Bartlett Island

On Saturday afternoons we’ve been going to the pool in Bar Harbor for practice. The tough part, often enough, is loading and unloading boats in the wind and cold and worrying about icy roads; we’re not usually tempted to go for a paddle outside. This time though, with temps in the thirties and not much wind, we decided to do both: ocean in the morning, pool in the afternoon. We launched at Bartlett Landing, on the northwest side of Mount Desert Island, and set-off around Bartlett Island at high tide.

 
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I’d brought along the little point-of-view video camera, and we experimented with different set-ups as we made our way toward the south end of Bartlett Island. Ice coated much of the steep, shore-side granite, and at high tide we could cruise alongside, our progress a bit slowed by the desire for video.

I don’t bring the little video camera on every trip. The great thing about such a camera is that you can turn it on and it does the work while you continue paddling. Of course, after you’ve downloaded copious amounts of footage-- which takes time as well as storage space on the computer, you reign-in the shotgun approach and try to get footage that counts.

 

 
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One of the reasons I paddle is that it puts me in the moment. Any kind of multi-tasking is a challenge to appreciating the moment: even thinking too much can be a form of multi-tasking, like wondering about how I might write about this, if I should blog about it. It takes you away, spreads your attention thin.  

Does shooting video make it more challenging to be present and attentive to the moment? You are essentially looking for little pieces of experience to save for later, an artifact to bring home, as if that is the object of your quest, rather than the quest being the reward in itself. But using the camera could actually make you focus more completely on the moment. Certainly, taking photos and video does slow me down sometimes when I might be apt to just go cruising-on. I slow down to consider how something looks and end up looking far more closely, thinking about it, appreciating it.

 
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I’m not sure that doing something without cameras makes it a more pure endeavor, and I probably won’t find out any time soon, since I’m fairly addicted to image-making. The trend of posting on Facebook adds a whole other level to the question that I think I’d better stay away from for the moment, since we’ve got an island to get around here.

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The real highlight of the trip was the ice: the tall icicles in Dogfish Cove, the long expanses of thin skim ice we plowed through along much of the western side. In the distance, seals climbed aboard an ice floe. Paddling through the ice was hard-going and a bit surreal: the constant crunching sound against our hulls, the paddles penetrating just enough to move forward, leaving alternating holes in our wake. I worried a little about breaking a paddle, and a little less about damaging hulls, but we made it through okay, finally taking a quick break on The Hub before hurrying, with the tide, back down Bartlett Narrows to the launch.

Lunch on Gooseberry

 

Dick and Kale met me at the ramp in Stonington. Temps hovered around freezing with a breezy north wind, but the sun on my face felt warm. The breeze gave us a push as we paddled toward the sloping profile of Steves Island.

 

I hadn’t paddled here in awhile. Lately I’ve preferred to car-top elsewhere, getting better acquainted with areas I don’t know as well, a satisfying process as I stare at the chart and see the pieces coming together. The satisfaction deepens when you return and see those places at a different tide, or in different weather, and your experience with a place starts to take on layers, informed by what happened each time you were there. 

A few weeks ago, paddling around Bartlett Island off MDI, I remembered how a group I had guided there started singing. As I paddled, the song came back to me- not the popular rock band’s version, but the students paddling their kayaks version. The song drifted through my head as I slowed to stare at tall icicles dripping down the cliffs. Then, below those icicles there was movement, and a coyote took a good look at me before loping off into the woods. And so another layer was added to my experience of the place.

 

 

But in the Stonington archipelago, my adopted backyard, there are enough layers of experience that they all blend together. I've paddled certain routes enough that it sometimes feels like a routine evening stroll, my mind wandering among my thoughts as much as the landscape.  Other times, it’s all still new. Having someone else along adds a whole new dimension. We paddled to some favorite spots: the tiny island paradise of Steves, McGlathery with its boulders perched on sloping slabs of granite, and on to Gooseberry, where we took a break. Out of the wind, with the sun on us, we felt plenty warm.

Meandering into the wind back toward Stonington, we hopscotched in the lee of islands: back to McGlathery, over to Spruce and on toward Hells Half Acre. Wherever we stopped, the beaches looked inviting with little to visually suggest that it was January. In colder months as the water cools, the algae thins-out, and the water turns clear... inviting even, if you weren't moving just to stay warm.

Despite the name of this blog, I sometimes wonder how long I can keep writing about paddling around Stonington and keep it interesting, at least for myself. One way is to get out of Stonington and then return. I like Thoreau's often-quoted statement from Walden: "I have traveled a good deal in Concord...". A case could be made that experience is experience, that it is just as rich to travel in small circles and get to know your backyard as it is to make an extended journey. I love reading accounts of extended journeys, yet I often read with a skeptical eye when the author claims more than he should about a place he glimpsed for a tiny fraction of its (and his) history.

There are too many variables: the tide, the weather and season, and perhaps most importantly- what's going on in the author's head. I think I've been skimming over the surface in these dispatches, and maybe that's all I will ever do. But when we land on some of these islands, or when I let the waves toss me along their shores... it's hard to describe the feeling. I walked among the sun-warmed boulders on Gooseberry and felt something bittersweet, that I loved it so much I didn't want to leave. I could only express this to my friends by saying something like "I really like this place." For now, I'll just leave it at that.

Bartlett Island

Rebecca and I met Nate and Peter in Pretty Marsh Harbor Monday morning, and found our way to the Bartlett Narrows launch, where we set off in a counter-clockwise circumnavigation of Bartlett Island. Three and a half miles long by one mile wide, Bartlett is one of the largest privately-owned islands on the Maine coast, and is home to a herd of award-winning cattle.



We didn’t see any cattle, only the more predictable seals & eagles, and a fleeting glimpse or two of a porpoise. With the wind from the northwest, we found some pleasant waves as we rounded The Hub and North Point, and enjoyed some contour paddling along the rocky west shore.




After mostly solo paddling over the winter, it has been a nice change to get out with a few other paddlers lately. It’s also a good excuse to check-out a different area. Peter had driven up from Belfast, while we drove an hour and a half each way.



Every time we extend our paddling boundaries, we see our coast a bit differently. From Stonington, Western Mountain appears as a distant profile that we simply refer to as “Mt. Desert”. As we paddled through Bartlett Narrows, I discovered a new context for my landmarks, and found myself seeking out others, like Blue Hill or the tower on Swans Island. It’s like putting together pieces of a puzzle, a process we continued after the paddle when we hiked up Beech Mountain and looked out over a maze of yet-to-be-paddled-by-us islands.