Category: Postcards

An eagle nearly collided with me here

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Funded by a family trust, Cobscook Shores is preserving waterfront lands around Cobscook Bay and its subsidiaries for public use and pleasure. One of its 14 sites is Pike Lands Cove, facing Eastport’s west side across the water from the North Lubec peninsula.

A trail leads out around tidepools I hope to investigate later.

 

A saltmarsh can be explored up-close.

 

Here’s where that eagle nearly ran into me. It was being chased by an angry gull. Eastport is across the water.

 

The beach trail culminates in this cove.

 

 

Wholly mackerel

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The humble mackerel – usually less than a pound apiece – is a popular fish caught around here. Its delicate nature means it doesn’t keep long, so for human consumption, it’s typically smoked for preservation. An oily fish, it tastes somewhat like salmon. More commonly, it’s used as bait in lobster traps.

I think it’s a beautiful fish.
The Breakwater is lined with fishermen.
Two heads left on a pier, likely used as bait.

Getting there is half of the fun

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The Maine coast is 3,478 miles, not including islands. They raise the figure to 7,000 miles.

I live on an island.

Just two miles away, as the crow flies, but an hour by land is the waterfront town of Lubec. One of the best ways for tourists to appreciate the coastal nature of Downeast is by taking the passenger ferry that runs between there and downtown Eastport. I promise you it’s much less crowded than Acadia.

We go down for a walkabout the town, a New Jersey-style pizza, and a sit in the brewpub’s beer garden. One day I watched seven gray seals cavort in the current. And then we catch a ride back, which runs along the other side of the channel from the one we followed down.

Folks from Lubec do something similar, including a stroll though Eastport’s art galleries.

Either way, you get fine insights the shoreline, history, and wildlife in a way you’d never get from land. There’s the Cargo Terminal, salmon farms, Roosevelt summer home, Treat Island. Maybe seals and eagles, too.

The ferry runs every two hours on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, weather permitting.

The Quoddy Dam is a friendly little vessel, named as a joke about the federal project that was quickly jettisoned.

 

Approaching Lubec.

 

At the dock. Treat and Dudley islands are in the background, with Eastport sticking out to the right.

 

Lubec at low tide.

 

Here we are, leaving Lubec behind.

A little more heaven on earth

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

The day I shot these, I encountered only one other person in two hours … and that was just as I was leaving. Admittedly, I arrived around 7 as a foggy dawn lifted and then listened to a mournful foghorn in the neighboring Bailey’s Mistake cove much of the morning. How could I not be elated?

In 1988, the Maine Coastal Heritage Trust secured the property now known as Boot Head Preserve, saving it from a planned 35-lot subdivision and instead opening it to public enjoyment. It’s a gem that includes coastal hiking, a cove with a cobble beach, and an arctic peat bog.

Promise me you won’t tell anyone else.

Just six-tenths of a mile from the parking lot, the trail opens out on this.

 

And this.

 

And passes beside wild iris.

 

To this.

 

And this.

 

And then this.

 

It really does need a soundtrack of the ocean’s endless crests striking the rocks below.

The lighthouses around Eastport are rather modest

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 18 Comments

Unlike the two most photographed and visited lighthouses around here – East Quoddy on Campobello Island, New Brunswick, and West Quoddy in Lubec, Maine, both of which have been featured here at the Barn – the remaining lighthouses I encounter locally are small-scale. They’re beacons, all right, but to call them houses may push the definition.

You be the judge. Here they are.

Cherry Island Light, New Brunswick, is the one we see most clearly. It’s an 18-foot-tall tower with a white flash every five seconds. As a lighthouse, it was first built in 1824.
And at night it does this.
Deer Point, New Brunswick, is a 20-foot tall tower with a two-second red flash every 10 seconds. The famed Old Sow, the largest whirlpool in the Western Hemisphere and second largest in the world, is just off its shore.
Facing Deer Island, the Dog Island Light in Eastport flashes white/red every five seconds. As you can see, it’s no longer a house, much less manned.
The Pendleberry Lighthouse, or St. Andrews North Point Light, in New Brunswick is glimpsed here from Robbinston, just up the Maine shoreline from Eastport.
A “sparkplug” or “wedding cake” design, the Lubec Channel Light  can be seen framed by the bridge from Lubec to Campobello Island from points in Eastport, though never this distinctly. I shot this in South Lubec, where it stands 53 feet above Mean High Tide and emits a flashing white signal every six seconds.
Whitlock Mills Light on the St. Croix River in Calais is the northernmost light in Maine. It’s on private property, and I’m grateful to the owner who allowed me access. The second tower has both a bell and a foghorn. I find this 25-foot tower, despite its small size, particularly charming.

Lupine island

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Officially, Eastport sits on Moose Island, though I have yet to see one here.

This time of year, though, it’s covered with flowering lupine, gloriously so. You’d never imagine the kind of winter we’d had.

With the sea in the distance.

 

Against our house, with Dame’s Rocket.

 

Behind the IGA.