The Shawsheen Trib
Volume 5, Number 1

Continuity Needed
by John Hicks-Courant
johnhc@theworld.com
When my fourth novel began writing itself — I don’t make this stuff up; I just write it down — last November, I was a little surprised to discover that a small, peripheral group of environmentalists was composed entirely of middle-aged men and women. They remember the establishment of the EPA, the Viet Nam war, and Nixon’s resignation. In other words, everybody in that group has gray hair and adult children.
This might have struck me as a quirk of this particular book, except that it seems to reflect a certain reality. Every environmentalist I know has a distinct memory of where he or she was when Jack Kennedy was shot. This is significant, and what it signifies isn’t very promising for the future of the Shawsheen River.
I am not very well versed in the science-fiction genre — the only three authors I can name off the top of my head are Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and Douglas Adams — but I somehow remember that one of the hallmarks of superior alien species is that the offspring are born with all of the knowledge learned by their forebears. That is, if a grandparent learned how to build durable domiciles out of pine needles, the newborn would have that knowledge at birth. This would, of course, be a great boon to any species, in all manner of ways. Alas, this is not the case with us.
Of all the cleanups I have participated in over the last decade and a half, the only young people I remember seeing on any of them were Joe Moore’s kids and my own. I don’t know about the Moore kids, but I’m pretty sure my own children will not be living anywhere near the Shawsheen River after they leave college. Come to think of it, the Moore family doesn’t live anywhere near the Shawsheen River now.
How are we going to get young people to take an interest in the ongoing stewardship of this otherwise completely unprotected river system?
We are, after all, a registered 501(c)3 organization chartered with educating the public about the value of the natural resource that is the Shawsheen River.
We should be teaching people about the river itself and the creatures that inhabit it and the bordering habitats it supports. We could show videos of some cleanups, maybe some before/after slides. Maybe we could talk about the satisfaction derived from righting a wrong.
These are just suggestions, and I am soliciting others. Do you have any ideas as to how we might gather the attention, interest, and eventual commitment of the fifteen- to forty-year-old crowd? Seem like a pretty broad age group? That’s two whole generations that are missing from our active membership.
What about bumper stickers? Decals? Speaking engagements? What besides the booths at various civic events can we do to attract interest? Let’s look at what we need to do:
Continue cleaning the river. It will always be at the bottom of the watershed, and trash will always flow downhill.
Monitor habitat quality. The threats of purple loosestrife and Eurasian milfoil are threats we know; we need to keep track of them and spot any new exotic invasive species.
Raise public awareness of the river. The vast majority of people who see it every day believe the Shawsheen River is a drainage ditch. We have to change this.
Keep at it, even after we’re gone. The three tasks listed above are all iterative processes that must be repeated ad infinitum. If we’re lucky, most of the current active members of the SRWA will be very active two decades hence. The river will remain where it is for much longer than a mere twenty years.
So, what do you think? What should we do?

