Christmas Paddle

On our calendar for December 25th, Rebecca had scrawled- in ink- “go kayaking”. No doubt we were hoping for a repeat of last year’s calm day on the water. It may be a little weird to make an appointment, but if we didn’t, chances are that we would end up with something else on the calendar, and we would find ourselves chatting with someone, probably about kayaking, wondering why we weren’t paddling.


As Christmas wishes go, this seems a modest desire, but the weather forecast wasn’t promising. As I bopped around the kitchen to my once-yearly listen to Dave Brubeck’s Christmas album, the north winds began subtly diminishing. By the time I had a casserole ready to go in the oven, it was obvious: time to get the gear together. I put the casserole in the fridge.



We paddled away from the launch. The air temp hovered in the mid-twenties and the sun slipped behind the clouds. We would need to keep moving to stay warm. “Where to?” we asked, but our bows were already pointed toward the sloping profile of Steves Island.


Funny, how often we head for Steves without thinking about it. It’s two miles away- maybe a half-hour paddle if you’re going non-stop, like we were. Maybe because the island is state-owned, and because we’re its “island adopters” for MITA, we feel some sense of ownership (as obviously many other people do). Maybe ownership isn’t the right word- try “stewardship” instead. We’d thought we might stop and pick up garbage- I could see some of the usual fishing debris, but it was cold enough and late enough that it made more sense to keep moving. We stopped short of going around the island, not wanting to disturb the huge raft of ducks on the south side. We headed around St. Helena and back toward town.


When we arrived back at the launch at sunset, we paused. Stonington was about as quiet as we’d ever seen it. There were no boats moving about the harbor, and the town felt subdued, lights coming on in windows here and there. Usually we don’t paddle much in the harbor. It is the domain of fishing boats, probably far more dangerous than anything else we might encounter in our kayaks. But it was so calm and quiet, we had to check it out, following the piers right into our neighborhood. I hovered in the water just across the street from our building, below the lit-up Christmas tree on the deck at the Seasons of Stonington restaurant. A couple of cars chugged past. In the front window of the gallery, a light came on, triggered by a timer, spotlighting Rebecca’s most recent close-up of a lobster boat bow.


It was high tide, so we were able to maneuver among the ledges, over toward Green Head. There were lights on in a few houses, and strings of Christmas lights strewn in the bushes and trees. Framed in a bright window opening, a woman stood at a kitchen counter. Most of the windows though, remained dark. Somewhere, a dog barked. The quiet was overpowering. We drifted awhile among the lobster boats, our toes and fingers beginning to turn numb, and headed back in. A casserole awaited at home.


Oh yes, since it’s Christmas, I should expound on finding something spiritual in nature. You know- the obligatory bla bla bla about what the holiday means to me, being a transcendentalist in the tradition of Emerson and Thoreau. Hmm... let’s not. Let's just say it was awesome, as it is every day, and leave it at that.

"I Really Like This Place"

On Sunday I launched from Causeway Beach and headed south. It’s funny how sometimes I look at the chart before the trip and get all kinds of big route ideas- the distances covered, the islands circumnavigated, but after about forty-five minutes of non-stop cardio, that all goes out the window. Sunday was sunny, thirty-ish, calm. I had all afternoon.


Pickering Island lay ahead and I looked forward to cruising along its long crescent-shaped beaches, which, with the low winter sun, looked cool in the shadows cast by the spruce forests. Around me, the surface roiled gently. The tide was going out, just about mid-tide now, and it surprised me how much current squeezed through these small islands and ledges. I paused to let it turn me here and there. Maybe that’s when everything slowed down.


My bow pointed toward a ledge- a small island really- a hump of stone rising from the sea. So I paddled over to it. A crow cawed at me and flew away. Maybe at a lower tide I could find a landing here and climb up, but for now I felt content to drift past.


I came to a beach on a small island and got out for a look around. Privately-owned with a conservation easement managed by the Nature Conservancy, the island’s public access status is perhaps a bit ambiguous... but not in December. I tramped through the snow, up though grassy meadows to a bluff overlooking a broad expanse of Penobscot Bay. I kept saying to myself “I really like this place... wow, I really like this place!” True, I say that about all the little islands, but for a moment there, I fell for this one.


I followed the shoreline of Pickering Island around and headed over to Crow Island. This five-acre island is state-owned, and was once even on the Maine Island Trail (check out this article by Dave Getchell Jr. in the May 1989 issue of Backpacker Magazine).


