Acadia and Down East

Acadia and Down East

October 24, 2006

Last week we drove Highway 1 up the coast of Maine heading for Acadia National Park and “Down East.” The trees may have been more beautiful than the trees on our tree peeping tour to the White Mountains. Even the red oaks and pin oaks were deep red and copper. The Maples that were first to turn had dropped leaves starting from the top down (where the wind blows harder, I guess). Some Maples, fiery red, were still scattered on the hillsides, and the aspen, more profuse the further north we went, painted great swaths of yellow across the hills.

We camped three nights at Black Woods Campground in Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island. They had already closed the other campgrounds, and only a little piece of Black Woods was open. The ranger taking our money at the entrance told us that even Black Woods would close November 1. Not only do the camp grounds close many businesses and restaurants were “closed for the season.”

Despite the closures, early October would be the perfect time to visit Acadia. Annie sat at the picnic table early in the morning wearing three layers of jackets and gloves waiting for the coffee to perk. The sun came through the spruce and warmed her face. There was no wind. The air was crisp. It felt like fall should feel. The crowds; up to nine thousand visitors check in each day at the visitor’s center in the summer; were gone.

Acadia is Lakes (ponds in Maine), rocky coastline, mountains, the view of painted forests the ocean and strings of islands from Cadillac Mountain, a year’s worth of trails to wander, and the “carriage roads.” Between 1913 and 1940 John D. Rockefeller, Jr. designed and built carriage roads all over the park so that it could be enjoyed with out “disturbance from the automobile.” This may be my new favorite old man’s place to bike. There are forty miles of packed crushed stone roads meandering over hills, through valleys and around lakes. I road a wonderful loop around Jordan Pond, by the end of Eagle Lake and past Bubble Lake.

Incidentally, we discovered another good thing about getting older; I bought a life time pass to US National Parks for $10.00. From now on we get into parks free and also get one half off camping fees.

Down East is what they call the most easterly part of Maine. It is also called the Sunrise Coast because the sun lights it’s rocks before anywhere else in the lower forty-eight. The most easterly point in the lower forty-eight is West Quoddy Head outside Lubec, the most easterly village. We walked a trail along the coast and Elmo climbed the rocks down to the water where the only part of the continental US to the east is in the Aleutians.

Wandering Maine

Wandering Maine

October 21, 2006

When I woke up this morning I had decided that Journey Travel should be called “Wandering.” That is the noun. The verb is, “wander.” When we were in Alaska, Joey went to Sitka and brought me back a t-shirt that says, “The Journey is the Destination.” My motto for this blog was, “The destination is just another part of the journey.”

This morning I think that both the Sitka t-shirt and my motto may miss the idea of Journey Travel. They both emphasize the destination. Maybe there is no destination, only the journey, and the journey is but wandering. I have another t-shirt that says, “Not all those who wander are lost.” So maybe even if we wander, we are not lost. That would be good news.

We wandered northwest to look at leaves. We started on back roads, the ones that have names, not numbers. Orange leaves on red maples shimmered along Swamp Road, flashed on the round hills above Quaker Meeting Road, and huddled in the gullies Poland Range Road crossed on narrow bridges. Depot Road led us to Gray (the village) which was not gray; but vermilion, crimson, yellow ochre, and lemon.

We turned north at Gray on a road with a number and watched the reflection of red leaves on sugar maples in Crystal Lake, Upper Range Pond, Tripp Pond, and Pennesseewasse Lake. At Bethel our old friend Highway 2 meandered west so that we could watch yellow leaves on aspen reflect in the ripples of the Androscoggin River. The leaves led us into New Hampshire where we stopped for lunch at Saladinos in Gorham and then drove to the top of Mt. Washington (worst weather in the US) to shiver in the cold wind and look at leaves as far as the eye could see. Annie and Elmo took me up a trail near the edge of White Mountains National Forest that was littered with dappled orange, yellow and red leaves.

Just before the light faded Parnelli Annie rocketed the Highlander back to Maine over Hurricane Mountain Road, and we wandered the back roads to Bathtub Cove knowing that were passing colored leaves in the dark.

