Maine’s Machias River has its start about 30 miles northeast of Bangor as the crow flies, and it runs for 75 miles to the Atlantic though a part of Maine known as “Downeast” by those who live there—a region characterized by a jagged coastline and inland high points called “mountains” that rise a couple of hundred feet above a glaciated, rock and rolling land. If you could look down from satellite height, you’d see that the river’s overall course forms a shimmering silvery question mark in the deep-green of the region’s forests suggesting the unknown and seeming to say, “Why gaze up at the stars when here at your feet lies undiscovered Earth?”
The Machias, pronounced “ma-CHEYE-us,” makes up in a series of lakes, starting with Fifth Lake and counting down to First. Each lake is connected to the next by a stream deep enough to paddle after spring snow melt. Once it emerges from First Lake, the Machias flows uninterrupted for about 45 miles to the coast. That’s the stem of the “?”
The Machias is a blackwater river, meaning the water, though clear of sediment, is the color of weak tea, a color caused by the tannic acids leached from decaying plants in the river’s numerous bogs. In a sense, the Machias is a kind of tea made by nature. But when stirred up in rapids, the tannic acid turns into a white froth. The resulting foam, though harmless, is often mistaken as a sign of pollution both on northern rivers like the Machias and on blackwater rivers in the Deep South.
In paddler’s lingo, the Machias is a “pool and drop” river, with the drops forming rapids ranging from Class I to III. Just before it meets the Atlantic at the coastal town of Machias, the river ramps up to one final drop, Class V+ Machias Falls, which plunges 30 feet into Machias Bay. The word “Machias” is said to be a Passamaquoddy Indian word for that final plunge, meaning “bad run of river.” The town has built a boardwalk to the falls, and from the safety of that vantage point you can look down at the raging maelstrom and imagine yourself styling it in your canoe, coming out the bottom not only upright but with a dry boat and a “good run!” smile. I’d say that in Passamaquoddy if I knew how.
Today the Machias flows freely all the way to that final waterfall, but for more than a century the river was dammed in places by lumbermen cutting the virgin forest—dams that were chiefly built of logs, rocks, and dirt. The loggers used these “splash dams,” as they were called, to regulate the river’s flow for the logs they floated down to the sawmills near the coast.
In the 1970s the last of the dams was taken down, letting the Machias flow freely again. Equally liberating, in the years since then the Machias has become one of the few rivers in the nation protected in its entirety from industrial extraction, development, and abuse. This was the happy achievement of a years-long drive by preservation-minded citizens of the state. Today the land bordering the river is either in public hands, owned by land trusts, or protected in conservation easements. This includes tracts owned by timber companies, which keep their activities back from the river and its tributaries.
To the River
On May 4, feeling the tug of the Machias question mark, I left Cullowhee heading north, Maine bound. I was pulling a trailer loaded with three canoes and one kayak, plus camping gear for four, and enough food to last a week. Mark Jaben, the kayaker on the trip, rode up with me; fellow canoeists Bobby Simpson and Pat Stone would fly to Bangor on May 6, our meeting spot. There we’d do final packing and spend the night, putting on the Machias the next day. Our goal was to paddle the river starting at the top, Fifth Machias Lake.
Our motel that night had seen better days. We’d been told when making reservations that it was undergoing renovations to see better days again; but as it turned out, we arrived early in the transition—meaning the new furniture, fixtures, carpet, paint, and cleaning supplies had arrived but were still in storage. Our accommodations were midway between modern rooms with all the comforts and tents in the woods. Make that threadbare tents with musty smells.
Making up for what the facility lacked in furnishings was the candid, humorous woman who greeted us at the desk—I’ll call her Lynn. Lynn said she had been brought in by the new owners to get the motel up and running again. Noticing the canoes on the trailer, she told us she had done some canoeing herself but not for days at a time, and she wanted to know about the adventure we’d planned. Lynn also told us she’d had a wild adventure of sorts right there in the motel, one she hoped not to have again. It came in the form of a plump woman who had checked in the night before, and who then called the front desk 27 times throughout the night to complain about one thing or another—including her inability to sleep. When the first call came, Lynn said she went to the room to see what the problem was and when she knocked on the door and it opened, she was greeted by the sight of the woman standing there bare from the waist up. Lynn rolled her eyes wide when she told us this, and, holding her hands down lower than her navel, exclaimed, “I didn’t know gravity could do THAT!
