Bathtub Cove

September 13, 2006

Bathtub Cove

Several days ago the moon was full. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there. I could see it sparkling on the edges of fog specks that jostled each other for space, glistened my glasses, amplified the owl calling from somewhere across the water and hid both the moon and the end of the dock. The dock runs from the deck behind our cottage (“cottage” is what they call a cabin on the coast of Maine) about forty feet out into the cove.

The name of the cove is Basin Cove, but I have renamed it Bathtub Cove. Bathtub Cove is about a mile and a half long, a half mile wide, and is what is called a tidal cove. That means that it fills with water at high tide and partially empties at low tide. Our Cottage is located at the head of the cove, exactly where your head would be if lying in the tub for a soak. At the other end is the drain. The drain is called Basin Cove Falls and is listed as one of the “unique natural areas” in the DeLorme Maine Atlas and Gazetteer. All water rushing in or out of the cove must squeeze through a narrow passage over granite rocks. The result is reversing rapids, southeast when the tide is going out and northwest when it is coming in. People come with their kayaks and canoes to play in the rapids.

The back of our cottage is all glass. When we wake we are looking down the length of the cove toward the falls. If the tide is high, we see water over the top of the sea grass. If it is low tide, we see mud for at least a half mile and then water. I wasn’t sure I was going to like the mud part of the cycle. I guess I was thinking of high tide and low tide like the bathroom light. You flick the switch and there is light; you flick it again and it is dark. That is not the way it is. The tide is always moving. It is like breathing, in and out, in and out, and the only time it holds it breath is when the tide changes, slack tide, and then only for a moment.

Nature is never static; it changes, always moving on to something new and exciting. We are back to rhythm, like at Hinchenbrook Island. I feel that life is rhythm, and since life is nature, the rhythm must be the rhythm of nature. We spend most of our lives fighting that rhythm and wonder why that is uncomfortable.

I like the mud because the wadding birds and shore birds come to feed; great blue heron, snowy egrets or little egrets or both (I need my friend, Georgette), lesser and greater yellowlegs, plovers, and sandpipers. The gulls come, but they also come at high tide. Our gulls are working gulls, not garbage dump gulls. They fish for a living. The cormorants come at high tide and dive under water next to the grass. Ducks float by. A pair of kingfishers swishes over the surface of the water. One day an osprey circled, hovered, and dove into the water. They all sing to us, and when the wind blows, the leaves on the paper birch and cottonwoods next to the house sing with the birds.

On the night of the full moon, I walked to the end of the dock. I knew it was supposed to be a really high tide, and I wanted to see how far the water came up the pilings. Somewhere between here and Calais, the moon sat on the Atlantic and pushed salty water into the Gulf of Maine. The gulf of Maine couldn’t hold it all and the water poured past Drunkers Ledge, Halfway Reef, Eagle Island and Horse Island into Cosco Bay. The moon was heavy and the water flowed by Potts point out of Cosco Bay and over Basin Cove Falls, up the cove into the salt marsh in front of our cottage and up the rocks next to the deck. The water was almost up to the board to which the planks were nailed. Only the very top of the sea grass was above the surface of the water. The grass gurgled and something slapped the water like big flat rocks dropped from a cliff. I called Annie. We listened to the gurgling and the slapping and tried to see where the fog ended and the water started.