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.