Paddling End-to-End
by John Hicks-Courant
johnhc@theworld.com
On December 4, 2004, I paddled from Great Road in Bedford to the Chippendale Dance Center in Lawrence. That is, I paddled from the beginning of the Shawsheen River to its confluence with the Merrimack River in one trip. We had been talking about making this end-to-end trip in the fall for several years now. It had come to seem like the appropriate thing to do now that — according to our own pronouncements — the entire river is navigable.
Logistics
Saying that “the entire river is navigable” is accurate more figuratively than literally. There are two portages. The one around Ballardvale Dam is a third-of-a-mile portage. The one around the breached Red Rocks Dam, the Stephens Street Dam, and the Balmoral Dam is about two miles. All of these dams are in Andover, which makes half of the river as it courses through Andover not only unnavigable but downright dangerous.
So I used a two-wheel attachment for the stern of my kayak that lets me pull it like a wagon. In the first portage, I took out in the Shawsheen Rubber Company parking lot, attached the wheels, and then rolled my boat over the bridge and down to the put-in at the end of Dale Street. For the second portage, I took out at the Central Street Bridge and rolled my kayak to Abbot Bridge Drive, where I had parked my truck. I then drove the two miles to the unofficial put-in at Riverina Road.
My extremely generous and very much appreciated shuttle drivers were my wife, Martha, who drove me back to my Bedford put-in after I parked my truck on Abbot Bridge Drive in Andover, and Bob Rauseo, who picked me up at the end in Lawrence and drove me and my boat back to Riverina Road in Andover.
The entire trip, which involved about 23 miles of paddling, two portages, and a stop for lunch, took 6_ hours, from 8:00AM to 2:30PM. When I started, the temperature was about 34 degrees. When I finished, it was about 45 degrees under clear skies. I finished the day with a sunburned face.
I wore a tight-knit watch cap, a t-shirt and four sweatshirts covered with a waterproof shell. The most important thing I wore on the trip was a pair of gloves I bought at the local hardware store just a few days earlier. These gloves feel like a pair of close-fitting, multi-layer ski gloves, but they are waterproof. That is, even when the outside of the glove is wet to the point of dripping, the inner layers stay dry. Sold under the brand name “West County gloves,” they are made with a much vaunted technology called “multex,” which I think means “innovative use of multiple layer.” They cost me about $25 and were worth every penny.
The only mistake I made in dressing was not considering that the interior of the kayak, even though dry, would become a refrigerator. I should have worn warmer socks. I spent most of the trip with very cold toes.
Bedford
Despite the heavy rains that had occurred in the last ten days, the First Woods in Bedford are still a struggle to paddle through. The canalized river is shallow and rocky when it is not clogged by fallen branches and trees. This section of the river is so full of trash that it reminded me of the Bayou before we really got to work on it three years ago. It’s that bad.
The multiple levels of neglectful abuse this section of the river displays aside, I once again saw the two deer that inhabit the small stretch of woods between Great Road and the well fields. They are both does, and I believe one is the offspring of the other. Their size difference is less than it was when I saw them last spring, but it is still apparent. They led me down the river for about a hundred yards before they leapt across the river and ran back upstream.
Knowing that this section of the river would be scratchy, and having lost several paddles in cold weather on the Shawsheen, I began my trip using my metal paddle with the hard-rubber blades. This indestructible paddle let me push off the bottom, pole myself over rocky stretches, and generally fight the environment of the First Woods without worrying about breaking anything. The downside of this paddle is that it is heavy and not very efficient. This added to the sense that I was battling my way through Bedford.
When I finally reached the First Meadow after thirty minutes of struggle, I switched to my lightweight, efficient wooden paddle, and my speed increased dramatically. The trashiness of the river peculiar to Bedford continued all the way to Rte. 3. At that point, I passed into the section of the First Meadow where I conducted half a dozen river sweeps this fall. Except for a strainer right below Rte. 3 that had captured the last of the trash streaming down from Bedford, the rest of the trash I encountered in the First Meadow was all old trash. That is, the bottles, cans, and foam cups were all tinted brown from years of being in the river. I finally figured out that the recent heavy rains had washed this trash out of the meadow grasses and into the channel. Another river sweep or two this winter, and the First Meadow will look pristine again by spring.
As I paddled through the First Meadow in Bedford, I kept looking for the albino hawk. For reasons that are entirely unclear to me, I’ve never seen it on the right, or east, side of the river, so I didn’t even look for it there. Indeed, I finally spotted it sitting in an oak tree about thirty feet above the water. I got close enough that I could see that it is not entirely white. There are flecks of gray on its breast, a sort of shadow of the mottling on the breast of a normal red tail hawk. I was so fascinated by the albino that I didn’t see the hawk right next to it until it took flight. I also saw a belted kingfisher, which surprised me. I don’t think we’ve ever seen one of these birds as late as December.
The four beaver lodges in the First Meadow in Bedford are in good repair. The newest one, right below Middlesex Turnpike, had progressed to the point where it was covered with a shell of sticks. The water was high enough that I scooted over the one beaver dam in the First Meadow without even denting it.
Billerica
Through the First Meadow and into the Second Woods is one of the nicest three-mile paddling trips on the river. With high water, the only possible obstacle was the Rte. 3A bridge. I squeezed under it without too much difficulty. The Sachem Street beaver colony’s dam is getting longer, but the water was high enough that I shot right over it. I did the same at the Buckingham Drive beaver dam. The new dam a mile below the Buckingham Drive colony was in disrepair, apparently abandoned by the beavers that started it.
I passed through the Second Meadow, Third Woods, Third Meadow, and into the Fourth Woods in high, quick water without encountering a single obstacle. The sun had started making itself evident, and it was a very pleasant way to spend a Saturday morning in late autumn. I passed under Whipple Road and into Tewksbury right on the 4-mph schedule.
Tewksbury
Through the Fourth Meadow and into the Fifth Woods is another of the nicest, easiest paddling trips on the river. It is very clean and obstacle free. Once you’re in the Fifth Woods, however, you have to contend with the Bridge Street bridge, the troublesome passage through the Mill Street bridge, and the swift water around the old mill island. Except for taking some water in the cockpit while crashing through the wave created by the Mill Street bridge, I passed through these possible problem areas with ease and at quite high speed.
There is a stretch of river between the old mill island and the old railroad trestle that can be just as scratchy as the First Woods in middling to low water. On this day, I sailed right through almost without having to paddle.
I have to confess that paddling unmolested through all of Billerica and Tewksbury still gives me a charge. I still clearly remember the days when making that trip without getting out of your boat seemed an impossible dream. It still feels like an accomplishment that I will be quietly proud of having been part of for the rest of my life.
Andover
It was while paddling out of the Fifth Meadow and through the Sixth Woods into the Flats that this trip first began to feel like an endurance test. My arms and shoulders began getting tired. I searched my memory and realized that, in previous long paddles, I had stopped and gotten out of my boat at either ten- or twelve-mile intervals. Here I was at mile fifteen, and I hadn’t stopped yet. I began hoping that the brief rest at the portage around Ballardvale Dam at mile sixteen would provide adequate relief.
It did. The two miles to the Central Street bridge passed in record time. After I passed the beaver lodge on the right bank on the river side of Pomp’s Pond, I realized that I needed fuel other than the Gatorade I had with me. After I loaded my kayak onto my truck, I did what I haven’t done in more than eighteen months: I bought a Big Mac at the MacDonald’s on Main Street. I probably won’t do that again for at least another two years, but it provided me with what I needed then.
Getting into a kayak at the Riverina Road put-in has always been a challenge. There is no easy, let alone graceful, way to do it. I spent at least ten minutes figuring out how to get into my kayak without getting into the river first. It was here that I called Bob Rauseo and told him I was an hour away from the take-out.
At this point, I was in the Seventh Woods, which eventually become the area we call The Bayou in Lawrence.
North Andover
I had recovered my energy completely after the half-hour break between the Central Street bridge and Riverina Road, and passed by Den Rock Park and under Rte. 114 at full speed. The sudden appearance of the preponderance of river birches on both sides of the river at Rte. 114 still amazes me. It seems entirely inexplicable. They’re absent throughout most of the river, but then they’re everywhere in that small section.
Lawrence
After you pass the hotel three or four times, you enter The Bayou. This section got that name because it used to be so full of trash that the channel no longer existed. Whenever the water got as high as middling, the channel disappeared, and the paddler was left guessing about what was downstream and what was a backwater.
This is no longer the case. The SRWA has been assiduously cleaning this section for the last three years, and the channel is very well defined, even in high water. The only time I was unsure of which was the correct direction, the point of confusion turned out to have been a large island, and either side would have worked.
The Bayou has the most amazing trees. Huge oaks, maples, and pines look large enough to be true “old growth,” and it seems possible that these trees have been left alone for several hundred years. What made these trees seem strange on this trip was that they were full of crows. Hundreds of crows, maybe even more than a thousand, occupied the trees like noisy black foliage. They were clearly mobbing, crying out as they do when they encounter a hawk or an owl. I looked for the guilty raptor and saw none. It took me a good ten minutes to figure out that I was the inspiration for this mobbing.
Cawing raucously the whole while, this cloud of crows followed me downstream until I passed under Loring Street. I can tell you that it’s a little unsettling to have hundreds of big black birds complaining loudly about your presence. None of them attacked me the way I’ve seen them attack hawks and owls, for which I was grateful. I saw the Hitchcock movie when I was a kid, and scenes were coming back to me rather regularly by the time I paddled under the Loring Street bridge. I did not really get a chance to admire the trees on this trip.
I paddled out of the Shawsheen River and into the Merrimack River at 2:25. Five minutes later, I pulled up to the bank a few feet below Bob Rauseo’s truck. When I climbed out of my kayak, I think I said, “Whatever you call the upper body equivalent of a limp, that’s what I’m doing.” I needed Bob’s help to get my kayak up the little hill below the parking lot.
Conclusion
This is a must-do trip, at least once but preferably twice each year. This is really the only way to get a picture of the whole river, and it is wonderful exercise. I plan on doing the trip again next spring, in the high waters of April, as well as next November or December. With any luck, we’ll have a trailer by then to make the portage from Abbot Bridge Drive to Riverina Road easier for two or more paddlers. I’m seriously hoping that by next November, the First Woods in Bedford will be as clean as they were ten years ago. We’ve done it before, so I know we can do it again.

