Maine author and retired Allagash Wilderness Waterway Supervisor Tim Caverly presented “48 Hours with an Allagash Wilderness Ranger” on Thursday at the Great Falls Forum at the Lewiston Public Library. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal
LEWISTON — Tim Caverly has spent a lifetime in the Maine wilderness.
“I never knew what a day would bring,” the retired Allagash Wilderness Waterway supervisor told the audience at a Great Falls Forum on Thursday.
Along the 92-mile canoe route — owned by the state and designated a Wild and Scenic River by the National Park Service — Caverly has come face-to-face with a baby moose and watched frolicking river otters.
Some days, he’d paddle along for 10 miles without seeing a single soul.
He met all sorts of oddballs attracted by the isolation — and liked many of them.
But much of his job for decades dealt with people doing stupid things or breaking rules, including folks breaking into private camps, installing illegal hot tubs and trying to sneak along a person or two extra on guided tours with strict limits on their numbers.
Caverly and his wife, Susan, told the crowd about their life in the Maine Woods, which he has detailed in 11 books so far.
“We didn’t have to do research,” Caverly said. “We lived it.”
Caverly mentioned a couple of women whose canoe got caught on a rock above the 40-foot Allagash Falls who were rescued by having ropes tied around their waists so they could be pulled to safety.
He showed a photograph of a passenger plane that crashed in Eagle Lake. He cited a couple of drownings as well.
But mostly his stories were more prosaic, including how a fumbled attempt to steal an old wagon wheel that had been turned into a chandelier wound up providing the necessary model to recreate the wagons used in 1907 to build a wilderness dam.
Susan Caverly told of a lightning bolt that shattered part of a historic barn. Fortunately, it did not catch fire.
Caverly recalled during his talk that when he was young, he went along with his older brother who was working at Baxter State Park. They would walk 7.2 miles to remote Russell Pond, he said, and stay there for days.
He said they brought salt crackers with them to feed a tame deer that would come by every evening.
When she didn’t show up for five days, Caverly said, they worried a lynx or bear might have hurt the friendly deer.
But then she returned, nibbled on some crackers and then, after the third one, “she did a backwards flip and disappeared,” Caverly said.
Shortly after, she returned with a fawn who cautiously approached and licked a little salt for itself.
“She introduced me to her young when we were both at a very early age,” Caverly said.
Tim Caverly said the Allagash isn’t as crowded as it once was, but can still get pretty busy on summer weekends after school gets out. He recommended starting visits on a Monday or Tuesday when the numbers are lower.
The Great Falls Forum features a monthly speaker and is co-sponsored by the Sun Journal, Bates College and Lewiston Public Library, which hosts events in Callahan Hall.
The next talk is slated for noon Thursday, March 16, at the library. It will feature a panel discussing new developments in Maine agriculture.
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