It’s one thing to know what a watershed is. It’s another entirely to understand it in your body.

On May 5th, 2024, in honor of National Drinking Water Week, outdoor photographer Andy Gagne and I set off with paddlers Alex Kerney and Charlotte Nutt to kayak 100 miles from source to sea down one of Maine’s most critical watersheds. Recreation is scarce on these rivers due to dams, downed trees, and protected Atlantic salmon habitat, but Andy and I have spent years photographing and writing about the land and waters we love, and this was a chance to get intimate with our home. To learn the journey of a water droplet by going on it.

Our expedition took place on the unceded ancestral lands of the Wabanaki people, who have been caring for this place for centuries. Beginning in the mountain headwaters of Songo Pond, we paddled the Crooked River to Sebago Lake and then continued down the Presumpscot River to Casco Bay, 100 miles from our start.  

Myself, Alex Kerney, and Charlotte Nutt.

Before this adventure, I never truly considered where my water comes from. I turned on the faucet each day, filled my glass with clean, clear water, and didn’t think twice about it.

A whopping 200,000+ people — 1 in 6 Mainers — get their clean drinking water from the Sebago Lake watershed. This is thanks to the forests around the Crooked River, which act as a natural filtration system, making it one of the top 50 cleanest water drinking supplies in the U.S. But development in Maine is booming, and losing just 8% of this forest could have costly consequences for clean water. It’s a rare environmental story where humans haven’t destroyed the natural system yet — but the threat is real.

Before, during, and after our journey, we spent a lot of time listening to the people and organizations who are invested in protecting this watershed. We met with land trusts and conservation nonprofits; visited an Atlantic salmon spawning site with a wildlife biologist; climbed aboard a boat for a water monitoring trip with Portland Water District scientists; and toured a water treatment plant. We met Dick Anderson, one of the first fisheries biologists to research the Crooked River in the 1960s; discussed Maine breweries’ reliance on the watershed over a beer with Allagash’s sustainability coordinator; and heard from a First Nations poet and environmental activist about the cultural and spiritual importance of protected waterways.

The story that emerged shows just how connected we all are — people, river, ocean, land — and how all of us are needed to protect the water that gives us life

As Portland Water District Environmental Services Manager Paul Hunt puts it: “There’s one water, and we protect it together and we drink it together. We’ll either all have green forests and blue water running off of it, or we won’t. It’s up to all of us.”

*** 

Setting off. 

Part I: The Crooked River

It was a cold, gray day on Songo Pond in the Maine mountains, the headwaters of the Sebago Lake watershed. Dry bags were sealed, food was stashed. We squeezed ourselves into dry suits, buckled on PFDs, and slid our kayaks into the water.

Our first day on the Crooked River found us chest-high in cold water, pushing our boats through a tangle of bushes, and playing a careful game of limbo with the trees that have blown down in recent storms. We slipped silently through high rocky gorges, over glassy black water framed by hemlocks. It started to rain, as if the water knew what we’re doing, as if it was saying, ready, set, go.

The Crooked River is one of the top 50 cleanest water drinking supplies in the U.S. 

Why does a healthy forest mean clean water?

We watched it in real time: instead of water droplets falling on soil and breaking apart before they end up in the river, they’re caught by the trees and slide gently down to the forest floor, intact. There, they gradually infiltrate into the soil, where they’re filtered and purified before they seep into the river. Think of a watershed like a piece of paper: if you were to crumple and unfold it again, you’d see the ridges, the streams, the valleys, the places water would run off or collect. Dump a little water out on the crumples and you’d see the way it runs downward from source to sea, how the creases flow into each other, how everything is connected.

This is why conservation organizations from Bethel to Portland realized it was important to join forces. Enter Sebago Clean Waters: a collaborative of conservation organizations that work with the Portland Water District to accelerate the pace of forest conservation in the Sebago Lake watershed. Together with individuals, communities, and businesses, the goal is to protect 25 percent (35,000 more acres) in the next 15 years.

“All development isn't bad. We're not anti-development. But how do we prioritize and protect these wild places so that they can stay that way and keep sustaining humans and animals?” says Maggie Lynn from Loon Echo Land Trust, one of the collaborating organizations. “What [conservation] can become — and what it’s hopefully becoming in Maine — is really the power to ensure that places, people, communities, and wildlife are all well and whole.” 

A beautiful, but challenging, journey. 

The Crooked River rapids were shallow, bony, and technical. I’m the kind of person who, given a good cause, will cheerfully leap into just about anything, but there’s a moment on every journey when you wonder what you’ve gotten yourself into; if you’re in over your head.