We left Lynn and the motel wildlife the next morning and in two hours reached Machias town. Although we hoped to launch at Fifth Machias Lake, our shuttle driver, Rob Scribner, had told us earlier that there was a chance the road to it, closed during the winter, might still be closed, and that turned out to be the case. But the road to Fourth Machias Lake was open, so he’d take us there.
Before leaving ,Rob made a short detour through town for us to see what would be our take-out spot at trip’s end. This was a good idea. What we saw was a nondescript grassy bank with a parking area above it that would be barely recognizable from the river as the place to stop—and it was only half-a-dozen paddle strokes above Machias Falls. We saw no warning sign about the 30-foot drop just ahead; the fall’s horizon line was hidden in the shadow cast by State Highway 1 that bridges the river there; and bridge traffic muffled the water’s roar. It’s good to have a clear picture in your mind of the take-out, or the waterfall might take you out. Luckily, the current leading to the lip of the falls is slow.
The put-in to Fourth Machias Lake turned out to be near the lake’s outlet, where the river, still in embryo form, flows down to Third Lake on what’s called Fourth Lake Stream. The moment we got out of the van and saw the shining expanse of water backed by green coniferous forest under a blue sky, it was clear that Fourth Machias Lake was too inviting for us to simply paddle the one mile down to the outlet and leave it behind. Here was no manmade reservoir of the likes we are used to in western North Carolina, where almost every living river has been dammed up into a kind of water battery to help power all our stuff. Fourth Machias Lake, spreading out fresh and natural before us, “was a specimen of what God saw fit to make this world,” to quote Thoreau when he looked out over the Maine wilderness during his first boating trip there. And we saw fit to enjoy it. So, packing up our boats, and saying goodbye to Rob, we paddled back up the lake in the opposite direction from the outlet to see the lake and find a spot to camp.
What we found to camp on was a clean, sandy spit on a small island with room enough for four. Settling in, we ate supper, let the days of traveling to get there fade from memory, then bedded down under a starry sky. We woke from time to time to loon howls, fish splashes, and beaver slaps, while ripples lapped at our feet. Accustomed to looking at a southern sky at night, I was surprised to see the Big Dipper not where I expected it—close to the northern horizon—but almost directly overhead. The clean water, the trees on the island pointing up into the night like black arrowheads, the Big Dipper spilling its contents into the lake—all said, this is Maine.
Rips, Pitches, Rapids, and Falls
A boating trip down the Machias puts you on every kind of freshwater. You cross glacier-scooped lakes, glide down fast, rocky streams, pass quiet bogs and meadows, stretch your muscles on long flatwater stretches, and run or portage a dozen or more boulder-strewn rapids. Much of the way is bounded by a boreal forest of hemlock, spruce, fir, and pine, with white birches, sugar maples, and a few other hardwoods establishing small beachheads in the sea of conifers. Here and there the trees open up around the dwelling of a Maine cottager who holds title to the land. I found it pleasurable to come on these simple cabins, complete with outhouses. They fit in modestly with the river, rocks and trees. A few of the oldest looked like they were returning to the elements of which they were made. Most seemed to be get-away cottages, others hunting camps, with moose and deer antlers hung on the eaves. Two or three cottages appeared to be accessible by trail or canoe only. Dirt roads led to the rest. We saw just one occupied during the trip.
Living in western North Carolina’s Blue Ridge, I’m accustomed to hearing the harsh-sounding “creek” and “fork” given to waterways here that are smaller than rivers—Moses Creek, West Fork. But on the Machias I found it pleasant to come on feeders romantically named “brooks” and “streams.” Indeed, a look at maps tells me that almost all of the smaller waterways in Maine have these designations—with brooks tending to be the smallest flows. This nomenclature must go back to the area’s settlement by the English starting in the 1600s. Crossing the hazardous Atlantic and facing life in an unknown land, the colonists brought memories of their dear brooks and streams with them to what they hoped would be a “New” England. Even the many Maine waterways that have kept their original Indian names often have “brook” or “stream” tacked onto them. It makes me think the English settlers wanted to give their lips something familiar to rest on after attempting to say what to their ears would have been alien words. Try a couple of these Red-White yokings for yourself: Chemquasabmitcook Stream; Nesowadnehunk Stream. What’s in a name? In these there is a hint of the clashes that would occur when two very different kinds of people met.
