The Great Wass Archipelago offers enough route choices that
it’s tough to choose where to start. We’d decided to head down the east side of
Great Wass to check-out Mud Hole while the tide was still fairly high, but
first, Charlie suggested, “Let’s go tease the salmon.”
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We launched over an hour after high tide and already the
current had picked-up enough to carry us quickly south toward the fish pens
near Spectacle Island. It was feeding time, and swarms of frenzied gulls hovered
over the pens, shrieking and competing for airspace above the attendant barges,
where rumbling diesel machinery ejected clouds of tiny pellets above the
net-covered pens. The gulls, presumably, caught enough of these pellets in
mid-air to make the fuss worth their while. We pulled up to the floats and
watched the chaos inside the netting. The water surface would now and then
appear almost solid with the backs of writhing fish, who frequently leapt
clear, revealing their fat, farm-fed, soon to be packaged and shipped bodies for
a moment that must have felt like pure instinct, and maybe even something like
joy in discovering their true nature.
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Or at least that’s how it looked to me. We proceeded to Mud
Hole. There were four of us: Charlie and Barb, Rebecca and me. Charlie is a
wildlife biologist for the state, and I think he knows the location of every
eagle’s nest. Every now and then an eagle swooped around us as if to verify
that this was indeed the guy who’d been watching their nests from aircraft. He
seems to have an effect on seals as well, who, rather then taking to the water
in fear, remained on their ledges as we passed.
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Mud Hole was not so muddy, at least when filled by the tide.
We found a lone sailboat anchored in its calm water, the dinghy pulled-up
nearby on shore where a pair of tall rubber boots leaned against a tree. 1540
of the the island’s 1700+ acres make up The Nature Conservancy’s Great Wass
Island Preserve, some of it accessible by trails that begin near Mud Hole. I
would assume the sailors had gone for a hike, since there’s not much else in
the neighborhood.
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We followed the steep granite bluffs along shore and headed
back out, following the shore out to Little Cape Point and across to Freeman
Rock, a treeless hump of rock marking the edge between Mud Hole Channel and the
open ocean. We left the calm water of Eastern Bay for calm water on the ocean,
which means a few swells coming in, breaking over the southern end and rolling
along the steep, plunging shoreline. Earlier in the summer, razorbills frequent
Freeman Rock, but there were no birds there today.
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In the narrow channel between Mistake and Knight Islands the
tide had slipped away, revealing a rockweed-covered sandbar. We left the boats
and followed the boardwalk to the Moose Peak lighthouse, where we sat and ate
lunch.
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The forecast had called for scattered showers. After lunch,
the northwest sky darkened, and as we passed the cliffs of Man Island, the wind
suddenly increased. By the time we rounded Black Head, breaking waves dotted
the sea beyond. The north wind hissed, steepening waves as it pushed against
the incoming current. We bent our heads and paddled slowly into it, getting a
slow, close-up look at Head Harbor Island’s wild, rocky east shore before
making our way back to the launch.
