Excerpted from Saving
Maine: A Personal Gazetteer
About Me
- Jim Krosschell
- Retired publishing executive ecstatic with the idea of spending most of his time on the coast of Maine
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
A Maine Gazetteer: Sebago Lake
Next door to Long
Lake , Sebago
Lake is the poster boy for southern Maine Maine Portland Maine
Friday, March 21, 2014
A Maine Gazetteer: Ripogenus Gorge
I stand on the high banks of
Ripogenus Gorge and look down at the West Branch of the Penobscot
River . This place looks primeval: the river rushes white and fast,
as if still proud of cutting through 200 feet of granite; the walking trail is
little more than a deer path, broken and damp; moss covers rock and trunk
alike; ancient vegetation creeps into and out of crevices and overhangs. Yet I
would be wrong in thinking about the purity of nature here. Since 1920 the
river has been dammed at Ripogenus
Lake
Excerpted from Saving
Maine: A Personal Gazetteer
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
A Maine Gazetteer: the intertidal zone
The incredibly rich inter-tidal zones,
described so movingly by Rachel Carson in The Edge of the Sea, are another
blessing both foreign and familiar, like a violent and disturbing Shakespeare
play seen so often it becomes comforting. The tide comes and goes. The
flatlander tries to burnish his claim to Maine by guessing whether it’s high or
low, and wastes hours watching rocks cover and uncover, and doesn’t think of
the trillions of seeds (barnacle, rockweed, lobster) floating under the surface
unless he’s read Carson.
The very words time and tide are basically the same, “tide” coming from an old English word meaning “division of time.” I believe the orderly passage of tides comforts the restless, bringing good tidings if you will, even though that annoying half-hour discrepancy – a tide peaks, then ebbs at approximately 6.5-hour intervals – especially that half-hour discrepancy jars us out of expectations and easy calculations. I wouldn’t really want to punch in four tides a day, perfectly spaced like Midwestern meals. When I want to walk a particularly rocky and steep stretch of shore nearby, I have to look at the tide clock, or the progress of the water against Little Island in our cove, to make sure the tide is low enough. The gods and the lobstermen would laugh at the sight of this formerly agile, now slightly creaky wanderer clambering up the granite ledges. Let him sneak around on the rockweed instead, like a normal lowly being.
The very words time and tide are basically the same, “tide” coming from an old English word meaning “division of time.” I believe the orderly passage of tides comforts the restless, bringing good tidings if you will, even though that annoying half-hour discrepancy – a tide peaks, then ebbs at approximately 6.5-hour intervals – especially that half-hour discrepancy jars us out of expectations and easy calculations. I wouldn’t really want to punch in four tides a day, perfectly spaced like Midwestern meals. When I want to walk a particularly rocky and steep stretch of shore nearby, I have to look at the tide clock, or the progress of the water against Little Island in our cove, to make sure the tide is low enough. The gods and the lobstermen would laugh at the sight of this formerly agile, now slightly creaky wanderer clambering up the granite ledges. Let him sneak around on the rockweed instead, like a normal lowly being.
Excerpted from Saving
Maine: A Personal Gazetteer
Thursday, March 13, 2014
A Maine Gazetteer: the fog of Owls Head
To my mind fog is as great an
inspiration as a storm. Owls Head is a peninsula sticking into the southern
part of Penobscot
Bay
In the hot summer of 2010 our usual
days of gray started to lift on the Sunday afternoon of the World Cup final. Up
till then, it had been four solid days of insularity - no, not quite: for an
hour on Friday the fog moved enough to reveal Sheep Island two miles away,
including a thin blue line in the water between the island and the mainland, as
if a hole in the clouds were illuminating the "gut," the channel that
boats take between Rockland and points south; and for a similar hour on
Saturday, it retreated from our shore to hang around the edges of the islands and
the points, and the tops of the island firs poked out of the fog as if they
were reeds in a lake, and the first floor of the house on Ginn Point was
blanketed and invisible, but not the second. For the vast majority of 96 hours,
we were bound to short views - a hundred yards at best - and the cool, moist
air. On Monday we awoke to blue skies and hot air, although fog still sat in
the gut for a few hours more, reminding us of its caprice.
And reminding us that fog is a most
useful thing. It means the city is hot, and we're not. It lovingly disrupts
noisy traffic from the airport. It prevents chores like mowing and weeding. It
clarifies the mind, especially when one has an essay or a story going strong.
Of course we want it eventually to end in a sunny day. The phrase "in a
fog" is quite descriptive of the dangers of piloting boats or negotiating
hangovers, of the boredom of watching TV, of obstruction in the pursuit of fun.
But walking in fog is other-worldly, and staring into it takes us out of
ourselves, and we'll desperately miss it when we have to go back to the city
and clearly see again all the distractions in our way.
Excerpted from Saving
Maine: A Personal Gazetteer
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
A Maine Gazetteer: Mars Hill
Between March 25 and September 18
the first sunlight of the US
morning normally hits Mars Hill in northern Maine ,
just two miles from the border with New
Brunswick . Mars Hill isn’t quite as dramatic as Cadillac Mountain ,
the highest point on the eastern seaboard; it rises only 1,300 feet above the St. John River valley. It is rounded and lumpish, much
more suited to the plain folks of Aroostook
County Canada
to the east, the great potato fields to the north, and the huge North Woods to
the west. And the air whistles with dollars, for early in Maine ’s wind power craze, Mars Hill was
identified as a prime site. The wind farm now features 28 turbines strung along
the top of the hill, producing enough power for some 20,000 homes.
I had mentally prepared myself for the sight of those
turbines, a kind of wincing bracing of ethics. I wasn’t prepared for the drive
up Route 1, that is, when we stopped on the road south of Mars Hill to view the
glory of Mt. Katahdin
Excerpted from Saving
Maine: A Personal Gazetteer
Sunday, March 9, 2014
A Maine Gazetteer: Acadia
Throughout the winter in Maine , for the five months of the year starting on
October 7 and lasting to March 6, Cadillac
Mountain in Acadia
National Park is the first place in
the United States
to receive the morning sun’s light. It is a place of worship: the pink granite
of the mountain rises 1,500 feet directly out of the sea, the luscious
Cranberry Isles lie just offshore to the south, the blue of the sky intensifies
the blue of the ocean, the sunshine streams from the east across the Schoodic Peninsula
and Frenchman Bay Bar Harbor just
below, where others worship, is temporarily irrelevant.
But even in the height of August,
in the middle of the day, the hundreds of people crowding Cadillac’s crown are
quiet as if in church, receiving a gift from Abraham’s God or the gods of
Thoreau. Perhaps for a few moments the light and the air cleanse them of care.
Perhaps it lasts longer than the drive back down to their motels, than the
drive back home. I’d like to think that feeling could last for the rest of
their days.
I read a blog post once that
described a morning on Cadillac shortly after 9/11. The author said the mood among the tourists
was somber until a few college women starting singing “America the
Beautiful.” As the song lifted to the heavens, many of the people around them
broke down in both tears and joy.
Even second-hand, the account was
thrilling. It wasn’t just the conflux of emotions, the anger and senselessness
and soul-piercing beauty. For me Acadia is
always a restorative place, and even the thought of it heals wounds all year
long.
Excerpted from Saving
Maine: A Personal Gazetteer
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