Canoeing the Deer River Flow

I had been wanting to paddle the Deer River Flow for some time, so when my friend, Phil Blanchard, came with his family to the Adirondacks for vacation, I suggested we take a trip there. Unfortunately, Phil got ill on the morning of our scheduled outing, so his son, Ben, and I did the trip alone.

Ben, who is twelve, was an enthusiastic companion. As we headed down the flow, we had to fight a moderate wind. I feared this might be difficult for Ben.

“Too bad about the wind,” I remarked.

“That’s OK. It makes it more fun,” Ben replied.

“How so?”

“The more you work, the more fun it is,” he said.

“I’ve never heard that theory,” I confessed.

“Because once the trip is done, you feel more satisfaction because you know worked more and you earned it more,” he said.

And you know what? The kid is right.

We paddled nine miles in all. We put in along Cold Brook Road on the south end of the flow, canoed to the large dam at the north end, then took the flow’s riverine east fork to Horseshoe Lake. You can read all about our adventure in a future issue of the Explorer.