Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Marsha for RADIOI, and today I will
Speaker 1: be reading National Geographic magazine dated May twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: which is donated by the publisher as a reminder, radiois
Speaker 1: a reading service intended for people who are blind or
Speaker 1: have other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
Speaker 1: Please join me now for the continuation of the article
Speaker 1: I began last time, entitled Australia's Big, Great, Big Camel
Speaker 1: Conundrum by Sean Williams. In Saudi Arabia, perhaps the sports
Speaker 1: global capital, the twenty twenty four Crown Prince Camel Festival
Speaker 1: featured more than twenty one thousand camels and a staggering
Speaker 1: prize pot of fifteen million dollars. Mcew is a realist, though,
Speaker 1: and thanks the only way to solve Australia's camera problem
Speaker 1: is to market the creature's varied attributes. The camel is
Speaker 1: so underrated, he says, we need to lift that profile
Speaker 1: and make it a another great industry for Australia. Opposed
Speaker 1: to culling, like some Aboriginal communities and animal welfare groups,
Speaker 1: is upset by the mindless slaughter of this great animal.
Speaker 1: Camels are remarkably versatile, unlike most other animal that you
Speaker 1: can race up to forty miles an hour. They can
Speaker 1: also be milked. Camel milk, which is creamy and slightly salty,
Speaker 1: offers a nutritious, low fat and low lactose alternative to
Speaker 1: cow's milk. Australia's camel milk production, fifty thousand gallons a
Speaker 1: year at least at last available count, is a drop
Speaker 1: in the proverbial bucket compared with six hundred thirty four
Speaker 1: million gallons in cow's milk sales today, but it's an
Speaker 1: emerging cottage industry. The Camel Milk Company, founded north of
Speaker 1: Melbourne in twenty fourteen, now has a milking herd of
Speaker 1: more than two hundred at its dairy summer Land Camels
Speaker 1: and Organic Farm and Queensland, where eight hundred camels Grayze
Speaker 1: vaunts the benefits of the vitamin C rich milk and
Speaker 1: offers a range of other dairy products from feta to gelato,
Speaker 1: body cream to milk vodka. Elsewhere in Queensland, q Camel
Speaker 1: is producing camel's milk chocolates. There are, of course, significant
Speaker 1: challenges to scaling these operations to such a degree that
Speaker 1: they could make a dent in the country's huge feral population.
Speaker 1: As Warwick Hill of South Australia based camel dairy hump
Speaker 1: Policious explains, animals bread for milking typically have uniformed teat
Speaker 1: and utter sizes. Nobody's made any serious efforts to breed
Speaker 1: camels for conformity to masure to machinery, He says, the
Speaker 1: time it takes us to milk a dozen camels a
Speaker 1: cow dairy could probably be putting through five hundred one
Speaker 1: of Humpoliicio's products. Jerki points towards another potential solution, camel meat,
Speaker 1: which is a one point six billion dollar global enterprise.
Speaker 1: An industry report projects it will swell to two point
Speaker 1: two billion by twenty thirty, with major markets in the
Speaker 1: Middle East and Africa. Camel meat is already having a moment.
Speaker 1: An episode of the new Australian TV show Eat the
Speaker 1: Invaders urged viewers to try it. Businesses already taking advantage
Speaker 1: of the demand include artisanal enterprises and large firms such
Speaker 1: as Samx, a meat exporter in Adelaide and New South Wales.
Speaker 1: F Fetala Foods, a wholesale and retail meat products supplier
Speaker 1: for the domestic market that offers camel burger paddies. Like
Speaker 1: camel dairy. Camel meat is a niche business in Australia.
