surface. Anyone sitting around probably was waiting for the lake to rise so that rafts of wood could be driven through the dam for a 40-mile ride down the Passadumkeag River and its tributaries.

Timber harvesting survives in this region. But the contrast between boom times past and the pace of life now is striking to our canoe team as we conclude our journey across Nicatous Lake and the Passadumkeag River.

Here, we see the restorative powers of nature as we move through an all-but-forgotten corner of Maine, brimming now with wildlife. Away from the lodge, we come upon more moose and deer than people.

We also notice the character of the landscape is changing. After almost two weeks in a boreal forest of spruce, pine and cedar, we start to see the maples and oaks more typical of southern Maine.

The changing landscape makes me think about all we have seen and the people we have met since leaving Vanceboro and the St. Croix River more than two weeks ago.

Tux Turkel, Telegram staff writer, paddles the deadwaters dotted with pines and maples above a small hydroelectric dam on the Passadumkeag River. On the last leg of the three-week journey down the 130-mile Eastern Maine Canoe Trail, the boreal forest of spruce, pine and cedar gives way to maples and oaks more typical of southern Maine. Nature's restorative powers have removed much of the evidence of the region's logging activities. Staff photo by John Patriquin.

I appreciate that the Eastern Maine Canoe Trail isn't a static experience, with log drives then and lobster bakes now. It's a living history. Events and time blend and flow here. The old ways of native people and settlers intermingle with the present. And in subtle ways, they suggest a future.

This week marks the end of a 130-mile canoe trip undertaken by a four-person team from The Portland Newspapers and WGME-TV (NewsChannel 13). For almost three weeks, we have traveled down the St. Croix River and over the lakes and streams of eastern Maine.

For more than a thousand years, the 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, and now these trails are being rediscovered. The route we are traveling connects the St. Croix River on the New Brunswick border with the Penobscot River north of Bangor. It 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.

Not everyone is enthusiastic about it. In northern Maine, timberland owners are leery of the idea. They fear private property rights would eventually lose out to the public's desire for a wilderness-like experience.

Still, efforts to establish water trails are under way on Maine 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.

The changing scenery really hits home for us on Gassabias Stream, a four-mile flow connecting Gassabias and Nicatous lakes.

This twisty stream looks like a southern swamp, dotted with dead trees and populated by ducks and ospreys. And as we round a bend, I'm surprised, on this placid stream, to hear the rush of water.

Recalling the logging era

And while we see no beaver here, we startle two otters playing on a log. More curious than afraid, they watch my approaching canoe before diving below water. And in a parting gesture, one follows the boat, surfaces and lets out a bark.

Long ago river drivers Roger Tourtillotte and Charles White sit along the banks of the Passadumkeag river and talk of their days driving pulp logs down the river. Staff photo by John Patriquin.

It's late in the day by the time we traverse Nicatous Lake and reach the lodge, at the outlet to Nicatous Stream. The lobster bake is being set up. Later, I would learn how the scene clashes with the memories of Charles White and Roger Tourtillotte, two local men who worked near this place in the 1950s.

White is 82 years old. Tourtillotte is 76. When they were young, they would come here in the winter to cut timber off the lake shores. The wood would be dragged onto the ice with horses and contained in a boom. With the spring thaw, workers would hold back water at the dam until the lake rose. Then they would lift the dam gates and sluice thousands of logs down Nicatous Stream to the Passadumkeag River.

''Anything that went out of the stream,'' Tourtillotte recalls, ''we had to go pick it out with poles.''

It was hard work, and neither man enjoyed it. But they each worked the drives for five years.

Tourtillotte says he did it ''to keep from starving. Pulp wood was the only thing to do here.''

The men helped guide the wood 40 miles to the town of Passadumkeag, where the river meets the Penobscot. On our journey, they met us at a breached dam that had powered a mill in their once-prosperous town. As they spoke, a great blue heron landed near the foundations of what was once known as Leonard's sawmill. Hundreds of men found work here around 1900, at the mills and log booms.

Today, memories are housed in a former church owned by the local historical society. On the walls hang weathered scaling tools, giant rulers that helped measure the volume of wood, and black hobnail boots, which gave men footing on wet, slippery logs.

Signs of logging fade

And when we do finally reach the Passadumkeag River, below the roar of Grand Falls, we enter a stretch that might as well be a nature preserve. Although a paved road is close by, we see more wildlife in the final 30 miles of our journey than we did on the first 100.

A bull moose rests cooly from the mid day sun and heat along the banks of the Passadumkeag river. Staff photo by John Patriquin.

A big treat comes when we see a young bull moose resting on a muddy shore. The photographers have been waiting all trip for this sort of photo opportunity. And the moose patiently poses for 10 minutes, munching ferns and tree branches to kill the time.

Moose and deer have left their tracks on a sand beach at Saponac Pond, where we make camp in the shadow of 1,463-foot Passadumkeag Mountain. A group of local residents wants to develop a small ski area on the mountain's opposite side. It would take water out of the river to make snow. But plans are moving slowly. Supporters are trying to win a federal grant for a feasibility study.

I think about the log drives and how little evidence remains of their impact on the landscape. Will chairlifts some day mark man's attempt to wring a living out of the natural resources here?

We decide to make a final push for the Penobscot the next day and wake at dawn. The air temperature is a chilly 45 degrees. The lake is shrouded in swirling mist. Bullfrogs, loons and woodpeckers provide background music as we gear up for a 21-mile day.

We paddle first through an eerie deadwater of flooded pines and maples, created by a small hydroelectric dam in the town of Lowell. Our passage disturbs a beaver, who slips off a rock and flaps his tail at us. We begin to see camps and homes along the shoreline but are gratified, at Rocky Rips, to surprise a buck deer and doe out for a morning drink.

Past the rips, the tree-lined riverbanks fade away and the horizon opens into a stark expanse of marsh and meadowland. Here, the Maine chapter of the Nature Conservancy has been given hundreds of acres along Cold Stream and Ayers Brook, habitat of a rare mayfly.

Looming ahead is the 60-foot-high Enfield Horseback. This sand-and-gravel ridge, or esker, was left behind 14,000 years ago by the glacier. The river cuts through the esker on its way to the town of Passadumkeag. It's a sign that the Penobscot River is only a few miles away.

Special features endure

We have passed dams that once held back water to move logs and now define the character of the waterways for recreation and hydroelectricity. We have learned how the long presence of Maine's Indian tribes can be captured in an arrowhead or witnessed in a rock carving. We have seen how the hunting and fishing traditions at century-old lodges are expanding to attract new guests to their rustic charm.

Above all, I'm left with the sense that the features that make the Eastern Maine Canoe Trail special will endure. This isn't the Allagash or the Penobscot's West Branch, with fabled white water. There are few attractions here to lure big-city adventure seekers. The appeal here is subtle, rugged and genuine. Hopefully, it is timeless.

I think about these things as we come upon the breached dam in the town of Passadumkeag. We are smiling and excited as we pass under the Route 2 bridge and enter the vast, flooded plain of the Penobscot. We have reached our goal.

For a brief moment, I consider that we could turn left here and float down to Bangor. Soon, we'd be in Penobscot Bay and the sea. That's what people did for a thousand years, in their birch-bark canoes over Maine's watery highways.

For a brief moment, I take comfort just in knowing that this route, used by people of prehistory, remains open for boaters on the cusp of the 21st century.

But we are modern travelers. The van is our vehicle and the interstate our highway. And on this day, our destination, gratefully, is home.

Linda Madsen, library assistant, contributed research to this story.

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