Sunday, March 28, 2010

PHOTOS SHOULD BE CLICKED ON FOR BETTER VIEWING



Leg 29, March 27, 2010, from Murch's Brook to Stepping Stone Brook











A week into spring and there remain ample reminders that this is Maine and we shouldn't rely too heavily on the calendar.

All sorts of interesting areas coinciding with the dead low tide of today's walk presented themselves. Tidal pools in particular seemed to have assembled their components to showcase their considerable beauty for the several hours available till the tide comes back in and rearranges things.








It seems there's a brook at nearly every turn, each brimming with the residuals of last week's big rain and continuing snow melt and each stuggling to still put in a respectable appearance when it's meandering finally leads to the receiving waters of Seal Cove or Mill Creek.




The sound of this one beckoned so beseechingly that I clambered over all manner of debris to get to it. As you can see it was worth it.


A couple of inland 'motions' and the debris from nearby quarrying were evident along the way. This one, found wanting I guess and abandoned, is right at the water's edge.





As I rounded the peninsula and headed down Mill Creek the extreme shallows gave off an entirely different color, shades of green and, with the sun head on at about due south, a luminous intensity. The same distinction attached to the wading waters on the other side of the Mill Creek Bridge.
Eight or ten firths can be found along Vinalhaven's coast. These narrow penetrations, some fairly modest like Mill Creek, others more imposing like Long Cove or Crockett Cove contrast with broader estuaries like Carver's Pond and the Basin.
Throughout this walk I've been surprised, astonished really, not simply by the beauty of my surroundings but by the humbling realization that I have been here for over sixty years and never taken the time to see it before. It seems ridiculous now to think, for example, of how often I've driven over the Mill Creek bridge and wondered what the rest of the Creek was like.








Stepping Stone Brook is probably always busy discharging, as it does, overflow from the two mile long watershed that includes Round Pond and, farther south, Folly and Otter Ponds.
Next adventure: Stepping Stone Brook to Holt Point.

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