Winter on the Shawsheen
By Tim Wacker
Staff Writer for Lawrence Tribune
Starting out with sunny skies and calm winds, yesterday wasn't a bad day for boating on the Shawsheen River. For Dec. 19, anyway.
With a fresh crust of ice on the river's edge and the temperature hovering at about 25 degrees, a cluster of the Shawsheen's faithful slipped canoes into the water outside the Knights of Columbus hall in Tewksbury and paddled toward the sunrise. It's an annual winter solstice canoe trip organized by the Shawsheen River Watershed Association.
"One year, the trip was beautiful," said Sharon Lapham of Billerica. "The sun was coming up over the pines, the ice was crackling under our feet, and it was the solstice. It was so beautiful."
Yesterday wasn't too shabby either, even though it wasn't quite the first day of winter. The snow expected for later in the day was still at bay and the morning sun made the season's spent marsh grass appear a pale shade of gold.
The turnout for the trip was half what organizer Robert Rauseo predicted, but then again, getting up at 5 a.m. to go canoeing in honor of the start of the year's worst boating weather is not a big attraction. Until you get there.
And that's pretty much what the group is all about. Since it was founded 20 years ago through one member's college project, the association has spread the word about this amber sinew that quietly meanders through marshlands and back yards from Bedford to Lawrence.
"Most people only know about the river from the bridges, where the banks have been torn up and the water diverted into tunnels," Rauseo said as he worked his canoe around a bend in the river, startling a flock of mallards.
"This river has always been like this," he said. "But the typical response when people see it like this is amazement."
The scenery wasn't always the same. The association has spent decades pulling all kinds of garbage from the river's shallow confines until now, when the bulk of what Rauseo calls the historic trash is gone.
But there is still plenty of work left. The group wants to improve public access to the river, even as rising real estate values make private owners ever more covetous. It hopes also to post a few signs and install a canoe launch or two. And then there is always the removal of trash tossed by careless drivers from the many bridges built over the Shawsheen.
The association is also eyeing a lightweight trailer so members such as John Hicks-Courant and Ken Doran don't have to strap canoes to their car roof racks and pickups.
These may seem like modest ambitions for a 20-year-old group with about 100 members, but since the state eliminated its multimillion-dollar watershed initiative program, groups such as the association have had to fend entirely for themselves. With help from corporations such as outdoor outfitters REI, newsletters get printed and garbage trucks are recruited to keep cleanup efforts going.
"We don't have any paid employees," Rauseo said. "We can make a $1,000 go a long way."
Looking to the future, the association wants to grow, Rauseo said, if only to expand the appreciation of this historic river. Ted Williams used to fly fish for Atlantic salmon along its banks, Rauseo said, and as far as the association is concerned, the river is better than ever, even on the edge of winter.
"We would like to expand our base," he said. "But we're less concerned with people becoming members than we are with people coming to know what's out here."