The Artist Eye

The Artist Eye

October 20, 2006

It is raining and I can just make out the pale gray line of trees dipping close to the pale gray water at the far end of the cove. The green has abandoned the oaks leaving copper polished like the big tubs for sale along the road in Mexico, rust like the splotches on an unused crosscut hanging on the side of a forgotten Maine barn, and red like looking at the sun through a glass of cabernet. The maples that turned first, the burning red ones, have dropped most of their leaves. Stragglers remain, a torn red leaf hanging alone at the end of a branch. Some maples the ones that look like the leaves were painted with sun and dipped in blood are full color. I think the color is more spectacular now than when the sugar maples emerged dripping red from surrounding shades of green.

I asked Len, the lady who owns the Eastland Motel (emphasis on “Mo”) in Lubec, if she knew of any spots around Lubec that would be good for painting. She told me a long story about her friend, Sally, who paints, the essence of which is that Sally sees things differently. Sally notices things that Len would never see, and sees possibilities for a painting where Len sees nothing but an old barn and a sick looking cow in a muddy lot. Sally sees with the artist eye. She sees texture, contrast, shadows, structure, eye candy. She has the artist eye.

I started painting with watercolors after we came to Maine. Maine begs one to paint. Ask Andrew Wythe. I don’t have the artist eye yet, but it is growing slowly in my brain. I already notice special scenes, I never saw before. We drive down untourist roads looking for places that need to be painted. I get out of the car where an old wooden shrimp boat with pealing green and white paint and broken windows is propped in the mud next to a partially collapsed dock from which a gray shack hangs precariously. I run around snapping pictures. I look for angles, shadows, (where is the sun?) where the paint flecks glow, color, the blue plastic barrel in the foreground leaning against the stack lobster traps, orange and green lobster buoys piled and fading next to a heap of aged loading pallets, the red boat floating in the distance and the just painted white house set in the orange and red maples across the bay. Then I wonder about the boat’s history, the owners, the families it supported and where they are now, the storms and close calls, the decision to park it in the mud and whether anyone remembers that it is here; or cares.

Whether one paints or not, developing the artist eye makes wandering special.

One place Len suggested that we go was the East Quoddy Head light house at the far end of the road on Campobello Island. Campobello Island is in New Brunswick, just across the bridge from Lubec, and is where the Roosevelts (Franklin Delano) had a summer house. I don’t know how to paint wind or sideways rain or the sound of waves crashing against the rocks or the white gull floating magically in the wind just above the mountain ash’s red berries. But I noticed them.

A picture of what I did paint is attached.

Walking Monhegan

October 11, 2006

Walking Monhegan

I was surprised as much by the fact that no one had carved their initials in it as I was by the size. It was growing in woods so thick that nothing green grew in the soil, not even ferns or moss. It was like walking through a cave, spruce needles above, layer on layer until light was only a suggestion, a hint, and idea you might have had. The cave walls were skinny spruce trunks so close together a mouse could have peeked through at Elmo, unafraid of the consequences.

Oh, “it” was a mushroom, the size of a large dinner plate. I am including a picture. I had Annie put her hand next to the mushroom so that you would believe me.

Walking the trails on Monhegan is like going to a twelve screen drive in movie each screen showing a great mystery movie. One must choose a plot or two, and hope for the opportunity to return. Monhegan is an island about twelve miles off the Maine coast. It is only 1.7 miles long and .7 miles wide, but has over seventeen miles of trail. The village, where eighty to ninety people live year round and where the artists and tourists exponentially expand the population in summer, occupies a small part of the island. The rest of the island is owned or controlled by Monhegan Associates, Inc, a private land trust dedicated to preserving Mohegan’s natural state. So far it has done well. Very strict rules govern use of the land trust property. For the most part they are followed. I saw no trash or mindless destruction of nature on Monhegan.