Speaker 1: Its camel meat industry produces a few hundred tons a year,
Speaker 1: a far cry from the nearly three million tons of
Speaker 1: beef it produces, but Eddie Hopkins, CEO of Camel Export Australia,
Speaker 1: says there's a growing demand abroad for the camels country's
Speaker 1: camel meat, particularly in the United States. He's fielded requests
Speaker 1: from more than twenty five tons a week about two
Speaker 1: hundred camelsworth, from grocers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, home to a
Speaker 1: large Somali community for whom the animal is a staple
Speaker 1: source of meat and milk. Hopkins thinks those requests are
Speaker 1: just scraping the surface and believes the actual weekly demand
Speaker 1: globally to be closer to twelve hundred camels, making him
Speaker 1: optimistic about the industry's long term prospects. Carmody, the rancher
Speaker 1: and YouTuber also hopes to sell some of the one
Speaker 1: hundred thirty tons of camel meat that his culls could
Speaker 1: yield annually. In one recent video, he slices off the
Speaker 1: fatty hump of a dromedary to access the meat underneath it,
Speaker 1: explaining he sometimes also makes cuts from the legs and
Speaker 1: shoulders for sausages, but it's a lot of work. Wonders
Speaker 1: whether enough customers will be willing to pay the necessary premium.
Speaker 1: After all, it's painstaking and expensive to cull the animals
Speaker 1: in the desert and transport them for processing. It's just
Speaker 1: horrendously cost prohibitive, Comedy says, and it's cheaper just to
Speaker 1: shoot them all. A number of experts agree that a
Speaker 1: commercial camel meat industry would never reach the scale needed
Speaker 1: to solve the problem. Biologist Tim Lowe of the Invasive
Speaker 1: Species Council argues that focusing on industries that harvest camels
Speaker 1: will only create resistance to necessary culling, which he sees
Speaker 1: as the sole practical solution. Carmody, for his part, says
Speaker 1: he can't even cull camel's efficiently with semi automatic weapons
Speaker 1: thanks to a statewide ban on the firearms that's been
Speaker 1: the subject of several jack out of the jack out
Speaker 1: the Baack videos. I'm letting everyone know exactly what's going
Speaker 1: on and how little we are supported, he says, being
Speaker 1: told that we're a threat to society. If we have
Speaker 1: access to tools to do the job, who are actually
Speaker 1: doing something we have to do. Recently, Carmody was flying
Speaker 1: up from Australia's southern coast toward home when less than
Speaker 1: an hour into the flight he spotted a small herd
Speaker 1: of camels heading toward a farming zone. It's not just
Speaker 1: an out the back problem, he says. It's going to
Speaker 1: start becoming a problem down on the coast, but for
Speaker 1: now it's outback cattle stations like Carmodes and Severans that
Speaker 1: remain at the heart of the crisis. To keep feral
Speaker 1: camels in check, Severin holds about fifty at a time
Speaker 1: that she's rounded up until they are mature enough to
Speaker 1: be sold for slaughter. We don't like to shoot to waste,
Speaker 1: she says, but her patience is wearing thin and she
Speaker 1: fears another clash is on the horizon. It's not if
Speaker 1: they'll come back, she says. They will come back. The
Speaker 1: real question is what the inhabitants of the outback are
Speaker 1: prepared to do about it. Next article, Who gets to
Speaker 1: dig for dinosaurs? The French countryside is rich in fossilized eggs, footprints,
Speaker 1: and bones. A battle is raging over who is allowed
Speaker 1: to hunt for them? By Scott Johnson. One scorching day
Speaker 1: last September, Annie Meechen crouched over a slab of red
Speaker 1: clay on a remote patch of farmland near Marseilles, on
Speaker 1: France's Mediterranean coast. Maiton was scraping away at the clay
Speaker 1: when she unearthed what looked like a tiny bone fragment.
Speaker 1: Sensing the familiar jolts of adrenaline that surged any time
Speaker 1: she came across a fossil, she called out to her husband, Patrick,
Speaker 1: who was digging near by. Carefully, the two amateur palaeontologists,
Speaker 1: both retired and in their sixties, cleared the surface area,
Speaker 1: dug a small trench around the bone, and fashioned a
Speaker 1: plaster mold for the scientific record. By the time night fell,
Speaker 1: the Machiens had two more molds and a growing sense
Speaker 1: of excitement that they might be on to something big.
Speaker 1: It was a consecration of the work we do, says Patrick. Indeed,
Speaker 1: leading experts would soon touch the potential significance of their find,
Speaker 1: but the discovery came at a tricky time for paleontology
Speaker 1: in France, where there are efforts to keep the couple
Speaker 1: and all other amateurs out of the digging game. Once simmering,
Speaker 1: the debate over who gets to hunt for dinosaur fossils
Speaker 1: has become a roiling fight over credentials. On one side,
Speaker 1: French officials and scientists fed up with looting and an
Speaker 1: international black market where fetch fossils can fetch top dollar.
