Leg 38, from the head of the Swimming Pool to Shipwreck Cove, the south shore of Calderwood Point.

Looking out toward the dam and the Thorofare beyond it's easy to sea why, back in the mid 1990's, this was such a poular spot. when I'd last paid any real attention to it, around 1960, it sported a big float with a diving board and lot of sporting folks, summer people mostly and mostly from North Haven. The water, contained as it was there in the shallow cove, was much warmer than the ocean. Quickly, though, the Swimming Pool lost its appeal, succumbing to miore exciting past times. The float and bath houses rotted away and the waterworks began to deteriorate.

The particular purpose of constructing the dam in this way, with the wood retaining wall down the middle was explained in detail to me when I work there. Sadly, I wasn't paying attention.

I passed another house I'd built fifteen years ago or so, a big one to replace an even larger summer home that had been destroyed by fire. The fire was rumored to have been started by drug enforcement agents trying to keep themselves warm as they scanned the waters below for traffickers. It had an eliptical arch and was a real head scratcher.

There's a staggering quantity of flotsham along this shore but not much other indication of human traffic, an appealing place for an Osprey or Eagle to homestead however and there are several of those.

Having intended to photograph only what I see during the walk around the shore I couldn't resist this old giant on the Zeke's Point Road. I've monitored its transition over the thirty years or so I've worked out on Calderwood Point.

Leg 37, from Birger Youngquist's former residence to the head of the'Swimming Pool' 10-04-10

The tide has made its way in and around, creating its own paths of least resistance, for so long that little environs have evolved in its path, places where nourishment is sure to be found by one creature or plant or another. In areas where the incoming tide, just as it turns, pushes its front waves into tiny watercourses, lush clusters of things are found, populations that peusumably benefit from the concentration of goodies, delivery of which can be relied upon so regularly.

The reverse is true too; the little channels that reveal themselves at low tide bringing fresh water from the uplands, before they become the conduit for the incoming tides, bring a different diversity to the same perfectly situated inhabitants.

The oaks certainly do like a challenge. They can be found up in the woods, where they might be more comfortable, but give them an impossible place to grow and they seize upon it. There are areas around the shore where they just flourish. This area in particular, part of the west shore of Mill River, is
certainly one.

When I was in high school my dad was hired to restore the wood portion, including the sluiceway, of the old dam here at the Swimmming Pool. The Swimming Pool was, I think, owned or perhaps leased by the North Haven Casino and around 1960 they made a real effort to restore not only the facilities here but also the interest in using it as a recreation area for its members. It had been thus ealier in the century but interest was, as I recall, waning. They hired Dad to not only rebuild the dam but to build two bathouses, one for men and one for the ladies, one on the north shore and one on the south and a float or two. I remember one had a diving board. He did the work asked of him but the hoped for revitalization fizzled. During this work all that remained of the bath houses were the eight concrete posts upon which each once stood.

Leg 36 from the head of Jennings Cove to Birger Youngquist's old place.

As I rounded the point at Stetson's I heard voices. Oddly, this was the first time in fifty or so walks, that I'd encountered another human being. I thought perhaps I'd interrupted a caretaker and crew hauling a float for the winter. Instead I came upon a big fibre glass whaler, high and dry, having motored in on the coming tide hours earlier and now abandoned by the receding water. Nearby were two clammers, busily engaged in the exhausting work of raking through the mud in search of steamers, gathering all they could during the five or six hours provided them, loading hod after hod into the boat. I walked around the perimeter of the cove without them seeing me. There were no niceties involved in this business, neither in the things they had to say to one another as they worked. Still, if this were the only thing left for me to do to provide for myself and my family, I wonder how long I'd last. More were around the next bend but this time the boat was not in view and they were wading through knee deep water raking what appeared to be only the water in search of I what, I could not tell. And then, as if I had not had enough of people, I rounded the final bend and came upon someone poling their dinghy (it was that shallow) out to a mooring and then heading up the River in a motorboat for North Haven. Altogether this was seven people, seven more than I'd encounted in nearly a year.

Whien I was a kid this was a common sight, dories full of nets waiting for the herring and the tide that would allow them to shut off the cove for harvest. Those though, were beautiful things, wooden, often lapstrake. These are huge fiber glass industrial things. Still this was a photogenic assemblage.

This was an early morning walk. I'd earlier warned a certain summer resident, staying late, that I'd probably be emerging in his front yard around 9am and came up from the shore looking directly into his bedroom at 8:58. The shades were all drawn back and revealed that he certainly hadn't taken me seriously. I quickly re-directed my gaze, oopting not to take a photo, and headed upland for my bike which I'/d stashed earlier next to his driveway but some distance from the house.

