by By Clyde H. Smith
Thistle Hill Publications, 2007
It’s a positive spin on the long canoe trip. No signs of the hypothermia that can result from an early spring downpour or dunking. No welts from the blackfly or mosquito attacks of summer. No images of canoeists doggedly, and awkwardly, pulling their crafts through shallows during an autumn dry spell.
Clyde H. Smith’s latest book, Northeast Passage: A Photographer’s Journey Along the Historic Northern Forest Canoe Trail, ignores all the minor irritants and celebrates the joy and wonder of it all. And why shouldn’t it? There is much to please the eye on this new river trail, which was conceived just a few years ago and runs 740 miles along rivers and lakes from northern Maine to eastern New York.
Smith, who died this past summer, was a devoted canoeist and one of the region’s renowned photographers. This, his last book, one of 21 that he has produced over decades, rejoices in his watery adventures along this unusual trail. His book offers beautiful scenes of the plants and animals of the region, the icy waters of winter, meandering stretches of flat water, roiling rapids, billowing clouds, and distant mountains. His color photographs would encourage any paddler to gather up his gear.
Northeast Passage is published by Thistle Hill of North Pomfret, Vermont, with help from the Avenir Foundation, which was established by the descendants of the late Homer Dodge, former president of Norwich University in Vermont. Smith describes Dodge as the “dean” of whitewater canoeing. Smith dedicated the book to Dodge, whom he met in Burlington, Vermont, in the early 1960s, just as whitewater canoeing was taking off as a sport.
Northeast Passage was produced in partnership with the Northern Forest Canoe Trail organization, of Waitsfield, Vermont, a nonprofit group that organized in 2000 to map out and promote the route that now runs from Fort Kent, Maine, to Old Forge, New York. The modern world intrudes on stretches of the trail, but Smith’s photographs show that much remains wild. There are sights any seventeenth-century fur trader would have recognized. Scenes are inviting even where civilization intrudes.
In addition to the photographs, the author has written four short essays with seasonal themes, and he offers a helpful double-page map of the complete route.
The introduction to Northeast Passage is written by Tom Slayton, editor emeritus of Vermont Life magazine, a devoted canoeist who traces Smith’s interest in the outdoors – his father was a fire warden on Cardigan Mountain in New Hampshire – from youth to late adulthood.
In Smith’s Northeast Passage, you’ll also see families setting up camp, paddlers gliding around rocks, sunrises and sunsets, moose staring at the camera, migrating snow geese, a happy young fisherman with trout. There are close-ups of daisies, a barred owl, and golden maple seedlings in the fall of the year. Just no mosquitoes, and that may be all for the good.