johnhc@TheWorld.com
This Trip description takes the paddler a little over a mile and half downstream from Rte. 3A in East Billerica. In this section, the river passes through its second wooded section, over a beaver dam, and into the Second Meadow (aka Floodplain 2).
Put-In/Take-Out
The Put-In for this trip is at Akerson Field in East Billerica. Often it is just as easy on to park in the nearly empty lot by Rte. 3A and put in at the end of any one of the beaten paths down to the river.
The Take-Out is at the power lines in the section of Billerica we affectionately call ?Little England‰ for its quaint street names such as Little John Drive and Robin Hood Lane. To get to this Take-Out by car, you turn onto Castlewood from Baldwin. Go all the way to the end of Castlewood and take a left onto Churchill. At the end of Churchill, take a left onto Buckingham ? see why we call it ?Little England? ? and park your car under the power lines. An access path leads down to the river from there.
The trip will take the average canoe paddler about an hour or maybe even an hour and a half.
The Woods
When you put in a Rte. 3A, you are still in the First Meadow. You enter the woods when you pass the Gateway Willow, which died over the 2001-02 winter. It had fed a family of beavers five or six years ago, but then the beavers left it alone, and it continued to leaf out each year. This year, however, it?s dead. It will probably stand as the Gateway Willow for another five years or so. Then we?ll be pulling it out of the channel and cutting it into moveable pieces.
Once you pass the willow, you enter a section of the river where the bottom is sandy. The sand here is very deep, and we have no explanation for how it got there. On your left you will see the dilapidated remains of a deck or platform that somebody who enjoyed the river once put there. If you look down into the water along here, you will likely see the resident snapping turtle. This turtle seems to prefer the left side of the river (as you?re headed downstream). It is about as large a snapping turtle as any of us has seen.
On your right, just a few feet past the old platform, you will see a shallow lagoon. This is a mysterious backwater. There is no sharp turn in the channel that could have caused it. The only explanation is the unnatural and remarkably deep pile of sand in the river bottom. The water just spread out, apparently. The back of that lagoon is about five feet from the river channel in the First Meadow. When the river is high, you can paddle between the Woods and Meadow through that lagoon.
You will notice that there are houses on both sides of the river, some of them quite close to the water. The woods grow in upland and seldom flood, which is why people build houses there. The result is that houses occupy more space in the wooded sections of the Shawsheen River than do the trees. Luckily, only about twenty-five percent of the Shawsheen River flows though what might be called ?wooded sections.‰
The presence of the houses on both sides of the river having been noted, it is worth mentioning that, throughout the Shawsheen River basin, it is extremely rare for houses to face one another across the river. That is, almost all of the riverfront houses face open space or woods on the other side of the river. You will seldom feel as if you are intruding on anybody?s neighborhood as you paddle by. We regard this as a matter of luck rather than any reasonable zoning bylaws in any of the towns.
The river runs fairly straight here right after you?ve entered the Woods. Keep an eye out for a kingfisher. It will often precede you downstream as you pass through this wooded section. The first sign you might have of its presence is short rattling call. It seems to feel the need to sound out its annoyance at the disturbance you?ve caused.
Wood ducks and mergansers are often seen in this section as well. If you?re a photographer, you?re going to want a good telephoto lens to capture these birds. They are shy in the extreme and will not let you get very close at all.
The river takes a forty-five-degree right turn at the end of this first section of the woods. A short distance further, the river take a forty-five-degree left turn. It then proceeds straight to the end of this wooded section.
The houses you pass on your right are in The Pines section of Pinehurst in Billerica. Most of those houses have been there a long time, and several of them have been or are in the process of being renovated. Just before you pass the first island in this section of the river, the Billerica Town Forest is on your left, as is the outfall of Jones Brook, one of the Shawsheen?s minor tributaries.
The first island you pass is the one we call ?Garside Island‰ because the Garside family lives in the house high up on the bank overlooking the small cove you pass through before you reach the island. You can go around the island to the left or the right, but the right side is consistently easier to navigate and is always passable.
The straight section you find yourself in after going around Garside Island is quite short. It is also one of the trashiest sections of the river. This is the one section of the river that has resisted persistent cleanup efforts. (One of our worst fears is that the Lawrence section of the river will prove to be as intractably trashed as this short piece.) The bottom here consists of bottles, both broken and whole, going back to the nineteenth century. It seems that the houses along the river bank here were originally vacation homes and possibly rentals. Household garbage ? everything from bed springs to milk bottles ? was discarded in the water. Quite a few boats too big for this river have been pulled out of the bottom piecemeal here.
You can go around the next island you encounter either to the left or the right. Often one side is passable while the other side is not. The next island you encounter just a few yards downstream, is the center of the only beaver dam in the mainstream in Billerica. (Other dams periodically appear, but they are ripped out by vigilantes before they get too settled.) You will see the beaver lodge on the left side of the river just before you get to the dam. The easiest way to spot the lodge is to note the entrance and exit canals that lead from the structure to the river?s main channel.
The beavers have dammed the river on both sides of the island. The easiest way over the dam is to stay to the left. You can pull your canoe up next to the dam and step out onto a small island on the left side of the main dam. Then you pull your canoe out behind you and walk it down to the end of that little island, about ten steps. Put your boat back in the water, and you?re on your way. That beaver dam, by the way, is the end of the first wooded section of the river and the beginning of Floodplain Two (the Second Meadow).
You are now in a shallow cove-like area where the water will seem peculiarly still. When you cross this small patch of broad water, the land on your right is still the island that is part of the beaver dam. When you pass it, you?ll see the stream of water coming into the channel from the other side of the beaver dam.
The river seems to travel relatively straight for a while, angling northeastward. The woods you see on your left getting progressively further from the main channel is still the Billerica Town Forest.
Once back in the floodplain, the river returns to its meandering character. For this final 800 yards of river travel on this small excursion, here are the statistics:
? 45-degree turns: Three
? 90-degree turns: Four
? 180-degree turns: Three
There is, at the seventh turn, a by-pass canal created by the river a few years ago. You can go straight through this canal an skip one of the 180-degree turns. In this section of the river, from the first week in July to the last week in August, you are likely to encounter a broad variety of dragonflies and damselflies as well as the occasional foul-tempered Canada Goose.
You are at the end of this short trip when you pass under the power lines. The river briefly widens after you pass under the power lines. You want to paddle into the backwater on the left. This is the end of the access path from Buckingham Street. At the other end of this path, theoretically, you have parked your car.
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