Bedford River Sweep
December 18, 2004
by John Hicks-Courant
johnhc@theworld.com
On Friday, December 17, I called the Bedford DPW and asked them to pick up the pile of wood I’d pull out of the river over the weekend. The DPW Director, who has been very supportive of our efforts over the years, came through again.
I saw a belted kingfisher, mink, mallards, and Canada geese. All four beaver lodges in the First Meadow are in great shape.
Picked up: 250 pounds of finished lumber and 1 full forty-gallon trash bag plus one car wheel (heavy).
By the time I reached the Rte. 62 bridge, my canoe already had enough stuff that I couldn’t stop for individual pieces of trash because the canoe had lost maneuverability.
By the time I left the First Woods and entered the First Meadow, I was in a race against darkness.
I lucked out in my race against darkness. I had enough daylight to empty my canoe, haul it up to the road, and load it onto my truck. Darkness fell like a curtain in the two or three minutes it took me to strap my canoe onto the rack.
A Bedford police car stopped behind my truck on Middlesex Turnpike just as I finished strapping my canoe onto the rack. The policeman seemed to think I looked like an accident about to happen.
It was an extremely successful as well as lucky late-season river sweep. The weather was in the low 40s and then the high 30s with a partly cloudy sky. A lot of the things I wanted to put in my boat were stuck in frozen mud, which is as solid as concrete.
There were still two-full-canoes worth of trash in the First Woods and First Meadow last December 18. After three months of winter, there is likely to be at least three more canoe loads of trash.
Our first cleanup of 2005 will be another river sweep like the one I conducted on December 18. Please join us. We will have canoes and paddles available for lending, but we need your hands and your willingness to help us reverse the trend in recent years of ignoring Bedford, where the river begins.

