The tides had been negligible (probably due to the flooding) but we decided to take advantage of what little help they could give us. The downside of this was that we had to leave Oak Point at 2am. The upside was that there was no wind at 2am, but still… 2am.
We got up in the dark and loaded the boat for one last push to St John. My dad was scheduled to meet us at the St John Marina near Ketepec; this was well above the city of St John, but we’d given up on the Bay and word on the street was that the flooding had been so severe that Reversing Falls hadn’t actually been reversing for about a month, so we figured it was an acceptable call to play it safe.
There’s a huge difference between seeing the sun rise in a canoe after paddling through the night and seeing the sun rise in a canoe after waking up super fucking early. The latter is downright delightful; you can appreciate the colors and the way the entire river springs to life, and as the sun breaks the horizon the warmth just seeps into your soul and makes you feel alive in the most incredible way. (If you’ve been up all night, it makes you feel slightly lukewarm and mostly you wish you were dead because then it’d be dark and it wouldn’t hurt your face as much.)
We scuttled across the path of another cable ferry and began the last push into St John. As you approach the city, the St John river widens and converges with the Kennebecasis River. The channel is over a mile across, wind is inevitable, and good-sized boats abound. We marveled at the fact that even though we were close to a major city, most of the riverside property was undeveloped and the scenery was stunning.
At last we spied the marina, and the end of our St John expedition was (literally) in sight. Surprisingly, the docks were completely empty and there wasn’t a single boat in any of the slips; we paddled right up to the main wharf to the delight of a construction crew making fence repairs.
The workers helped us pull the boat out of the water and told us how the entire building had been underwater just a week earlier. They were completely revamping the interior of the restaurant on the second story of the marina building, and several of their streetlights by the dock had been damaged because the water had been so high that boats had run into the bulbs. The marina owners were wonderful people and let us use their wifi to let my dad know we’d arrived, clean up a bit in the marina’s bathrooms, and then hang out on the dock playing gin rummy until I recognized my dad’s Subaru pulling in to drive us back to the US.
The end of a trip like this is always bittersweet, but this one is especially so- as soon as we get back to Vermont, we’re loading up my car with all my gear and MY canoe and I’m headed to Michigan for several months to work as a protection ranger and EMT with the National Park Service. It’s an amazing job opportunity for me and I’m totally pumped, but it means an entire summer without Steve in the other end of the boat. He’s driving west with me and then flying back, and I’m going to be absolutely crushed when I have to leave him at a tiny Michigan airport and set out on my next adventure alone. Going from “expedition mode” to the front country is difficult enough, but going from almost forty days in close contact with your favorite person to not seeing them at all for four months is a special kind of heartbreaking.
For now, though, we’re just looking forward to hot showers, a couch, and as many pizza rolls as we can stand. One creature comfort at a time.