We walked all the way around the island and hiked many of the cross trails. Each trail was a new movie; crashing surf, towering cliffs, ship wrecks, views of rocky gull covered islands, pebble beaches with basketball sized pebbles, musky trails through black woods, open spruce forest crisscrossed with tannin colored streams, forest floors carpeted with spongy moss and decorated with ferns yellowing, tiny fairy houses built under logs and between tree roots, views of the red roofed light house tender’s house, climbs up steep mini-mountains, bluffs covered in blooming asters, white/yellow grass topped with airy fluorescents, ocean side rock gardens decorated with creeping juniper and knee high ancient spruce distorted by Atlantic wind, granite rocks and ledges cracked by time and covered in green moss and orange lichen, shady groves of skinny paper birch and small smooth barked trees with yellowing leaves that look like a mulberry (probably a type of smooth barked maple), crimson leaves floating on pools of water reflecting pieces of sky breaking through forest canopy, red berries topping mountain ash and rained over some bush unknown to me, raspberry brambles fluttered with yellow rumped warblers, and the gatherings of common eider with its bright white back riding over the swells rushing toward the rocks below the island cliffs.

On top of a cliff on the east side of the island, I pointed to the horizon. “Look Annie,” I said. “What’s that? Is that Iceland? No. Not big enough. It must be Ireland.” I jumped up and down. “Annie, it’s a whale.”

Annie stared at the ocean for a few minutes. “Try super tanker,” she said.

The Raine Principle

October 5, 2006

The Raine Principle

The Raine Principle is part of Journey Travel. In the late 80’s we took a bunch of kids to England. We met a bobby (policeman) in London named David Raine. Raine had lived in London all his life. He knew the story behind every old pub in London and all the back streets between them. He loved London and loved to talk about his London. Wherever one wanders, there is a David Raine and the wandering experience will be much richer if the wanderer can find him.

Just before I left for Denton, Hal Morgan knocked on the back door. He wanted to know how to get in touch with the lady who owns our house. Hal is eighty-three years old and has lived in a little house with his wife near the end of Basin Point Road for the last fifty-seven years. Mrs. Morgan doesn’t get around too well any more; botched hip replacement surgery. Hal doesn’t have any front teeth, or at least he wasn’t wearing them when he knocked on the door. He was wearing patched overalls and a faded blue shirt. Hal is a lobsterman. He used to have a forty-seven foot boat and ran over a hundred and fifty traps. Now he has a twenty foot boat and runs twenty traps when the weather is good.

The tide was out and mud was shimmering in the cove about half way down to Hal’s house. I asked if anyone ever went clamming in Basin Cove.

“Oh yeah, this is the best clamming area in Harpswell. Even the commercial clammers use this cove. They will be right out there in front of your house.”

He was right. By the time we got back from Denton, the clammers were coming every day. They come when the tide is going out and stay until the water gets too deep for them to bend over and dig with their short handled clamming rake. To be a good clammer you must be able to cut your toe nails while standing and be able to hold that position while digging mud for at least six hours. They pull rafts that look like toy coal barges. They drag it across the soft mud and it floats behind them on water. They wear hip boots, say the F word more frequently than the grunts did in Viet Nam, and leave with bushels of clams in net bags thrown in the back of pickup trucks.

Before I met Bill (another David Raine), who lives in Cundy’s Harbor and who is the brother of Cathy who lives in Denton (small world), I thought that Harpswell was a peninsula. I was wrong. Harpswell is a town which consists of a neck and a mess of islands. We live on the neck, Harpswell Neck, which incidentally looks a lot like a skinny peninsula. Bathtub Cove is close to the ocean end of Harpswell Neck. The biggest islands are Great Island, Bailey Island and Orr’s Island. Cundy’s Harbor is on Great Island. The neck and all the big islands are hooked together by bridges. There are hundreds of other smaller islands in Harpswell. They have names and most have cottages, but you have to have a boat to get there.

Bill has lived in Harpswell since he retired from the Marine Corps twelve years ago. He told me that Harpswell has more shoreline than any city or town in the US. I believe him. We have driven down about a tenth of the side roads on both the Neck and the roaded islands. Each side road runs down a sub-peninsula off of which drive ways run down sub-sub-peninsulas. Every road ends at a bay or a cove or a salt marsh.

Bill also suggested that I not go clamming in front of the cabin without getting a permit from the city office on Mountain Road Which connects Harpswell Neck and Great Island. “I’m not even sure you can get a permit,” he said. “You have to live in the city where you are going to clam. Temporary residence may not count.” Bill laughed. “The commercial boys might not like you out there getting their clams.”