Eagle nesting may account for its current exclusion from MITA, but again, that’s from April through August. Of course, I couldn’t help looking around and thinking about where I’d put my tent: in the meadows, beneath the stands of spruce, overlooking the pocket beaches where the smooth stones clattered with every wave- one could hardly go wrong. Again, I caught myself saying “I really like this place...”


I crossed back over to Deer Isle, aiming for Heart Island, and as a nearly full moon rose above my bow and the sun fizzled into the clouds on the horizon behind me, I followed the shore back to the causeway.

Icicles

With the ups and downs our weather brings us this time of year, I end up checking the forecast compulsively, watching for windows of opportunity. There wasn’t much wind on Friday, but it sure felt cold. I didn’t get out, but as usual, wished that I had. It helped that on Saturday the air temperature was forecast to rise into the 30s, with not much wind, and possibly even some sunshine. Once again, I headed over to the ramp in Bucks Harbor, this time, heading southeast, down Eggemoggin Reach.


The shorelines of Brooksville and Little Deer Isle are separated by Eggemoggin Reach, only a mile or so across, but each shore is distinctly different from the other. On the Brooksville side, the settlement is concentrated mostly into one area, from Norumbega, an old enclave of summer cottages overlooking Deadmans Cove, to Herricks. The rest is fairly wild. Low cliffs rise directly from the water, topped by scrubby, twisted pines.


Of course, there are layers of history here, visible if you know where to look. A sheltered cove known as “The Punchbowl” was apparently an Indian village, and its mud covers the remains of a trading ship that was destroyed and burned, killing all aboard. There’s still tension between locals and People From Away, but maybe a little less extreme.


The sun came out as I crossed the Reach. This stretch of Little Deer Isle shoreline is thinly-settled, with plenty of forest between most of the houses, and an overall gentler, less cliffy shore than the one across the Reach. I pointed toward the one section of low, overhanging cliffs, and as I neared it, I remembered that there sometimes is a reward for getting out in the colder weather. In this case: icicles.


Forward progress stopped. I drifted and marveled: totally unexpected. A gift.


Soon, I stopped long enough to eat a sandwich, which was long enough for my toes and fingers to turn numb. I paddled hard for Thrumcap Island and heated-up again.


I stopped there to check things out- the nests on the rocks, a nice view up the reach toward the bridge, a desolate grandeur so close to home- and I could imagine whiling away a warmer afternoon here. But my toes were numb. So I got moving and warmed-up as I headed the two miles up Horsehoe Cove, returning with a little push from the current.

A half-hour after sunset, I paddled into Betsy's Cove. In the dim light, the water surface below the ramp had a dull sheen. I plowed into it and came to a stop. Ice. I paused for a moment, just to savor the scene: a winter evening in a New England town, yellow light from occasional lit windows, thin crescent of a moon overhead, and somewhere, the crunch of tires over ice and snow.

I'll admit that when we get a little cold weather, I complain a little like most everyone, and lately I've been remembering how nice it was last winter in the Everglades. But would I completely give up one for the other? Can't have everything, I guess. This is where I am now. I backed out of the ice and found my way around its edges, back to shore.

Cape Rosier

With the forecast calling for some wintry weather for the week ahead, the weekend looked okay: air temps in the the 30s with light winds out of the north. It’s all relative. Knowing it would soon be colder and stormier, I decided I’d better make the most of it, so on Saturday I drove to Brooksville and launched at Betsy’s Cove town launch in Buck(s) Harbor.


If you paddled directly from Bucks Harbor to Blake Point, you’d go just over three miles, but the southeast shore of Cape Rosier is indented with coves reaching far inland, multiplying the paddle-able shoreline to over twelve miles. I launched just after high tide, so my timing was off, but I was eager to check-out Horseshoe Cove. This narrow finger of the sea stretches over two miles inland, with a zigzag about half way in.


The half-hour paddle to the mouth of Horseshoe is past surprisingly unpopulated shoreline. Condon Point is undeveloped (and for sale- hey land trust people). I knew I was paddling against the flow, but it wasn’t obvious until the cove narrowed in front of Seal Cove Boatyard. I dodged the current, following eddies where I could, rounding the corner into the zigzag, where I encountered a constriction creating a tidal rapids.


I got out and watched it for a bit and ate the first of my sandwiches. Definitely a spot to check-out at other tides. And there’s more than a mile or more still to go upstream. I headed back out just in time though, scraping along the bottom just south of the boatyard.