I know how to read a river. I’ve been a raft guide and a sea kayaker for years. I’ve paddled a whitewater canoe. The Crooked is a class II-III river, which was within my range of skill. Plus, I was with three friends who had been kayaking for over a decade, and they were watching out for me and each other, running safety. But the river was threaded with rocks, and our borrowed boats were loaded and awkward. I came out of one rapid bleeding from the knuckles. I came out of another swimming. There was no way around it: I was new at this. And the river was there to keep me humble.

But god, there was so much beauty.  

Folks from the land trusts joined us by canoe for part of the way.

Time passed in stone dams, darting fish, cathedral groves of hemlocks and spruces, whitewater riffles, and winding stretches of smooth water. At Twin Bridges, a protected tract of forestland 32 miles downstream from where we started, friends from the land trusts climbed into canoes and we all went floating down. They looked around wide-eyed at all the things they work behind computers to protect, remembering why. The day was warm, the air wild with hatching mayflies, wings catching the sun. That night, we camped under a sky full of stars. 

Storm-blown trees were prevalent obstacles along the way.

The wood was the biggest problem. Unusually bad storms had blown down hundreds of trees, and we spent a large part of every day dragging our loaded boats over, under, and around them.  

The clear, open water of Sebago Lake was a welcome relief.

This made Sebago Lake when we reached it feel like a big inhale: gray above, gray below, water and sky melting together. Nothing but open space. 

Part II: The Presumpscot River to Casco Bay

When we left Sebago Lake, the thrust of our journey shifted from clean drinking water to a story of interconnectedness. These two rivers could not have had a different history. We were paddling toward some of the most densely-populated areas of Maine, on a river that has been so industrialized that at one point you couldn’t go near it. As if to drive home the point, our entrance to the Presumpscot was rough: a long, muddy portage around a massive dam in driving rain.

The word “Presumpscot” in Wabanaki language means “River of Many Falls.” This area, like so much of what is now called Maine, has a violent history of colonization and warfare that has led to over 200 years of indigenous displacement and erasure. No matter where in Maine we are, we live, love, and recreate on stolen land.  

Part II: Industrialized waters.

As we paddled toward the ocean, we reflected on the 250-year legacy of river protectors on the Presumpscot, from Wabanaki Chief Polin’s 1736 march to Boston to advocate for fish passage to advocacy for the Clean Water Act of 1972 and beyond. Water quality, fish passage, and recreation access have largely been restored, but we’ve heard stories of days when you couldn’t touch the river, how the toxins dumped in these waters would peel the paint off houses.

“At the root of any act of preserving something is love, and love is gained through connection,” says Michael Shaunessy from Friends of the Presumpscot River. “If somebody wants to abuse a river, they don’t want people to like it. If they can keep people from connecting to it, they can keep people from falling in love with it. That’s what builds advocates.” 

Environmental activist Mihku Paul.

“When you grow up in an environment and you have a relationship with it over time, it just sort of becomes part of you,” says Wolastoqey poet, artist, and environmental activist Mihku Paul. “How can I convince wenooch ["non-indigenous"] people and others that protecting these spaces is not simply a good idea; that a river is not simply a view; that it has a deeply ingrained function in a total ecosystem that keeps everything alive? They talk about ‘my riverfront property, my values,’ but what value is it if you have a home next to a dead ecosystem?” 

*** 

The final stretch.

One hundred miles from where we started, at Mackworth Island in Casco Bay, a cheer went up from a waiting crowd as our kayaks hit the beach. We climbed out onto the sand with shaky legs and a new understanding of what a watershed is.

“I would ask people to think about the waters not as a fluid, a thing that sort of moves. Not as just wetness. Not as salt or fresh or bog,” says Mihku Paul. “Think of the waters as something alive that supports something larger, and something larger, until we have this incredible whole which we call our home.”

What if we remembered this — that the river was alive? Would we be able to see beyond what she is to us; all the ways we use her?

If you run your finger down our route from Bethel to Casco Bay on a map, you’ll read six different names for waterways, but don’t let that fool you into thinking they’re all separate. It’s just one river. And from the mountains to the ocean, when we care for these waters, what we’re really doing is caring for ourselves and our communities.

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Jenny O’Connell is a writer, outdoor guide, environmental storyteller, and professor of creative writing from Portland, Maine. She writes for the Appalachian Mountain Club, and her award-winning nonfiction has appeared in magazines across the U.S. Finding Petronella, her debut adventure memoir-in-progress, traces Jenny’s 2014 solo trek across Finland following the footsteps of a legendary woman beyond the Arctic Circle. More of Jenny’s writing is available at jenny-oconnell.com. 

To learn more about the Crooked River Source to Sea journey, visit www.andygagnephotography.com/crooked-river-project/.