He told me about the Harpswell-Brunswick clammers border war. One time some clammers from Brunswick were clamming in a Harpswell bay. The Harpswell boys tried to run them off and the sheriff had to break up the fight. There was apparently some dispute about the location of the bay in relation to the border between Brunswick and Harpswell. The Harpswell city council called a special meeting to discuss the issue and both the Harpswell clammers and the Brunswick Clammers showed up. Before the end of the meeting there was a full scale riot. The sheriff and his deputies couldn’t break it up so they called in reinforcements from all over the area.

“The city game warden checks those bays all the time,” bill said. “He might get you before the clammers.”

One of the clammers in our cove is a woman. I was thinking about seeing if Annie wanted to do some clamming.

Salt Marsh

Our Cabin from across the bay

Salt Marsh

September 15, 2006

Annie is in Texas. Her father (Papa) is ill and tired, tired of living in a body that has worn out.

In the last four months, Annie and I have spent more time alone together (I know; I am leaving out Elmo) than any other time in our forty plus years of marriage. I have always loved her, but I like her now more than I ever have. I miss her already. Elmo misses her also, but then he misses her when she goes into the bathroom and closes the door. He and I are doing our best to take care of each other.

I will write about Papa, but I am not yet ready to do so.

In front of me, just out the window, across the deck and at the foot of the wall of stacked rocks is a salt marsh. I don’t know much about a salt marsh. We don’t have a lot of salt marshes around Denton or in the Colorado mountains where I have done most of my wandering. I heard a salt marsh expert on NPR say that salt marshes were critical to the entire ocean ecosystem and the air that we breathe; something to do with microorganisms. He also said that many of our salt marshes were dying and that they really didn’t yet know why.

Our salt marsh looks healthy. It may be best that I know so little. If I knew a lot, I would put the names on the paper and move on. But since I have no names I must watch it, feel it, smell it, hear it and get to know it so that I can write you a picture. Whether it is a bird, a flower, a tree or a person; we so often stop with the name. There is more to everything than the name.

The Bathtub Cove salt marsh spends part of most days submerged in salt water.

September 29, 2006

Salt Marsh Continued

I had to go to Denton; Papa was dying.

We came back to Bathtub Cove yesterday; after the struggle ended and Papa died, after the funeral home came and picked up that part of Papa that we thought was him and know now that it was not, after Hospice left; after grand kids came in from Colorado, Washington, San Marcos, Maine, and Alaska; after the stories and barbecue and potato salad and old black and white pictures from WWII; after the tears and hugs and laughter; after the decisions, the cemetery, the flowers; after the funeral--after saying good-by.

The salt marsh is till out side the window, a little more yellow. The sea grass that grows in the middle part of the marsh and that, before we left, looked like combed ducktails from 1957 now lies flat on the mud in yellow brown and green waves, east to west. I watch the tide come in and watch it go out again. I suppose that I should add, “from the dock of the bay.” It is raining today and the wind blows down the cove and slings rain drops against the windows.

A great blue heron lands in the thick pointy grass that still stands stiff and tall in front of the fallen wavy grass. Sea water covers the grass roots and the heron’s feet. The heron waits, frozen like a statute of herself, for a fish to swim into the grass. Her long neck, small head and pointy beak flash like an arrow released from the bow and the fish that had just eaten a tiny crab dies in the beak of the heron. Cormorants like a convoy of miniature submarines with periscopes raised float by, dive, and pop to the surface. The school of tiny fish they chase sprinkle the surface like a handful of gravel thrown from the dock. Some of the fish feed the Cormorants.

Yellow and brown leaves fallen from the cottonwoods and paper birch stick to planks on the porch in front of the windows and litter the small yard off the end of the house. The goldenrod blooms are dirty brown and sad, and a storm that came to the cove while we were gone blew down an old cottonwood in the forest behind the house.

I wait and watch the water and the birds. The tide comes in; bathtub Cove is full. The wind drives waves toward our rocks and dries the planks on the deck. A paper birch leaf blows against the glass, and a monarch flutters by ignoring the wind. The clouds break. Sun light sparkles the wave tops. Down the street wild asters bloom like lavender mist drifting next to the road. The leaves on some of the sugar maples look like hanging campfire coals swished by an unexpected wind. A flock Canada geese honking fly over Bathtub cove in a lopsided V, and Annie comes in the back door humming; carrying a pot of chrysanthemums swathed in bronze blooms.