White on White, Southwest Harbor, Maine; July 11, 2011 (Beachcombing series No.41)

The Clark Point Road runs from the center of Southwest Harbor out to the Coast Guard station at the end of the point. To get there you follow Main Street down from the head of the island til you reach the hardware store in Southwest Harbor, and turn left at the blinking light. There are two actual traffic lights on the island and by the time you reach this one you’ll have passed them both.

Upper Town Dock, Southwest Harbor, Maine; July 11, 2011 (Beachcombing series No.40)

After the turn you’ll go by a restaurant, a variety store, a small shopping plaza with three storefronts and a post office,  several small houses, then an assortment of large and gracious houses, some of which are still homes but many of which have become inns. Look for the street sign that says Upper Town Dock. If you reach Hamilton Marine Supply and the old warehouse that houses the sailing school you’ve gone too far. Park at the Town Dock and walk down the stairs. You might see a barge tied up at the next dock over.

Climb carefully over the railing, and drop down onto the mussel beds under the dock.

 

You’ll notice the ground underfoot alternates between patches of small, angular stones and wide swathes of silty, fine-grained mud. The odor of rotting seafood does not come from the lobster pound three docks to the left. That’s just the smell of low tide on a mud flat.

You’ll find lots of evidence that this is a working harbor, like bits of the old tires that are used as bumpers on many docks, random pieces of machinery and industrial debris picturesquely covered in barnacles and rust. There is a lot of broken glass, but no sea glass.

 The duality of Maine shore life is particularly compressed along this shoreline. Utilitarian docks piled with lobster pots jut out right beside docks decked out with flags and pots of geraniums.

On a bright summer day, the summer folk and the working folk seem to co-exist peacefully. In many communities the bed-and-breakfast guests do not care to be woken by the fishing boat motors when they roar to life at the crack of dawn. Take a good long look around you. If the general trend along this coast continues, the barges and lobster pots will be pushed out by the flags and geraniums. For the moment, though, there seems to be a balance here. Savor it.

Bob’s Camp, Trenton, Maine; Independence Day, 2011 (Beachcombing series No.38)

Fourth of July in Bar Harbor is about as close as I’ve ever gotten to living in a Norman Rockwell painting. The parade starts at 10am, wandering down Main Street, filled with my friends, my childrens’ classmates, people I’ve worked with, and people I know from places like the post office or the pharmacy.

My husband is in a Dixieland band, and they have a float every year.

 Sometimes one of my kids ends up in the parade. They’re always a little sulky about it because a lot of the paraders throw candy, and if they are in the parade, they can’t catch candy! Granted, all this small-town fellowship is watched by, I don’t know, maybe 6,000 strangers who are here on vacation doubling the size of the population, but its still very much our parade.

This year the kids did a little decoration of their own:

After the parade there’s a huge seafood festival on the town Athletic Fields, but I’ve never gone. We usually have our own lobster festival over at Bob’s camp on Union River Bay. You may remember Bob’s camp, if you’ve been reading for a while. This year the weather was perfect,

the lupine were in full bloom,

and my father-in-law read the Declaration of Independence out loud to all of us.

When he finished, I tried to recite the Preamble to the Constitution, and got out a pretty mangled version of about two-thirds of it. Then one of the kids started singing the Schoolhouse Rock song – do you remember it? Those were awesome videos. I can’t believe “kids today” still watch them. And they remember the Preamble! “We the people”…. la la la. It’s still stuck in my head and July is almost over.

In the evening the Town Band gives a concert in the bandstand on the Village Green, and then there are fireworks. After the fireworks there is a massive traffic jam that lasts til long after midnight, so people who’ve done this before hang out at the ice cream parlors or the bars, depending on their personal preference, and the locals go home and stuff their heads under their pillows trying to drown out the horns of people who think honking will help 5,000 people move their cars faster down the single road out of town. We usually put the younger kids to bed and open a bottle of wine with friends who live outside of town. When the jam clears up, we all tumble into bed, happy to be Americans.

The Bar Harbor Yacht Club is a small, uninsulated cabin perched precariously on a rocky outcrop over a substantial dock. There is no sign marking the steep, unpaved drive. It is frequented by people in practical clothes and sensible shoes with weatherbeaten skin and permanent crinkles at the corners of their eyes from peering into the wind. Most of the members seem to be sailors, but there are a handful of motorboats moored there, too. I have trouble saying the name with a straight face. I’ve always thought it would be more accurately called the “Well-Hidden Place to Moor your Boat without Fuss.” I’m not a member myself, but my father-in-law is, and we seem to congregate at the club for special family occasions. There’s an almost-level crushed-stone terrace in front of the cabin with a cluster of adirondack chairs and a plastic table. It’s a perfect place for a picnic in honor of Father’s Day.

The Bluffs, May 29, 2010 (Beachcombing series No.34)

A typical day of beachcombing: three rock crab shells, a green crab shell, blue mussels, sea urchins, bits of nylon rope, birch bark, sea glass, periwinkle shells, a sprig of rockweed, and a piece of rusty metal. The crab shells were probably shed, since they are pretty clean, with no hint of dead crab in them.

The most interesting finds of the day were the clusters of whelk egg cases. I think these are the eggs of the Common Northern Whelk (Buccinum undatum). The photo below shows a northern whelk laying eggs.

Image credit: Scott Leslie (click on photo for link.)

Don’t worry, all the baby whelks seem to have hatched from the cases I found. I tried to open a couple of the egg sacs that still look a bit bubble-like (as you can see, most of them are sort of deflated) but the stuff they are made of is surprisingly strong. It looks like translucent seaweed, and now that it’s dry it sounds papery, but it’s as tough as tyvek, and feels similar when you try to tear it.