Tag: Maine

About the Passamaquoddy

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

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.

  1. The first time I heard of the tribe was through a traditional healer and his apprentice who were our house guests maybe a dozen years ago back in Dover. And ever since, thanks to his warning, I never disrespect a mockingbird. Could that be why I’m still here?
  2. The tribe generally proclaims itself as “people of the dawn” or even “keepers of the dawn.” I’ve already posted that the dawns around here – the first light in the USA – are unique and full of wonder. But the tribal name’s root reflects the importance of fishing in their culture – “pollock-spearer” or “those of the place where pollock are plentiful.”
  3. Traditionally, for most of their 10,000 or more years, they summered in settled villages around the coasts and tributaries on both sides of the St. Croix River, where they harvested shellfish and worked the deep waters. In winter they dispersed inland, where they hunted large game.
  4. Today their centers are Sipayak (the Pleasant Point Reservation adjoining Eastport), where 2,005 members are enrolled; Motahkomikuk (Indian Township an hour to the north), 1,364 members; and Qonasqamkuk in New Brunswick, 206. There are also uninhabited tribal tracts inland.
  5. Economically, on-reservation families have a much higher poverty-income rate compared to Maine overall. The tribe is making efforts to improve income. A blueberry enterprise, a maple-syrup operation, and vacation sites are among its new directions.
  6. About 500 people speak its Algonquian dialect. After a steep decline in numbers over recent decades, efforts to preserve and reclaim its use are under way. It is being taught in the elementary schools.
  7. They’ve long been considered first-class loggers and woodworkers, as well as excellent basketry artists.
  8. In 1993 the state banned the use of the word “Passamaquoddy” by businesses, products, and activities without the written authorization of the tribe. Those using it before that date, however, were exempted.
  9. The tribe is one of four comprising the Wabanaki Confederacy today.
  10. Joe Clabby’s two excellent histories about Eastport and the Passamaquoddy vicinity delineate seemingly endless governmental mismanagement, mistreatment, and betrayal of the tribe and others in Maine and the nation – even when its members have served with honor in the world wars. One entry, relatively minor in comparison, hits home for me. In 1950, longtime “Indian agent … Hiram Hall allowed the state to charge the Passamaquoddy Fund $8,000 per home for home construction (the homes are worth only $2,500.)” Not that it ended his career.

We’re rolling in wild blueberries

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments
The handheld rake was invented in 1910. I can’t imagine trying to pick large quantities of blueberries without it.

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.

As you can see, traditional picking can be backbreaking work. But old-timers tell you it delivers better berries than the newer mechanized harvesters do.

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.

You can drive right past a blueberry barren like this and not know it’s loaded with ripe fruit.
Here’s what a stop to look reveals.
For a few weeks each spring, clusters of commercial honeybee hives are placed by the hundreds throughout the barrens. The electrical fencing is intended to keep bears out.

Just so you know.

What’s your favorite kind of berry? And your favorite way to eat (or drink) them?

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.

When our small city turns into a four-day party

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Though Eastport was settled relatively late – that is, toward the end of the Revolutionary War – it was instilled with a Colonial flavor by prominent early residents who were resolute veterans.

A continuing spirit of Tea Party and Minutemen makes Independence Day in New England feel different than those elsewhere. It’s not just the place of the Shot Heard ‘Round the World. It’s the region where thickheaded Yankees have always doodled.

Quite simply, history is palpably alive everywhere across New England.

Boston, of course, is the epicenter, but across the six most northeasterly states, local observations uphold distinctive traditions. Think of musketeers firing a round ever so often along the town parade route, along with fifes and drums.

As an independently enterprising oceanside village, Eastport soon had a reputation as a hive of privateering – that is, legalized piracy – and not-so-legal smuggling. That independent streak gets its own attention in the city’s annual Pirate Festival a week after Labor Day.

How joyous!

Unlike much of America, the city had frontline experience of the War of 1812. Fort Sullivan atop the bluffs surrendered to the British Navy in 1814, and Eastport then remained under the royal thumb until 1818.

Two years after its reunification with the United States, Maine became liberated from Massachusetts for the first time since 1653 and began to breathe into its own unique character.

For its part, Eastport rocketed as a center of shipping, shipbuilding, fishing, and sardine canning before the big decline of the 1900s set in.

Today, the tiny city’s locals remember a vibrant past and close-knit community, one that spanned the shorelines on both the American and Canadian sides of the watery border.

Is a renaissance on the horizon? There are signs for hope.

All of these strands infuse the holiday here.

Here’s a taste of last year’s pyrotechnics fired off from the fish pier downtown.
Yes, fireworks can be visually composed, leading your eyes around the sky.

The national holiday also marks the opening of New England’s short summer season. After a cold, dark, long winter, Eastport’s small year-’round populace can actually come out into the open air for long times together. The ocean and lakes are finally warming, to the extent that they do, and that attracts vacationers to join in.

After months when only a stray New Hampshire or Massachusetts auto plate is seen around here, I’ve now seen those of every state but Alabama, Hawaii, and North Dakota (not all at the same time), some seeming rather exotic.

And the Fourth includes the city’s Old Home Week, with high school reunions and the return of many summer residents.

A lot happens over a four-day span. There’s a doll carriage and wagon parade. A torchlight parade. Car shows, bike races, water games, pet show, rubber ducky race, festive all-you-can-eat blueberry pancake breakfast, free outdoor movie, contests, live music, and a street dance, all with a small-town flavor.

A traditional visit by a large U.S. Navy vessel failed to materialize, a consequence of being on Ukraine-related alert. Three different ships had expressed interest in landing at the Breakwater before the turn in world events.

While fireworks were displayed off over the harbor on the Fourth, America’s Independence Day (the beautifully designed and executed big show fired from the town’s Fish Pier was followed by a joyously rowdy encore from a diner’s smaller private pier), the companion July 1 presentation for Canada Day, in honor of our neighbors in New Brunswick, was still a victim of Covid cutbacks. Some residents, though, could view shows happening on Deer Island across the water.

Seems ever so fitting to shoot the works twice, considering Eastport’s dual connections.

it really does feel like a party’s come to town.

How do you celebrate the Fourth?