You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
Each summer, a few superyachts make their way from the Bay of Fundy into Eastport and tie up for a night or two at the Breakwater pier downtown. They usually draw an envious gaggle, as well as pure curiosity and gossip.
Some of them even blog about their travels, referring to each other first-name only and touting the “good friends” they made in port.
Uh-huh.
Some are flagged in the USA, while others come by way of tax havens.
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.
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.
Getting to or from Eastport means driving through the Passamaquoddy’s Pleasant Point Reservation. And yes, I dutifully observe the 35 mile an hour speed limit. I also gladly pay the voluntary “toll” that helps fund the fireworks for the tribe’s annual festival. Besides, it’s a better bargain than a movie and, anyway, we’re all invited.
Having lived previously at the edge of the Yakama reservation in Washington state, I appreciate having an Indigenous population so close at hand.
Here are some things I’ve learned.
What’s harvested by the ton in Washington County is not just blueberries, but wild blueberries – lowbush, laced with small pellets of complex, concentrated flavor, rather than the big, juicy, cultivated highbush kind.
What grows here, I’ll argue, is tastier and richer than the more coddled kind I had previously known and even grown.
Maine has a near monopoly in the production of the wild lowbush berries in the United States. Neighboring parts of Canada are also of note. Still, the output is only a fraction of what’s harvested from the domesticated highbush farmers in other states.
Just so you know.
What’s your favorite kind of berry? And your favorite way to eat (or drink) them?
In Colonial times, the royal surveyor marked the biggest ones as the King’s Pine, reserved for the masts of the Royal Navy.
It created a lot of bitter resentment among the settlers who had to work around them.
Today, pines of that stature are largely a legend in a state that has been heavily logged over. But some, we can hope, are growing back.
Roque Beach State Park, a few miles south of Machias, is one of the rare sandy beaches in an otherwise rocky shoreline.
The water is too cold for swimming, for most of us, though some sports will take a dunk.
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.
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.
Jnana's Red Barn 