As for the rapids of the Machias, they come in a confusing number of terms. There are “Rips” (as in Otter Rips) and “Pitches” (Karrick’s Pitch), “Rapids” (Wigwam Rapids One—Two—Three—and—Four) and “Falls” (Great Falls). But I began to see a kind of sense to the classifications as the trip progressed. “Rips” are the easiest: low-gradient class I-II whitewater. Read them from the boat and run. At high water rips will be washed out. “Pitches,” as the name suggests, tend to be short and feature an abrupt drop of a couple of feet, Class II-III. “Rapids” are rips combined with pitches, and we got out on shore to scout several. “Falls” are the most difficult of the whitewater—class IIIs featuring pitches, hydraulic ledges, and wave trains. At our medium-low water level, the rapids and falls were also boulder gardens, presenting us with complicated lines to pick out and follow. The names of the falls are, in the order you come to them, Long Falls, Little Falls, Upper and Lower Holmes Falls, and Great Falls. We scouted all of the falls, each of us deciding whether to run the entire thing or to portage in part or whole. We took turns being rope throwers at the pinch spots—though no one got pinched enough to need a rope.
Upper Holmes Falls is the most difficult of the whitewater drops, and we reached it on the fourth day. The river crashes down a trough of rock, with powerful plunge holes that can’t be avoided. We rated it Class IV/V.
Keeping in mind the old saying of the voyageurs, “No Indian dies on the portage trail,” the three of us in watercraft that trace their lineage back to birchbark canoes portaged Upper Holmes. After careful scouting, Mark ran it in his kayak by following a skinny line on the far left, dropping through tight notches in five closely spaced ledges.
Great Falls is the last of the major drops, close to one-half mile in length, and we got to it on the sixth day. We broke the rapid down into two sections, and ran it mostly on the left. I say “mostly” because there is a wide pour-over ledge on the left part-way down that has a keeper hydraulic behind it. We scouted out a line that we could follow around the right edge of this danger, then with a quick turn dart back towards the left shore again—a move easier said than done. It’s also a line easier seen from shore than from a rock-n-rolling canoe. If you don’t want to run Great Falls, there is a portage trail on both banks.
At the bottom of Great Falls lies a pleasant campsite on river right, and it opens to a rock shelf where it’s easy to bathe and relax in the sun.
A Boater’s Tale
If you make enough river trips, you learn that when it stirs a lake to life wind can be as big force to contend with as rapids. Third Machias Lake was so stirred. Third Lake is 6 miles long and around a mile wide, oriented northwest to southeast, and on the second day we entered it at the top with a stiff wind blowing down its length. That six-mile fetch allowed the wind to push up whitecaps. Midway down, if you stood on shore and looked out, Third Lake appeared to be a Mississippi-wide parade of waves rolling past—and the waves were doing just that, rolling past on the surface of the still body of lake water below. This is the opposite of what happens in a rapid, where the waves stay in place while the body of the river rushes through them.
It was a tailwind, thank goodness. Thank goodness too that we did not enter the lake one week earlier, because we’d have faced the head winds from one of the state’s strongest storms of the year. The storm struck from the Atlantic and, with 50mph wind driving a horizontal deluge of rain, tried to blow Downeast Maine upwest. But even an ordinary tailwind such as we had, if given enough fetch, can turn any lake into a talewind. Hear mine.
By the time we’d paddled a couple of miles down Third Lake the waves were crowding past. They’d sweep in from behind, scoop the boats up—borrowing Bobby’s apt phrase—then set them down in the trough, but only until the next wave scooped them up again. You could feel the biggest of the swells lift the stern first, then roll forward under the boat until it lifted the bow, before coming out in front.
