Our fourth week-long cottage stay in Maine was special, since
friends Louise and Masaharu (hereafter L&M) drove up from Washington
DC to join us. The two Louise's became
friends some 35 years ago, when each had a son transfer from a Japanese school
to Nishimachi, an international school in Tokyo. L&M are even more international than us,
with kids on three continents (Australia, N. America & Europe), compared to
a mere two for our progeny.
For our week together we chose Back River Bend in Georgetown,
Maine. It's part marina, part boatyard,
part cottage community. Owners Sam and
Ruth have been here some 40 years, and when they weren't building or repairing
boats, they and their kids built eight cottages and their own home, all
overlooking the Back River.
At Sebago Cottage, our home for the week, we had a beautiful bedroom downstairs while L&M had the upstairs. There is a screened porch where we ate every
meal -- the temperature was high 60s to low 70s every breakfast and
supper. It was a comfortable place, and
became even more so through the interactions of old friends enjoying each
other's company.
Back River Bend is, as you might have guessed, at a scenic S-bend
in the Back River. Though the Back River
looks like a river, it spends half of every day flowing north and half flowing
south, and there is not a drop of fresh water in it from one end to the
other. The "river" is actually
a 6 1/2 mile long tidal estuary. As a
tidal estuary, the Back River of course has tides! The current runs towards the ocean for 6 1/4
hours, then turns and runs the other way for another 6 1/4, then back towards,
then back away, ad infinitum. As
those who know tides understand, each day the times of low and high tide are
different, roughly 50 minutes later per day.
While the current is mostly under 1mph, it still makes sense, as they
say, to go with the flow and to head toward the ocean with an outgoing tide,
inland with an incoming one.
Sam and Ruth have both canoes and kayaks for rent, and we went
(as usual) for a canoe. L&M went for
kayaks since that's what they're more familiar and comfortable
with. For our first two trips the tide
was ebbing so we headed south 3 miles on the tide to Crow Island, where the
Back River joins the mighty Kennebec.
Sam told us we could use a certain dock that
belonged to a friend, so we tied up and had our picnic lunches. We had started 4 hours into the ebbing tide,
so the river was already fairly low and the mud flats had fully emerged. Between the hour of boating and the hour at
lunch it was now low tide, and clam diggers were hard at work on the back
portion of our small island. Meanwhile,
one of Masaharu's sembei crackers had fallen on the rock and an ant was hard at
work trying to be Hero if the Day, if only he could bring it back home. Partly on his own and partly with help from
one other ant, this tiny creature entertained us for the second half of our
lunch by moving his giant trophy about a foot laterally and several
inches vertically.
Ahead of us was the Kennebec.
To the right it's 170 miles to its source. Ahead and slightly left and it's 5 miles to
the open ocean. Each of these two days,
we got to this point just a little too late to go further since the tide was
getting ready to turn, and the wind already had. As mentioned in an earlier posting, an
onshore wind (and in mid-coast Maine that means from the south or southwest)
often arises or intensifies each afternoon as the land heats up and the air
above it rises, and cool ocean air rushes in to replace the rising warm
air. We've rarely seen a day where the
afternoon wind wasn't from the S or SW at 6 mph or more, sometimes even up to
15 mph. That and the incoming tide were not
things we wanted to paddle against, even though they would make for easy going
when we turned to come home.
And so we just admired the view to the south, then put the camera
on telephoto. In the photo above, you
can't really see that there's anything unusual about that next island downstream. With the lens partway out you can see that
there is something, but what is it?
At full telephoto, it finally is clear that we were seeing the Perkins
Island Lighthouse, a mile and a half away.
The lighthouse keeper's house is peeking out at the left, and the odd
pyramidal structure next to the lighthouse was built to give the fog horn
additional resonance.
Louise and Masaharu had arrived by car, so
for the next two days we took advantage of our greater mobility by heading to
the nearby city of Bath for more groceries, and for a pair of hikes. The first was in a park overlooking the
Kennebec. Some of the colors were
surprising, like the stained glass look of some leaves, a red mushroom, and a
patch of ghostly white Indian Pipestem.
This elusive fungus grows in various parts of New England and gets its
energy from decaying vegetable matter, since it has no chlorophyll and cannot
convert sunlight into energy.
It was a vigorous hike, and it was Masaharu's first encounter
with another ghostly inhabitant of many a New England forest, an ancient stone
wall. They are mute testimony to the
fact that on one or both sides of the wall, some settler cleared the trees and
farmed or grazed this land. It must have
been a hard life, trying to raise crops or animals on this thin, hardscrabble
land.
What brings most folks to Reid State Park, however, is the
beaches, a rarity in this part of the state.
Half Mile Beach has a tidal lagoon behind it, and lots of folks like to
float on it. When the tide is ebbing and
the water has had a chance to warm up in the salt marsh, it gets up to a
'balmy' 55 degrees, 5 degrees warmer than the ocean.
The other beach is "Mile Beach," separated from its
shorter companion by a rocky outcropping full of tide pools, pockets in the
rocks where plants and animals get watered twice a day by high tide, then sit
in stillness for up to 12 hours 'til the next high tide washes over them.
Back at Back River Bend, the tide wasn't yet quite right for a
trip "upriver" so we spent one day exploring small side channels in
the nearby salt marshes. They're quite a
bit of fun to negotiate with kayak or canoe, but they get shallower and
shallower as high tide passes, so you can't linger too too long.
For our final two days the tide and winds cooperated for us to
travel north 3 1/2 miles on the incoming tide to Hockomock Bay. The bay is 1 1/2 miles across, but with
several islands in the middle, and numerous deep coves to explore around the
edges. It's a major thoroughfare for
boaters, as you can deduce from the navigational buoys. We spotted a pair of osprey nests (with
resident ospreys, even) and various groupings of other birds. The gulls were fairly nonchalant, but the
cormorants were a bit skittish and often took off, slapping the water with
their feet as they did so.
How do you wrap up a week in Maine like this? With lobster, of course. For our last dinner we picked up fresh
lobsters at a scenic place called Five Islands, although we could only get two
of the islands to fit in the photo.
Lobsters needed for later are in those plastic boxes floating from the
dock. You tell the clerk what size (i.e.
weight) you want, and how many. Another
clerk grabs some in back and weighs them in front of you. You admire or pity them, and in any event pay
for them, and off they go to the cauldron.
Fifteen minutes later, you're ready to go. Most folks eat on the pier there, but we
wanted to enjoy our private dining room so back in the car we went to Back
River Bend, where the boys did the lobster cracking duties. It was a great end to a great week.
Next week we head off to Harpswell, then come back to Back River
Bend for a week in a different, smaller cabin.
It will be a very different experience without Louise and Masaharu. Come back for the next episode, hopefully to
be published soon!
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