After weaving our kayaks 10 miles around submerged trees and hidden rocks, and ducking beneath branches hanging over a serpentine, secluded section of the upper Pawcatuck River one day last week, it was time for a lunch break.

“We can pull ashore at a canoe camp in about a mile,” Tom Sanford said, studying a map.

“Or we can just drift while we eat,” I suggested. “Much more elegant.”

The rest of our group — Tom and his son, Rick; and Maggie Jones and her son, Clancy Philbrick — agreed. So we extracted sandwiches, energy bars, nuts, dried fruit and other snacks from waterproof containers, and munched while a gentle current pulled us downstream.

The setting could not have been more idyllic. Hawks wheeled above a lush, verdant forest canopy; kingfishers swooped and chattered; catbirds mewed; a black-billed cuckoo sang in “po-po-po” triplets; hummingbirds flitted; bullfrogs croaked; and painted turtles sunned on logs.

Meanwhile, dragonflies and damselflies of every hue, including blue-fronted dancers, common baskettail, azure bluets, blue dashers and ebony jewelwings, hitched rides on our kayak decks and darted among arching stems of water willows.

Additionally, lavender-hued pickerelweed burst into blossom, along with swamp milkweed, cardinal flowers and swamp honeysuckle that, as Maggie put it, “infused the air with its delicate, clove-like scent.”

As if this tableau weren’t sufficiently sublime, curtains of wild blueberries dangled from bushes along the shore, ripe for the plucking from our cockpits.

Every so often, our group paused to remind ourselves that we were not paddling down a remote, tropical rivulet but on an accessible, small river in southern New England, about a half-hour drive from New London. Most people only view the Pawcatuck River from their car windows while crossing a short bridge between Pawcatuck and Westerly, or when boating near Watch Hill.

But the 38-mile-long river, which begins as a narrow creek exiting Worden Pond in South Kingston, R.I., and ends as a wide, tidal outlet in Little Narragansett Bay, is a glorious waterway fully deserving its federal Wild and Scenic River designation as part of the Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed.

Tom and Rick organized a multi-day, staged voyage from source to mouth, and invited Maggie, director emeritus of Mystic’s Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center, and me to join the fun. The four of us paddled the first leg a few weeks ago, which I wrote about in a June 25 column, “Serendipity and serenity at the Pawcatuck River’s serpentine headwaters.” Clancy joined our group for last week’s second leg; all of us plan to finish the journey, as weather and schedules permit, in another week or so.

We began last week’s section where we left off at the end of the first leg, in the tiny Rhode Island village of Shannock, where the most picturesque remnant of once-thriving textile mills is a tumbling, horseshoe-shaped waterfall.

As many as eight dams helped provide power along the river, and after most of the mills shut down, the federal government, with support from state authorities and private environmental groups, began replacing the barriers with fish ladders to allow fish once again to swim upriver to spawn.

As The Day reported in Judy Benson’s 2015 series about the Pawcatuck River, when the final dam was removed six years ago, such anadromous fish as herring, eels and shad were able to swim freely on the Pawcatuck for the first time in more than 250 years. 

These new fish ladders, also known as weirs, may benefit fish, but they’re not exactly kayak-friendly, so our group wound up portaging around them. No problem — none of us minded short detours that helped protect natural habitat.

We also were grateful to the Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed Association and volunteers for helping keep the river clean and relatively clear of obstruction, by cutting trees felled by beavers and knocked down by storms.

During 13 miles of paddling, we managed to scrape through unscathed and upright, stopping to scoop up only a handful of discarded bottles and snagged fishing bobbers.

Our main concern had been a constricted passage beneath the Route 112 bridge in Carolina known as The Mousehole, which a guidebook warned is a treacherous opening that sweeps around a sharp bend leading to Class II rapids. When Tom scouted this section in early spring, he reported roiling whitewater with no opportunity for a portage.

As we approached the bridge, all of us tightened PFDs straps and secured helmets. Rick elected to go first and blow a whistle three times if it was safe for the rest of us to proceed, and twice if we needed to somehow scramble around the gap on land.

“What happens if he doesn’t whistle at all?” I asked.

Rick shot ahead without answering, plunged into The Mousehole, and disappeared around the bend. We held our breath.

Tick … tick … tick … tick …

Finally: Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!

Giddy with relief, we followed.

“We’re through!” Maggie exclaimed. “Thinking about this has been giving me sleepless nights!”

“Piece of cake,” I said. Lack of rain and seasonably low water had tamed The Mousehole.

The rest of the day’s journey on what Clancy took to calling “the Mighty Pawcatuck” was drama-free.

Over the next few miles, the river snaked back and forth several times beneath Amtrak trestles, where an occasional passing train served as an indication that we were never far from civilization.

After paddling past the barely visible mouth of the Wood River, we portaged around a broken dam at Burdickville and finally reached the end of the day’s journey, a state boat ramp off Route 91 in Bradford.

Directly across the street stands the former Bradford Dyeing Association mill, which produced textiles for more than a century and then operated for several years as a printing and finishing company. The company faced numerous lawsuits related to its discharge of chemicals and other industrial waste into the river — thankfully, a long-abandoned practice.

Factories today no longer need dams to supply them with power and are prohibited from piping toxic effluent into waterways.

Let’s hope the federal government doesn’t relax any of these environmental regulations, so that future generations will continue to enjoy a cleaner, free-flowing Pawcatuck.