Moving much faster than the waves was the wind, and it wanted to turn the boats sideways, settling them parallel in the troughs. We had to give strong correcting strokes to keep from broaching, while at the same time maintaining forward speed. To broach in the waves meant risking capsize. And, unless you could right the canoe again and crawl back in it, a capsize meant a swim to shore in water in the 50s, with the others put to it to rescue the upside-down boat and gear. Obviously, one capsize sets the stage for others to happen. The North Woods in general have much bigger lakes than Third—topping out with oceanic Lake Superior itself—and there are real-life tales of just such group wipe-outs on some of them, with fatalities due to hypothermia, exhaustion, and flush drowning. Third Machias Lake was big and wavy enough for us, but it did not rise to the dire conditions that paddlers can encounter.
Our goal that day was Prune Island. I’d read that it had a “fine campsite” on its lee side. The island was only four miles down the lake, but to reach it we had to double rocky points and one forested cape. Somewhat like bottlenecks, these horizontal out-juttings of land concentrated the wind, which wanted to push us into the rocks. By the time we made Prune Island’s lee that afternoon—where in a matter of a few feet of travel we went from wind and waves to calm—I felt like we’d been challenged enough.
Careful map reading kept us from having to double two of the points. The map showed that one point might have a slim channel of water separating it from the main shore—and it did, though the boat-wide passage was not visible until we were right on it. Another point was shown to have a tiny waist. We landed there and pulled our canoes a mere 10 feet across to the other side.
Our derring-do on Third Machias Lake did come with one deflating moment. While huddled on the sheltered side of a point eating lunch and pulling on protective cold-water clothing for the final push to Prune Island, we saw two tandem canoes shoot past heading in our same direction. Each canoe was paddled by two men I judged to be in their early 30s. Since they were paddling tandem, they had both ends of the canoes pegged down, making it less likely to broach. And being strong, in boats longer and faster than our solo canoes, they were almost able to keep pace with the waves. I couldn’t help but notice the contrast between the four of us—the youngest twice their age, shivering in our protective clothing, and resting for a final joust with the lake—and the other four in their prime. It was almost galling to see them cruise past dressed in nothing but shorts and shirts. They weren’t even wearing life-jackets.
Concerned that the upstarts might be going to Prune Island, skunking us out of the campsite, I yelled to the one in the stern of the lead canoe, “Where are you headed?” He yelled back, but in the wind he might as well have been speaking Passamaquoddy. When he saw me cup my ears and shake my head “no,” he smiled and flashed two fingers on his grip hand. I took that to mean their destination was Second Lake, and relaxed.
The four young guns did not stop to chat. They were vigorous, confident, but they had miles to go before they slept, including Third Lake’s final stretch below Prune Island. That’s where the wind and waves would be the highest. After that, they had one of the trickiest and longest of the Machias rapids to run or portage—Long Falls. It lies between Third and Second Lakes. We watched them shave the next point, their paddles digging in without pause. In a few minutes they were distant dots among gray waves. We turned back to putting on our water armor.
Having weathered the wind-blown lake, what a relief to find tucked away in the tall trees of Prune Island the fabled campsite–our harbor for the night. It had good sleeping spots and an old, large rock fire pit that looked to have been stacked up in voyageur days. Also, there was a view out between the trees to the lake’s final stretch of wind-whipped whitecaps. It made our port seem all the more welcoming and secure. After supper, I turned in at 7:00, to the joshing of the others. It wouldn’t be dark until near 10:00. But I noticed that they were turning in too by 8:00. I woke in the morning at 5:00 am. It was already light. Lying in my sleeping bag, I watched a red squirrel come down a hemlock tree. Its movements from branch to branch were quick and exact, and crouching on the lowest branch it looked for a long minute at the sleeping forms below. I expected hear it launch into the shrill scolding I’ve heard these “boomers” make many times. But—nature often paying no attention to our expectations—this squirrel, having contemplated the scene, silently retreated back up the trunk and went from tree to tree away.
Temps were in the 30s that morning, so to bring the campsite to life, I fired up a good blaze. While getting our breakfasts, we could see the final two miles of Third Lake that we still had to paddle. They lay tranquil and blue in the morning sun.
Four more days of exciting rips and pleasant campsites and beautiful views lay before us. Having already covered them in some detail, I’ll leave the rest for you to discover. And if the road is open to Fifth Machias Lake, please write to tell me what you find.
