You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
They’re Calais, Eastport, Lubec, and Machias. Or the other way around, depending on how you’re driving or sailing.
Like pearls on a string, one that hugs the coastline of vast Washington County.
The image of four anchors arrayed along a map makes sense, each one with its own distinctive attraction.
Their combined population comes to barely eight thousand.
The terrain around here is much more real than Acadia, for sure, if you’re the least bit interested in the Real Maine.
Nothing like a decaying hurricane somewhere out at sea to roil the water. This one was rough enough to cancel ferry service to neighboring Monhegan Island for days.
It was dark and very cold that night, with snow piled high along the freeway.
Now that I’m getting familiar with deer, I realize that the critter I nicked with the right fender was much larger than any of the deer I see these days. They seem rather small, actually, apart from their appetites.
Still, that encounter could have been much worse. I have to consider myself quite lucky. A few feet one way or the other, the beast could have come crashing through my windshield.
Just one more fact of living where I do.
In New York’s Adirondack Mountains, seen across Lake Champlain from Vermont. A serious storm’s coming on.
Some Sunday mornings, my drive to and from the Quaker meetinghouse a half-hour from my home is a meditation in its own right.
Even in fog or snow, it can be refreshing.
Much of the road is through forest, plus stretches along Passamaquoddy and Cobscook bays and their tributaries. The route also passes through a tribal reservation and a national wildlife preserve, which does sound a bit exotic though I take it as routine.
Eagle sightings are common, and I have had to stop for deer or turkeys in the middle of U.S. 1. Once I even spotted a moose far ahead on the pavement.
A radio program of classical choral music on a CBC station that comes in quite clearly is often also an element, depending on my mood.
Do you remember the freedom you felt when you first learned to drive? Some mornings, especially when there’s no other traffic, that elation returns.
While I’m tempted to proclaim “What could be more glorious than this!” I will also note many of the scattered homes I pass resemble junkyards – poverty in Washington County is a constant – so there’s a reminder of that reality, too. I suspect there are more dead cars and trucks here than people.
As an added touch, there are no traffic lights, either.
If you see them, they’ll give you a sense of proportion for the experience of hiking the coastal trail at Quoddy Head State Park in Lubec.
Maybe this will help you locate them. There were five in the party, including a child, when we caught up with them.
The tide’s out.
That’s how I heard “Appy,” for Appalachian Gap in Vermont’s Green Mountains.
These are from last summer. I hate to think what the route’s like now, after the recent record-breaking flooding.
Jnana's Red Barn 