Speaker 1: On the other, hobbyists working with professionals to protect and
Speaker 1: catalog the country's geologic patrimony, filling museums with specimens that
Speaker 1: only hordes of enthusiasts could possibly collect. Each side accuses
Speaker 1: the other of being anti science. Both sides have evidence
Speaker 1: to back themselves up, and it's a conflict that is
Speaker 1: becoming only more urgent as the country's palaeontological wealth is
Speaker 1: increasingly understood. France was once filled with dinosaurs. Today it
Speaker 1: has one of the most extensive fossil records in Europe,
Speaker 1: ranging from the Late Triassic period to the Late Crestaceous,
Speaker 1: roughly two hundred million to seventy five million years ago.
Speaker 1: Fossils were first discovered in the country in the eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: but interest in paleontology was turbocharged in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: when researchers found a large cache of dinosaur eggs in
Speaker 1: the stony southern foothills of Montagne Saint Victoire. A raft
Speaker 1: of scientific and newspaper articles followed, and within months people
Speaker 1: swarmed the area around the city of Exon Provence, soon
Speaker 1: nicknamed Eggs on Provence, in search of their own scaly
Speaker 1: orb roughly the size and shape of a football. A
Speaker 1: clandestine market emerged. A single specimen might sell for a
Speaker 1: few thousand francs the equivalent of several hundred euros today.
Speaker 1: In response, authorities cracked down and in nineteen ninety four
Speaker 1: turned San Vitoire into a nature reserve, but dinosaur eggs
Speaker 1: kept cropping up. Between two thousand and two thousand four,
Speaker 1: researchers in x uncovered five hundred or so at a
Speaker 1: plot that would become a Monoprix retail store, and more
Speaker 1: than four hundred eggs were found underneath the Grand Teatre
Speaker 1: de Provence. Professional paleontologists, many busy with research, were unable
Speaker 1: to constantly look for new fossils. Amateurs increasingly filled the void.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen eighties, the Mechans dug up a massive
Speaker 1: jawbone of an abolissurid, a dinosaur that until then had
Speaker 1: only been found in South America. In twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: an amateur digger discovered what turned out to be a
Speaker 1: nearly complete titanosaur in a wooded area by the town
Speaker 1: of Cruisi in southern France. Many of those hobbyists, including
Speaker 1: the Meschenes, follow paleontological methods when they dig, and then
Speaker 1: share their discoveries with the scientific community. Earlier this year,
Speaker 1: two amateur paleontologists in southwestern France uncovered several hundred noteworthy
Speaker 1: fossils from the Ordovician period, some four hundred seventy million
Speaker 1: years ago. Their finds quickly became the subject of an
Speaker 1: academic study among scientists at the University of Lausand in Switzerland.