Back at Bangor
On our return to the motel, we learned from Lynn that her needy guest had stayed all week. When Lynn discovered that the woman’s credit card did not work, she, with backup, had booted the woman the day before we returned. On entering the vacated room, Lynn said she found a garbage dump of Door Dash food containers and other trash, plus a stinking wet spot on the bed where the woman had urinated.
My Machias mates were to catch flights the next day for home; but for me, the Machias was the first part of a two-part trip. Becky was flying into Bangor that afternoon, and on our way back to North Carolina we planned to spend five days in Concord, Massachusetts, to worship all things Thoreau. This included canoeing on Walden Pond. So I left my three companions with Lynn and drove down the road to a more reputable establishment where Becky and I had booked a room. We met the others later at a restaurant for the post-trip victory supper.
Machias Trip Facts and Pointers
Trip dates: May 7-13, 2023. Put-in, Fourth Machias Lake. Take-out, the town of Machias. Length, around 70 river miles, including the extra distance we paddled on Fourth Lake. The weather was dry and clear throughout, a Maine rarity in May, with a low around 30 degrees and highs in the 70s. We had no mosquitoes but there were blackflies. The flies were never more than a minor bother, and disappeared at night. I hung insect netting over my canoe “cradle” just once or twice. The state has put an attractive flyer online about the river from Third Lake outlet down: https://www.maine.gov/dacf/parksearch/PropertyGuides/PDF_GUIDE/machiasriverguide.pdf
Our informative and pleasant shuttle driver was Rob Scribner. Rob is a long-time certified Maine Guide and owner of Sunrise Canoe and Kayak, based in Machias. He’s been down the Machias and other Maine rivers many times. We met Rob at his shop just out of town. The last day we found my truck and trailer waiting for us at the town take-out, as he promised it would be. Phone: (207) 255-3375; Email: info@sunrisecanoeandkayak.com; also see: www.sunrisecanoeandkayak.com.
River level? I can’t say what the Machias was flowing in terms of cfs. It does not seem to have a USGS river gauge. The most exact I can be is that our flow was at a medium level starting out, dropping two to three inches each day as the dry week went on. Rob can tell you if the river is running high or low, and he can recommend the best dates to plan a trip. Or, he can run a trip for you as outfitter/guide. I’d contact him several months in advance if you want to schedule a trip.
Portage notes: There are portage trails at each of the largest rapids, but you should consult a guidebook or trip reports to find out which side of the river they are on. See AMC River Guide, 3rd edition. Signs cannot be counted on. I recall seeing just two.
The portage trail around Upper Holmes Falls had no sign and was not easy to spot from the river. It starts on the left about 100’ upstream of a concrete logging road bridge. Do not float past the bridge or you’ll be committed to running a very tough drop. Also, do not miss the portage trail around Airline Rapids, which you’ll come to mid-trip. I saw a sign for it upstream of the State Route 9 bridge, which crosses the river at the head of the rapid. But feeling the need to live up to the tee-shirt I was wearing—it has a drawing on it of an old goat canoeing rapids, with the words “Old enough to know better, young enough not to care”—I let us drift on down below the bridge, where we made a tricky landing in fast current on the right. The rapid was easy to scout from there, and the old goats ran the whole thing.
Navigating the lakes: Both Fourth and Third Lakes have very irregular shorelines, plus islands and points. From a boat in the middle of one of these lakes it can be hard to distinguish one island from another, big islands from little ones, island from mainland, or points and bays from straight shore. From a distance individual features blend into an undifferentiated green horizon. If it’s windy, rainy, or foggy, the challenge of keeping yourself oriented goes up. Hidden in each lake’s wavering panorama of land and water is the narrow outlet you have to find to get to the next lake. Mount a compass on the thwart in front of you for immediate reference, and bring USGS 7.5 minute topo maps—as well as the knowhow to read them.
Every trip seems to develop its own saying. On the Machias it was “pretty good.” That’s what I said to the others the first couple of nights when they asked how my lightweight store-bought suppers tasted: “pretty good.” From there, “pretty good” became the reply to everything. How was your run through Little Falls? Pretty good. How’d you sleep last night? Pretty good. Is your beer still cold? Pretty good. What’s the footing like on the portage trail? Pretty good. How’s your bug-dope working? Pretty good!
PS, as in PostShots
