Where the Water Moves

On a rainy Friday in late April, I sat at the one restaurant and general store in Grand Lake Stream eating a Reuben, waiting to check into Grand Lake Lodge on the banks of West Grand Lake.  A solid four hour drive from Portland, this diminutive village becomes deceptively busy in summer and fall as anglers from all over the country and world arrive for guided fishing trips and all-inclusive stays at the sporting camps in town.  Early spring was a different story—the town was still quiet and sleepy from the long winter, the lodges just now opening their doors and beginning to prep for the busy season.  I was here to document the Down Lakes Land Trust’s Festival in the Forest: a celebration of spring’s arrival throughout the land trust’s 54,000 acre community forest spanning a huge swath of the region’s watershed and woodland, including the headwaters of the Machais River Corridor.

I made time, too, for a visit to the Grand Lake Stream Historical Society and to meet with the town’s most well-known canoe-maker—Dale Tobey has been shaping Grand Laker-style canoes and paddles for better part of 40 years. He has an immaculately preened beard and strong, knowing hands that have long been telling wood and varnish to do as he requires. “I can’t escape Grand Lake canoes,” he said in a clearly well-rehearsed line, “I build them all winter and guide trips in them all summer.”

Best of all, I spent a day fishing West Grand Lake on a guided trip with Paul Laney from Laney’s Guide Service—how could one come all this way to such a far-flung place and not?  Halfway through the day we pulled our canoe onto a small sandy patch and trudged through the woods to a clearing with a stone fireplace and a picnic table for a shore lunch that included a landlocked salmon I’d caught just a half-hour earlier.