The mouth of the cove is marked by Dog Island, a small island connected to the mainland by a sandbar at lower tides. Next is an area called “Barneys Mistake”. I’m not sure who Barney was, but I would guess his mistake had something to do with the numerous ledges here. The cove is looked over by a few residences, closed for the winter. Actually, that can be said for pretty much all the shoreline in the area- all privately-owned with discrete cabins that have been there for generations.


I paddled as far as Bakeman Beach, then headed back via Spectacle Island and the Thrumcap, arriving back as it grew dark.


On Sunday, I picked up where I left-off, launching at Bakeman Beach, which is owned by the town. I parked just off the road, at the top of the beach and headed west, out around Head of the Cape. Here, I felt the wind in my face and paddled into small wind-driven waves that collided with the steep, rocky shore. This would obviously be a committing section of shoreline, so I took a moment for a reality check, considering the risks versus my preparedness.


Reality check out of the way, I followed the shore north. A couple of obvious bailouts stood-out, predictably in Ames Cove, Orr Cove and the coves approaching Harborside. The grey sky spat out sleet and snow, sometimes veiling the shores of Islesboro, Dice Head in Castine, and in the distant north, Sears Island and Cape Jellison. I ate my sandwich on Holbrook Island, beneath the watchful gaze of a bald eagle, and headed back the way I’d come, arriving back at the beach just before dark. I saw no other boats underway all weekend. It’s been fun to car-top the kayak to other launches, paddling unfamiliar shoreline, connecting the dots with previous trips. But now, with the kayak and the car obscured by snow, I may want to put the boat away for a few days.


We just watched a video about Andrew McAuley’s 2007 fatal attempt to kayak from Tasmania to New Zealand. A very sad, but amazing story. You can watch it for free here.

Around Little Deer Isle

Yesterday I cartopped over to the causeway between Deer Isle and Little Deer Isle, parked in the sand and launched just after low tide. I pointed south, toward the distant windmills on Vinalhaven, and paddled out past Carney Island. My plan was to go around Little Deer Isle- roughly an eight-mile circumnavigation- and return to the north side of the causeway when the tide was higher, carrying my kayak across the road to my launching point.



I thought I’d stay close to Little Deer Isle, but as I paddled past one closed-up summer house after another, I kept looking out toward the islands to the south. My bow wavered like a compass needle until finally it pointed me out to the little islands, un-named on my charts (listed as "Bar I." on my 1949 chart). After the first pair, attached by a sandbar (A-frame cabins on east end) I came to a small islet, more of a treeless ledge with some grassy vegetation on top. But just enough beach was exposed for me to land and have a look. I don’t know why I like these treeless, forlorn spots so much. Maybe because they’re small enough and so wild and exposed that they will always be overlooked by most, and remain wild. In warmer months, the island obviously belongs to the birds, as evidenced by the abandonned nests atop it. But in winter, hey, this place is mine; just one of a few perks to paddling in the cooler months. Actually, it wasn’t bad for the last day of November: not much wind, air and water temps in the mid-40s. Beneath my drysuit I wore three thin layers of merino wool and fleece. I was plenty warm.



I took another short break on Sheep Island, which is managed by Island Heritage Trust. The island has a dramatic rocky bluff on its southern side, and some clearings among the spruce, probably thanks to its former role as a sheep grazing island. Now though, most of those clearings and trails are overgrown with spiky, drysuit-snatching vegetation, so I kept my exploration to the shore rocks.


I kept close to the LDI shore the rest of the way: into narrow Swains Cove, and along the northwest shore. Here, a few rustic cabins still perch above the bluffy shoreline, but never far from a pocket beach where one would launch a kayak. These places don’t have docks that can be seen from outer space or any of the other amenities that so many summer “cabins” now have. The only thing wrong with them is that none of them belong to me. And they are a vanishing breed. As they get sold for the high value of their land, they get knocked-down and replaced by places with luxuries like insulation, indoor plumbing and places to land helicopters. There are some plusses to the real estate slump.


And of course at the northwestern tip of Little Deer Isle there’s the charming community of Victorian “cottages” in the village of Eggemoggin. It is always picturesque to paddle between these shingled fantasies and the Pumpkin Island Light. As I rounded the last point into Eggemoggin Reach, the bridge came into view. I followed the shore, still checking-out the houses, but there’s something about seeing the bridge... and the impending sunset at 3:57, that makes you step up your pace, and soon I was back at the causeway. At the higher end of the tide (which had not yet reached my car) it was a short carry across the road.