Investing in Memories

"Come TINTIN, come,” my four-year-old daughter hollered, then broke into a giggle. Her two-year-old brother threw back his head and let rip with his best belly laugh. We paddled, a family of four snug in a fully loaded 17′ canoe, up Lobster Stream in northern Maine. Tall conifers lined the banks on either side and funneled a mild headwind against our bow. Tethered to our stern, TINTIN, our 16′ wood-and-canvas canoe also teeming with gear, kept slipping broadside to our progress, creating drag like an anchor. I fiddled with the length of the line to no avail. I had built TINTIN 15 years earlier for a 700-mile paddle adventure across the Northeast. Before marriage and children, that trip had turned canoe and boy into an inseparable duo, but fast-forward to our inaugural and long-anticipated family canoe trip, and TINTIN had been demoted to service as a barge. What better way, I had naïvely thought, to instill a bond between my beloved TINTIN and the next generation than a family adventure— yet, 20 minutes into our first day, the kids were treating TINTIN like a goofy pet.

Donnie Mullen

The put-in on Lobster Stream is just upstream of its confluence with the West Branch of the Penobscot River. We were all excited, a tad anxious, and already tired following the long journey from home. The 2-mile paddle up to Lobster Lake is, strictly speaking, upstream but in practice it’s an easy flat water trip. TINTIN, in the foreground, carries gear for a family of four.

I was embarrassed to admit that I had stooped to the ignoble act of towing another canoe, but the previous week had been such a chaotic blur that finding the put-in, loading the boats, and shoving off felt like an accomplishment akin to a space-shuttle launch. A month earlier, during a heartfelt and late-night talk with my wife Erin, we agreed that, spring bugs and proper sleep be damned, the children were ready to experience true camping. Erin and I had met while working for Outward Bound and shared a long history of outdoor adventuring, running the gamut from a month-long paddle trip into the wilds of Quebec and Labrador to taking a reflective escape aboard TINTIN on our wedding day. Of course, our late-night declaration required of us a Herculean task: to find, organize, update, and pack the gear required. Then menu planning, shopping, and parceling out the food—which Erin largely executed herself, while also managing the children—as I busied myself with work, a handy camouflage for my being overwhelmed by the complex task of packing for a family of four, one still in diapers. My singular contribution, other than packing my own few clothes, was to mount the two canoes on the roof of our truck in a towering jumble that just might survive Maine’s punishing logging roads.