Speaker 1: But there's big money to be made in the fossil trade,
Speaker 1: and some diggers are less scrupulous. Tierri Tortosa, curator and
Speaker 1: paleontologists at the sand Vetoire National Nature Reserve, has helped
Speaker 1: a few hobbyists authenticate their finds, only to discover later
Speaker 1: that the items were sold on the black market. A
Speaker 1: specialist in vertebrates of the Upper Cretaceous period, he says
Speaker 1: he is aware of private collections that are worth hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of dollars, but there are surely some worth
Speaker 1: much more. In November twenty twenty four, an Apatosaurus skeleton
Speaker 1: found in Wyoming was sold to an anonymous bidder for
Speaker 1: six million dollars at an auction in Paris. In twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, at t Rex known as Trinity was sold
Speaker 1: in Zurich for five point four million. Museums can't afford
Speaker 1: these price tags. Even if they could. Purchasing the fines
Speaker 1: would open a Pandora's box, Tortosa says, if we start
Speaker 1: buying fossils, every one will say, well, we won't give
Speaker 1: it away because some one will buy it. More often,
Speaker 1: fossils disappear from the public record with much less fanfare
Speaker 1: than a public auction. One particularly valuable site in Roquefort
Speaker 1: la Bedoul On, France's southern coast, has been repeatedly pillaged
Speaker 1: by looters. It's a ruin now, laments Tortosa. Ninety percent
Speaker 1: of private collections, he says, are sold, lost to fire
Speaker 1: or simply abandoned. In one report, the French National Council
Speaker 1: for the Protection of Nature found France's geological patrimony had
Speaker 1: been heavily impacted by the collection of fossils in Normandy,
Speaker 1: the situation is especially tense. For centuries, locals have been
Speaker 1: collecting one hundred sixty million year old Jurassic period fossils,
Speaker 1: ammonites and other treasurers from the beaches below the Sheer
Speaker 1: Cliffs of Calvados, where some of the first dinosaur remains
Speaker 1: in France were found. For the time being, they still can,
Speaker 1: but the French government has plans to transform the area
Speaker 1: into a twenty three mile nature reserve, a measure designed
Speaker 1: in part to place restrictions on who is allowed to
Speaker 1: dig at the site. If the proposed regulations are enacted,
Speaker 1: anyone caught collecting fossils without permission could incur a seven
Speaker 1: hundred fifty euro of fine. Carine Bautelier, director of the
Speaker 1: local National Historic Natural History Museum Paleo Space, has described
Speaker 1: the government's efforts as the assassination of paleontology in Normandy.
Speaker 1: In protest, her team placed red flags on every dinosaur
Speaker 1: specimen that had been collected by an amateur, virtually the
Speaker 1: entire collection. Some twenty seven thousand fossils were flagged. Laurent Puglisi,
Speaker 1: a doctor from Paris, and an Ardent amateur collector himself,
Speaker 1: argues that the Calvados Cliffs represent a unique challenge. It's
Speaker 1: a seafront area, so if the fossils aren't collected right away,
Speaker 1: they'll be turned into sand in a matter of hours.
Speaker 1: He fumes collecting them is preserving them. Puglisi has been
Speaker 1: spearheading an effort to persuade local and national authorities to relent,
Speaker 1: to little effect so far. Eric Beaufetot, the a paleontologist
Speaker 1: at France's National Center for Scientific Research, echoes Puglisi's concerns.
Speaker 1: If we prevent amateurs from collecting fossils, well, there won't
Speaker 1: be any new fossils already. He says, parts of provols
Speaker 1: would become a research wasteland because of overlay strict regulations. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the meschens have been fortunate. Their discovery in Kravls near
Speaker 1: Marseilles last septem ever, took place on a tract of
Speaker 1: private land whose owner had given them permission to continue
Speaker 1: their research. After their initial find, the couple returned to
Speaker 1: the site four times and eventually uncovered several more fossils
Speaker 1: belonging to the same dinosaur. The collection of rust colored
Speaker 1: bones could answer a mystery that has been bubbling in
Speaker 1: French paleontological circles for more than thirty years. In the
Speaker 1: late nineteen eighties, the Meischans had discovered a similar set
Speaker 1: of bones in another region of Provence. Beaufetau studied the
Speaker 1: fossils and concluded that they belonged to a chicken sized
Speaker 1: raptor with a hooked talon that looped at the tail
Speaker 1: end of the Cretaceous period, just a few million years
Speaker 1: before dinosaurs went extinct roughly sixty six million years ago.
Speaker 1: Beaufetaut co authored a paper about the discovery and declared
Speaker 1: a new raptor species, naming it Vera Raptor mechanorum in
Speaker 1: honor of the meschens. Soon, a team of scientists from
Speaker 1: Paris disputed the new designation, claiming the bones likely belonged
Speaker 1: to a different raptor species, and Vera Raptor machanorum has
Speaker 1: been shrouded in ambiguity ever since. The Mechans new find
Speaker 1: could provide the missing pieces to help resolve the mystery,
Speaker 1: says Tortosa, who has examined the discovery. Yet, despite his
Speaker 1: collaboration with amateurs, Tortosa favors increased regulation and better enforcement
Speaker 1: of existing rules over who is authorized to dig. Regulation
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean prohibition, he says. But France also shouldn't
Speaker 1: be a wild West where anything goes, he adds. One
Speaker 1: day recently, the Mechans opened the door to a small
Speaker 1: room in an undisclosed location that houses their collection, the
Speaker 1: fruits of four decades of digging, passing shells that hold
Speaker 1: crocodile and alligator craniums, a giant turtle carapace, dozens of
Speaker 1: dinosaur teeth, an ankle, sawrus pelvis, and numerous fragments of Titanosaurus.
