DOWN EAST magazine • August 2022
I went to the Kennebec Gorge that Sunday in 2020 for fishing time. I’d quit at 10:30, then walk the rim trail back to Carry Brook, where I’d left the truck, get to camp, and head home; be there by suppertime. With the rod and net in my left hand and the wading staff in my right, I started up the path that leads to the rim. And then I was sitting, my back against the base of the mossy boulder. I had no memory of having fallen and no consciousness of being injured. I do not remember his bandaging my head, but it must have been a quick, expert job. I do remember the six paddlers arriving, carrying a stretcher, putting it down, and lifting me onto it. I awoke to find myself lying on a hospital bed in Portland. Providence provided me with the Kennebec River rafting guides, whose training had equipped them to deal with just such an emergency and whose rafts and expertise made them the only means for a medevac operation. All of this, so that, two years after the fact, I might sit comfortably in my chair, on a perfect summer afternoon, and tell you about it. ~ Franklin Burroughs