Paddle Power

Only a light rain and a pair of scullers on the dock at the rowing boathouse witnessed the arrival of first year student Cedar Mead Farwell ’17. Paddling up the Connecticut River, he slipped ashore at 8:30 a.m. in a wood-and-canvas canoe reversing the legendary downstream departure of John Ledyard, class of 1776—and unloaded his clothing, bedding, some artwork and a laptop computer to haul up to his dorm room in Bissell Hall. “It was my mom’s idea,” Cedar says later, referring to Edie Farwell ’83, who rowed for Dartmouth. “I didn’t want to be that kid who was too cool to arrive on campus the normal way, but I ended up agreeing that driving 22 minutes from our home in Vermont felt like a lame way to go off to college.” Edie paddled with him on the 12-mile trip, which began above the Hartland Rapids, where Cedar’s father, Jay Mead ’82, had learned to roll a kayak back in his College days. Jay, Cedar’s younger brother, Silas, and the family black Lab, Leo, joined the expedition at the overnight campsite on Gilman Island, a mile downstream from campus. Cedar, who’s planning to major in environmental engineering, says he’ll never forget the middle section of the trip, when a dam release at Wilder caused a surge in the flow from 700 to 7,500 cubic feet per second. “For a couple of hours it was really intense,” he says. “It felt like a test, like making it up the Congo in Heart of Darkness. Getting through it actually made me more confident about what I’ll be tackling in school. I’ve been a little nervous about whether or not I belong here. It’s good knowing I got here under my own power.” >

The freshman and his family went against the current to get to school.