Speaker 1: Patrick and Annie paused next to a table covered by
Speaker 1: a half dozen fossils. No entire skeleton of very Raptor
Speaker 1: machanorum has ever been found, but the specimens laid out
Speaker 1: on the table that included a tibia, a piece of cranium,
Speaker 1: teeth and armed fragment, and portions of a vertebra represented
Speaker 1: perhaps the most complete collection to date. Were not religious,
Speaker 1: said Patrick as he looked around the room. But this
Speaker 1: is like our church. Next. Paddling America's grandest water trail
Speaker 1: by Freddy Wilkinson. A Season on the Northern Forest Canoe
Speaker 1: Trail stretching from the Adirondacks to northern Maine reveals fresh
Speaker 1: possibilities for an ancient route. The rain came down in sheets,
Speaker 1: roiling the surface of Fourth Lake and Oblong Crescent, in
Speaker 1: the heart of New York's Adirondack Mountains and the largest
Speaker 1: of eight lakes in the Futon Fulton Chain. I laid
Speaker 1: my paddle on my knees and looked around. Our small
Speaker 1: flotilla of canoes and kayaks, containing a dozen or so paddlers,
Speaker 1: was spread out over a half mile. Though the downpour
Speaker 1: obscured many of my companions, we were hustling toward the
Speaker 1: closest takeout a mile away on Fifth Lake. Only a
Speaker 1: few hours earlier, I had shoved off from a tiny
Speaker 1: hamlet of Old Forge in upstate New York, pushing east
Speaker 1: with a group of Native American paddlers along a portion
Speaker 1: of an ancient route that runs for seven hundred forty
Speaker 1: miles to Maine. The Northern Forest Canoe Trail n f
Speaker 1: c T is made up of a network of more
Speaker 1: than eighty lakes, ponds, and rivers and streams that snake
Speaker 1: from Old Forge across the heart of the Northeast through
Speaker 1: Vermont Quebec and New Hampshire, before finally ending with more
Speaker 1: than three hundred miles of travel deep in the woods
Speaker 1: of Maine. Unlike a lot of canoe trips, this is
Speaker 1: not a strictly down stream affair, but an overland journey too.
Speaker 1: Many of these waterways are not connected, and so extend
Speaker 1: of portaging of one's canoe, camping gear and food is mandatory.
Speaker 1: Lucky for us, when we hauled the boats out at
Speaker 1: Fifth Lake, our first carry was short, just a half mile,
Speaker 1: and a gas station along the way offered a dry
Speaker 1: spot to regroup. We left our canoes in a corner
Speaker 1: of the parking lot. Most of the team huddled inside
Speaker 1: around hot drinks while a few smoke cigarettes under an
Speaker 1: awning out front. Spirits were not high, but there was
Speaker 1: no easy way to bail. In two thousand, a group
Speaker 1: of paddlers from New England established this long stretch of
Speaker 1: waterways as the NFCT and began to formally map it.
Speaker 1: An eponymous nonprofit has spent the twenty five years since
Speaker 1: helping people of all stripes discover one of North America's
Speaker 1: greatest canoeing adventures. Of course, the designation doesn't mean the
Speaker 1: waterways are just now being utilized for the first time.