Winter Solstice Canoe Trip
December 19, 2004
Because the actual winter solstice would occur on a weekday — a very cold and inclement weekday at that, as it would turn out — we decided to conduct this annual pagan paddle on the preceding Sunday.
The participants were John Hicks-Courant, Bob Rauseo, Ken Doran, Sharon Lapham, Tim Wacker, and Mario Krasjewski. The latter two are Eagle Tribune employees.
We put in at the K of C as the sky brightened and actually saw the sun rise in our one-mile paddle to the confluence with Strongwater Brook.
The air was just below freezing, and there were wafer-thin ice ledges along the banks, but the water came right to the shore at both the put-in and take-out. We started at about 7:15 and were out of the water by 7:40.
The following day, a full-fledged article written by Tim Wacker, an environmental reporter, appeared in the Eagle Tribune accompanied by one of those full-frontal classic pictures of Bob Rauseo with paddle in hand taken by Mario Krajewski, photographer. You can read a downloaded copy of the article, entitled “Winter on the Shawsheen” at our website,

New Year’s Day Trip
On January 1, 2005, two canoes and two kayaks made the trip from the Whipple Road bridge to the Knights of Columbus parking lot. As has become to seem almost traditional, Sharon Lapham provided logistical support. The biggest challenge of the day was the ice that stood between the land and the open water at both the put-in and the take-out. The forceful and strategic use of the potato rake that we call “the hook” opened a path through the ice at both ends.
The paddlers on this trip were:
John Hicks-Courant
Miranda Hicks-Courant
Ken Doran
Robert Rauseo
Jim & Natalie Normandie
It was a beautiful day with a clear sky and very little wind. The paddling was easy. Seen on this trip were a red tail hawk, a belted kingfisher, and uncounted mallard ducks and Canada geese. It was a wonderful way to start another year on the Shawsheen River.