Leg 35, from the head of Jennings Cove and around the several little islands that, at low tide, comprise Jennings Island.

The cove and island that bear Livingston Jenning's name are all part of the windfall that resulted from his prudent purchase of the land between here and the Carrying Place Bridge. I don't recall what they were called before he acquired this land but do know they hence became known by his name and that info has found its way onto the relevant charts of the area.

I've seen this green fungus on the tidal flats elsewhere but not in such profusion. There's quite a contrast, particularly at this time, when the fading color of summer color transitions into fall, between it and the surrounding grey rock and clamflats.

This was my first walk since May 10, when the demands of approaching summer put an end to what had been one or two outings a week. During the intervening months I'd forgotton about needed protection and I simply struck out in the shorts and sandals I'd been wearing for months, a big mistake. The flats filled the sandals with broken shells and debris and when I tried to escape to the juniper festooned ledges above, my legs were torn to shreds, well not shreds exactly - that was Elaine's term when, after I returned home and hosed off in the yard, she viewed the damage.

Here at this very low tide I again enjoyed the luminescent mussel shoals I'd seen earlier at Perry Creek. It was late afternoon and the setting sun was providing just the right light to show them at their best advantage. Greys, blues, purples: mud, water and shells were very complimentary to one another.

Leg 34, from the head of Mill Pond on Calderwood Neck around Boy Scout Point, to Jennings Cove.

During this early morning walk and the one preceeding it, in this one stretch of shore from the Carrying Place Bridge to Jenning Cove, I passed four houses my dad built, one he and I built and three I built myself. I remember when Livingston Jennings bought this land, all of it from a local fellow who probably thought he got a pretty good deal but then Liv divided up the narrow shoreline between the Carrying Place and the head of Mill Pond into one and two acre lots and the land on Boy Scout Point and beyond to where Stetson's is now into ten acre lots and put them all on the market. At the time my grandfather was a real estate salesman for the Allen Agency and Grant Duell was representing Cousins. Between the two of them and, a little later when I took over from my grandfather, me all the lots were sold. Jennings did pretty well for himself and in the process managed to get a heretofore unnamed offshore island and a cove offically named for himself.

A pair of Ospreys, probably in the committed sense, entertained me for a long while just off Boy Scout Point as they engaged in the remarkable aerials that allow them to prowl from aloft for prey far beneath them in the shallows of low tide. During my ten or fifteen minutes of observation they apparently didn't seen anything worth diving for but expended a lot of energy in the process.

I've often seen apple trees during my walk. Now and then one seems interesting enough to go up and investigate. This was one of those. They are nearly all lovely, rambling old artifacts, now and then exceptionally beautiful.

Next leg, when I get an hour or two will be from Jennings Cove to the area where Berger & Doris Youngquist once lived.

LEG 33, FROM CARRYING PLACE BRIDGE TO THE HEAD OF MILL POND, CALDERWOOD NECK, MAY 7, 2010

My last walk terminated at the Carrying Place Bridge, terminated along with much hope that we or any of our descendants will ever again see the beauty that was that artifact, its surface having been obliterated but a pathetic 'restoration' undertaken by Knowles Industrial Services of Gorham, Maine. Calls to them have not been returned. I'm not surprised.

During this modest walk, perhaps an hour and a half, I passed three houses built by my dad, one we both built and a fifth by me, memories at every juncture.

Throughout this long exercise I've come across inexplicable concentrations of one kind or another. Early on it was accummulations of mussel shells but only in certain areas, then colonies of barnacles, again only in certain places. In each case there seemed no good reason why these should not have gathered just as easily in adjacent spots. Lichen are another good example. Certain species, with specific exposures, happily segregated from others. These black lichen are very enthusiatic about the west shore in this area of Mill River.

The Mill Pond was another and particularly desirable old mill site. The narrows are so constricted that they could easily be traversed by a hanging pedestrian bridge the remains of which are still in place as is some of the machinery. I can remember going back and forth here, hand over hand, as a kid.

There was a good chance for this little spruce to gather a little nourishment from an area just to its left. Instead, it stubbornly sent out a tendril across the entire dry face of this boulder to reach

a little soil elsewhere, probably a better neighborhood.

With summer and attendant deadlines coming on it's hard to find time to continue. Until fall, it may be only once every week or two. The next leg, later in May, will be from the Head of Mill Pond to Jenkins Cove.