Speaker 1: The communities within the Howdi Sonauni Federation and Algonquin people,
Speaker 1: among others, have applied these waters for millennia. Beginning the
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds, the same network of rivers and lakes proved
Speaker 1: vital to European settlers for transportation and expansion of the
Speaker 1: fur trapping and timber industries, and in the decades after
Speaker 1: the Civil War, the very beginnings of the American outdoor
Speaker 1: recreation ethos began to take root in the area. All
Speaker 1: for one reason. In this part of the world, it's
Speaker 1: easier to travel by water than by land. I've lived
Speaker 1: in New England my whole life, but I'm a mountain
Speaker 1: guide and had virtually no canoeing experience. Still, when a
Speaker 1: friend first told me about the NFCT, it felt like
Speaker 1: a chance to hike the Appalachian Trail in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: to experiencing to experience something wild before it was overrun
Speaker 1: by weekend warriors and influencers. Fewer than three hundred people
Speaker 1: have paddled the trail in one go, and while I
Speaker 1: never planned to join their ranks, over the course of
Speaker 1: four months, I traversed hundreds of the trails miles on
Speaker 1: trips led by members of several indigenous nations. At the
Speaker 1: gas station, the hot coffee, cigarettes and energy drinks kicked
Speaker 1: in and our spirits began to rebound. The downpour led
Speaker 1: up just enough for us to talk each other into
Speaker 1: heading for the first available campsite, a lean to three
Speaker 1: miles away on sixth late, at the place called Gough Point.
Speaker 1: It's easier to keep going when you don't have a choice,
Speaker 1: someone said with a shrug. By the time we arrived,
Speaker 1: the rain had nearly stopped. We started a fire and
Speaker 1: sat in a circle, roasting hot dogs and drying out
Speaker 1: our drenched gear. The blaze crackled, sending beams of firelight
Speaker 1: glittering across the now still surface of the darkened lake.
Speaker 1: On the opposite shore, we could see headlights weaving along
Speaker 1: Route twenty eight. Growing up, Jeremiah Point learned about how
Speaker 1: his grandparents survived the residential schools institutions deployed by the
Speaker 1: US and Canadian governments that took Indigenous children away from
Speaker 1: their communities to eradicate their cultures, often by violent and
Speaker 1: abusive me He also knew that his parents had survived
Speaker 1: the Indian day Schools, another assimilative of effort by generations,
Speaker 1: the first to not be under an active policy to
Speaker 1: assimilate and colonize. He told me, people think that it
Speaker 1: happened a long time ago, and it didn't. Point did
Speaker 1: not know the region's rivers the way his Aquissani Mohawk
Speaker 1: ancestors did. That started to change in twenty thirteen when
Speaker 1: he paddled on the Hudson River in New York State
Speaker 1: as part of the Two Row Wampum Paddle, an event
Speaker 1: that commemorated the four hundred year anniversary of the original
Speaker 1: treaty between the Howdsaunee people and the Dutch. Despite it
Speaker 1: being his first time on a canoe journey, Point felt
Speaker 1: a strange sense of deja vous. Every time he encountered
Speaker 1: somebody knew, whether from the Cayuga, Senator, Seneca, or Oneida nations,
Speaker 1: he had a sense as though they'd met before. The
Speaker 1: campsites they stopped at along the Hudson's banks felt like home.
Speaker 1: It's in our dna. An elder told him, our ancestors
Speaker 1: did this trip. They were here for thousands of years.
Speaker 1: That's why the monarch butterfly can go from Canada to
Speaker 1: Mexico over multiple generations. They're not taught that it's in
Speaker 1: their blood. On our trip, Point shared an eighteen foot
Speaker 1: canoe with Iowan A Howie sergeant and Aucassani Mohawk artists
Speaker 1: on their first canoe journey. Each morning, the pair were
Speaker 1: the first out of their tents, pripping breakfast and starting
Speaker 1: the long process of breaking down camp. Iowan A Howie
Speaker 1: shared points sense of unity on the water. It's a
Speaker 1: place of connection and prayer, they told me. Most of
Speaker 1: our crew, like Neil Benedict and Oneida Welder, were hoping
Speaker 1: to make the full two week trip to Vermont. Others
Speaker 1: like Lenny Printup and his then twelve year old son Thunder,
Speaker 1: citizens of the Onandaga nation, were merely tagging along for
Speaker 1: the long weekend, and some heard about the trip just
Speaker 1: thirty minutes before our departure. One fellow was so excited
Speaker 1: to tag along he nearly forgot to bring his paddle.