K of C to Ballardvale
January 15, 2005
On January 15, two canoes and a kayak paddled from the Knights of Columbus (K of C) in Tewksbury to the Ballardvale dam in Andover. The seven-mile trip took the kayaker one hour and the canoers about an hour and a half. The water was high, and the floodplains were flooded. The air was a couple of degrees above freezing, and the water seemed to be right at freezing but moving too quickly to set.
This trip normally has three challenges near the beginning. These are the Mill Street bridge, the mill island, and the old railroad trestle just below the mill island. On January 15, the high water made the Mill Street bridge a special challenge. As the river reached the beginning of either of the two culverts, it plunged a little over two feet. Then the rushing water hits the other end of the culvert and forms a wall of water more than two feet high. Because of the design of my kayak, I shot straight through the wall of water. It hit me square in the chest. At least one of the canoes also took on water. It was very cold water.
Shortly after passing under the Mill Street bridge, the paddler encounters the island on which the eponymic mill once stood. Staying to the left of the island leaves the paddler in the old tailrace of the mill, below which two falling trees cross the channel, forming a kind of X. In high water, the apex of the lower half of that X was just at head height. On that Saturday, the paddlers raced through whitewater toward a specific point in that X. To the right or the left of that point meant a spill. We all made it through, but there were some seriously beating hearts by the time the boats passed the X.
The trestle did not present a challenge that day. It only becomes a problem in low water.
The only other real challenge that day was the take-out at the Ballardvale millpond. The shoreline was completely iced in. There was, however, a culvert emerging from the bank that spewed run-off into the river. Because the run-off was polluted, the water it ran into did not freeze as solidly as the rest. By paddling up onto the discolored ice from that culvert, I was able to break a path to the shore.
The next winter paddle will probably be on the section of the river in Andover between Ballardvale and the Central Street bridge.
If you would like to participate in any of these winter paddles, most of which are arranged on pretty short notice, please send a message to BobOtter@AOL.com telling him that you would like to be put on his e-mail list for paddling expeditions. He usually gets word out two or three days before the event, about the time he gets a “reliable” weather forecast.
Paddling participants were:
Jack Brady
Ken Doran
John Hicks-Courant
Bob Marsh
Bob Rauseo
Terrestrial and moral support were provided by Sharon Lapham and Frank Perdicaro.

Help Us Lower our Expenses!
by Jack Brady
KayakJack@comcast.net
The SRWA’s two main expenses are the cost of properly disposing of the trash and tires we pull from the river and the cost of reproducing and mailing our newsletter, The Shawsheen Trib.  Historically, we have been able to obtain grants that cover a large percentage of the trash disposal, and our publishing costs have been paid by our membership fees. 
Now you can help reduce the cost of distributing the newsletter by allowing us to e-mail it to you.  Eliminating the cost of reproducing and mailing a year’s worth of newsletters to one person is very close to what we pay to properly dispose of four car tires pulled from the river. 
In addition to our newsletter, you will have the option of receiving any notices, calendar event updates, and meeting announcements. 
All of our e-mail messages are sent out as BCC (Blind Courtesy Copy).  This way, your address remains confidential and no other recipients can see your private email address; your address is kept from spammers.  Non-members without an e-mail address do not receive all issues of The Shawsheen Trib, our newsletter.
The Shawsheen Trib is sent out as an Adobe ‘Portable Document Format’, more commonly known as PDF file.  To access this file type, you can get a free download from at Adobe’s website: http://www.adobe.com/.  Then click on ‘Get Adobe Reader’ on the left portion of the form and follow the screen instructions.
Once you have the PDF file, you have the option of printing it double sided. After you select “Print,” select “Odd Pages only” on the bottom left side of the print window. Then print the document. When the pages emerge, turn them over and put them back in the printer. Select “Even Pages Only” on the bottom left and “Reverse Pages” on the top right of the window. Then print. The newsletter will look exactly as it would have if we had mailed it to you.
To get The ShawsheenTrib electronically, send an e-mail message to KayakJack@comcast.net with a Subject of ‘SRWA E-Mail Address’.  You may also want to do this if your old e-mail address changes.

