Just about anyone who's spent time on northern Maine's Allagash River has heard of Norm.
As the owner of Pelletier's Campground in St. Francis, near Fort Kent, Norm L'Italien has outfitted and shuttled paddlers for 40 years, and has a reputation for his deep knowledge of the river and wealth of stories. But, now in his 70s, he says the demands of the job are taking a toll, and that this season will be his last.
On a muggy summer evening in St. Francis, the air thick with blackflies, L'Italien was standing on top of a Ford transport van, securing three canoes to a roof rack for a family heading out early the next morning.
L'Italien coordinates hundreds of trips like this one each summer, hosting campers, renting out canoes, and dispatching a team of drivers to shuttle clients and their vehicles down rugged logging roads to put-ins and take-outs along the 92-mile Allagash Wilderness Waterway.
He runs the operation from picnic table in a garage at the campground, his reservation system a spiral-bound notebook.
"Yeah, I'm from the old school," he said. "I'm not like you young guys. I don't have everything on the computer, and I find it's a lot easier for me this way."
It's a lot to keep track of, and constantly changing. There had already been a mishap today involving a Boy Scout troop on the rapids below Churchill Dam, in which one of his boats took a beating.
"Oh they flipped over, and they sorta, it looks like they messed up one of my canoes pretty bad, it's like a U shape and it's full of water," L'Italien said.
Like the path of the Allagash itself, L'Italien took a winding route to this line of work.
He grew up in the town of Eagle Lake, enlisted in the Army ten days out of high school, and was stationed in Germany for a few years.
When he came back to The County, he got a degree, started working part time at his father-in-law's campground, and landed a job at the Great Northern Paper Co., until he was laid-off in 1986 during a tumultuous time in the industry.
"They came out with a nasty word called 'restructuring' and kicked us out the door," he recalled.
By then, his father-in-law was ready to retire from his campground and outfitting business, and L'Italien took over full time.
"I never thought that I'd do it this long," L'Italien said. "It sorta got, like I said, in my blood some. All in all I've really enjoyed it."
Over the years, he's encountered his share of memorable characters, some of them quite famous.
"I'll tell you this one: I met RFK Jr. down here," he said.
This was back in 1978, when L'Italien was helping his father-in-law run the business. RFK Jr. came with a few other Kennedys, and aside from a security detail, L'Italien said they were like any other campers.
"They wanted some firewood, I said, 'Hey, there's some across the road. Here's the old pickup. Help yourself,' you know," he recalled.
Then there was the time he realized a fellow veteran he was driving to the river was actually one of his Army training sergeants from 40 years ago.
"And he signed my basic training yearbook," L'Italien said.
Another time, he found himself in the middle of a legal dispute after two vacationing couples had a disagreement while on the river. One pair left the trip early and drove back to Connecticut, stranding the other couple in the north Maine woods without a car.
"I went to court, you know, wanted me to write out a statement what had happened. One one was suing the other there," L'Italien said.
L'Italien gives most campers a map orientation before they depart, walking new paddlers through the campsites, fishing spots and potential hazards of the Allagash.
Given his in-depth knowledge of the river, L'Italien said clients often ask him how many times he's paddled the Allagash himself.
"And I'll go real slow and I'll go like this — zero," he said, making an O shape with his hand. "I've been too busy catering to people all these years."
But that may soon change. At 73, he said the physical strain and 16 hour days are wearing him down, and that after this season ends in October, he'll retire.
L'Italien said he's looking forward to spending more time with the grandkids, traveling to see his Army buddies and, finally, paddling a portion of the iconic river he's helped so many others experience.
"Probably gonna take one of them — that little blue canoe there, or the purple one, 13 footer, and start like at Umsaskis," he said, referring to a lake on the Allagash paddling route. "Four days, three nights. I think I could do it in three days, two nights."
"Sometime, before it's too late," he added, with a chuckle.
But on this day, as the sun dropped low over the St. John River Valley and campers settled in for the night, L'Italien was back at the van, on a stepladder, to finish tying down some canoes.