Speaker 1: It is wonderful how well watered this country is. Henry
Speaker 1: David Throughout wrote In the Main Woods, which was published
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty four and contains chronicles of three canoe
Speaker 1: journeys through the northern forest on some of the same
Speaker 1: passageways that now make up the NFCT. Generally, you may
Speaker 1: go in any direction in a canoe by making frequent
Speaker 1: but not very long pottages, an understatement, if ever, there
Speaker 1: was one. As the Saranac River ran down out of
Speaker 1: the Eastern Adirondacks in New York, just some twenty miles
Speaker 1: west of Lake Champlain, whitewater gushing through a gorge forced
Speaker 1: us to pull off the river and start yet another portage.
Speaker 1: Although most carries on the NFCT are a mile or
Speaker 1: less and portage wheels take the bit out of many
Speaker 1: of them, the carries are often the most challenging part
Speaker 1: of any canoe journey. Trails can get tight and hilly,
Speaker 1: and navigating roots, rocks, and foliage while lugging your gear
Speaker 1: takes as much mental fortitude as it does physical endurance.
Speaker 1: For nearly the entire day, we trudged in the hot
Speaker 1: sun down Casey Road, and had hardly rained since the
Speaker 1: first days of our journey, and the river was unusually low.
Speaker 1: We were forced to follow the road for eight miles
Speaker 1: rather than the more typical five, most of the way
Speaker 1: to Claybourg, a small village in the already small town
Speaker 1: of Saranac. For the first few miles, the road was
Speaker 1: nothing more than a narrow gravel track tunneling through a
Speaker 1: dense emerald patchwork of June leaves. The river faintly rushed
Speaker 1: somewhere in the distance. We were beat and what little
Speaker 1: conversation we could muster tapered off as we labored along,
Speaker 1: descending into the first stifling heat wave of summer. Four
Speaker 1: miles into the march, the road changed to cracked pavement,
Speaker 1: and a call broke our trance. Would you like a lemonade?
Speaker 1: To our right? On a sturdy wrap around porch sat
Speaker 1: Holly and Lee Plummadore, cheerful middle aged couple. The walls
Speaker 1: were adorned with a collection of vintage signs Lee Tires, Nassau,
Speaker 1: our happy place. It was the first house we had
Speaker 1: seen all morning. We would indeed like some lemonade, we said,
Speaker 1: grateful for the excuse to set down our canoes and
Speaker 1: get out of the sun. The Plumbadors both had roots
Speaker 1: in Clayburg. Lee was born and raised there, while Holly's
Speaker 1: grandparents called the village home. She found her way back
Speaker 1: for good once she married Lee, and the couples settled
Speaker 1: down near the Saranac. Recently, they noticed an increase in
Speaker 1: voters journeying down their road in the last two or
Speaker 1: three years, as when it's really picked up, Lee said,
Speaker 1: noting that the passers by varied from the occasional adventurer
Speaker 1: to an almost daily parade of people. At the height
Speaker 1: of summer. The couple started offering refreshments. It just seemed
Speaker 1: like the neighborly thing to do. Some people stopped, some don't,
Speaker 1: Lee said, nodding toward the road simmering in the noon heat.
Speaker 1: This can be daunting. Later that afternoon, while we were
Speaker 1: still plotting down the road and n f C. T.
Speaker 1: Stewart and volunteer named Craig van Bargin pulled up alongside
Speaker 1: us with a tractor and a wagon long enough to
Speaker 1: accommodate all our canoes. He shepherded us down river and
Speaker 1: deposited us at a campsite he maintains a short distance
Speaker 1: from the Saranac. A few days later, when we trudged
Speaker 1: into the village of swant and Vermont, I said good
Speaker 1: bye to Point Ayanahua'i and the rest of my companions.
Speaker 1: I kept paddling against the current up the Missiskoi River.
Speaker 1: The lower water allowed me and Clayton Francis, a lone
Speaker 1: paddler the group had befriended, to make our way up
Speaker 1: several easy rapids, wading across pools and dragging our canoes
Speaker 1: behind us with short sections of rope. This concludes readings
Speaker 1: from National Geographic Magazine for to day. Your reader has
Speaker 1: been Marsha. Thank you for listening, Keep on listening and
Speaker 1: have a great day.