January 5, 2005 SRWA Executive Committee Meeting
At 7:00 on the night of January 5, the SRWA Executive Committee met at Bob Rauseo’s house. In attendance were:
Jack Brady
Bob Marsh
Suzanne Roberts
Bill Speciale
Ken Doran
John Hicks-Courant
Bob Rauseo
There were five items on the agenda:
The Trailer
In the last issue of The Shawsheen Trib, we asked our members whether we should proceed with the acquisition of a lightweight trailer that could carry six canoes or kayaks. We committed to making the purchase if the SRWA received as much as a third of the $2,000 price in dedicated donations. That issue of the newsletter was published in November of 2004. By January 5, 2005, the SRWA had received $1,000.01 in dedicated donations. The Executive Committee unanimously approved the acquisition.
The Canoes
The Executive Committee also unanimously approved the acquisition of three used Old Town 159 canoes for the price of $300 each.
Third-Party Membership Recruitment
The Digital Credit Union (DCU) is a financial organization born in the days of DEC that has outlived its parent. It is a local business that admits members only if they work for certain business or belong to certain organizations. It has been suggested that the SRWA offer itself as one of those organizations. Any time somebody wanted to join the DCU, they could elect to join the SRWA, which would make them eligible for DCU membership. Questions immediate arose about the use of membership lists and protection of SRWA members’ privacy. Bob Rauseo assumed responsibility for answering all of the questions raised.
River Access-Point Signs
Ken Doran proposed the purchase of signs from an internet web site. These signs would show a silhouette of a person paddling a canoe on choppy water with an arrow indicating the direction of the access point. The committee voted against making the purchase, but Ken Doran and Bob Marsh decided to purchase the signs and erect them in Andover once they had the town’s permission.
Purple Loosestrife Project
It was decided that the purple loosestrife project proposed in the last issue of this publication should proceed along rigorously designed parameters to allow us to calibrate the effectiveness of the program. Suzanne Roberts assumed responsibility for drawing up the design.

SRWA Community Outreach and the Canoeing Merit Badge
One of the advantages of the SRWA's recent purchase of a canoe trailer and some additional canoes is that we will be able to do more community outreach.  The SRWA is interested in working with Scouting organizations to help their members obtain a Canoeing Merit Badge.
We would do this in two sessions.  Session 1 would be two to four hours of instruction at either Pomps Pond in Andover or Nutting Lake in Billerica. At this session, SRWA instructors would demonstrate the necessary paddling strokes and the Scouts would practice under the watchful eye of the instructors. 
Session 2 would be a two- to four-hour canoe trip on the Shawsheen River where the Scouts would apply the techniques they had learned at the previous session.  These sessions would be free of charge.
The SRWA has all the gear the Scouts would need with one exception. Each Scout would have to bring an emergency whistle.  Scouts should also bring drinking water or fruit juice.  More details (what to wear, when and where) will be available as the event approaches. Although the training sites are in Andover and Billerica, Scouts from all communities are welcome.
The ten requirements for the Canoeing Merit badge can be found on the web at http://www.meritbadge.com/mb/033.htm.  The SRWA would only address requirements 4 through 10.  Requirements 1 through 3 would be the responsibility of Scout’s troop.  
Interested Scoutmasters should e-mail KayakJack@comcast.net with a subject of “Canoeing Merit Badge Inquiry.”

The Red Tail Hawk
Illustration by Sharon Lapham
Description: 22 inches long with a wingspan of 50 inches. Head, back, and wings dark brown; upper chest white, lower chest has band of heavy brown streaks contrasting with white thighs; tail pale orange below, dark rufous above. Seen from below, the underwings mainly white with dark leading edge at shoulder and black crescent beyond wrist.
*

(Editor’s Note: At least two albino red tail hawks have been spotted along the Shawsheen River. One is resident in the Bedford section of the First Meadow, and the other lives in the Bayou section.)
Habitat: Tree lines at edges of open areas such as a river meadow or farm field.
Diet: Squirrels, and smaller birds such as young crows, kingbirds, grackles, catbirds, and mockingbirds. A clear sign of a nearby hawk or owl is the cacophony of mobbing crows. Being much more common than owls, as well as the most common hawk in New England, crows are usually mobbing a red tail hawk.
Song: The red tail hawk is not a shy bird, and its distinctive rasping squeal, often described as a downward slurring keeer–r-r, is often the first hint a person has that a hawk is in the area.