Leg 53, the westernmost of four eventual walks along the south shore of Winter harbor

Like last year at this time, all the water on the island is rushing to the sea. Every sleepy stream is awake and making itself known and the means available to them, the obstacles to their passage and the detours they've been compelled to choose combine to create every imaginable waterway.

All around this island, I've come across gulls engaged in a frenzy of feeding amidst schools of small fish. The gulls float over their prey and then, when they feel quite sure of themselves, flap their wings hard enough to get them just aloft, turn a kind of somersault and then plunge into the water like a missile. They bat about 500.

Leg 53 from the

Leg 52, the northeast half of Penobscot island.

Although I might have reached the island by trudging through the mud, I opted to kayak out to a point about midway on the southeast shore. It was a beautiful day for a paddle and my previous trek across the flats had about done me in. I reached the island about an hour before low tide and had no more than taken a couple of photos when my camera let me know I'd forgotted to charge my batteries. I was tempted to go back and return another day since I do enjoy documenting my progress but I'd come all this way -

I resigned myself to walking without photography. As I walked the tide receded and I found the going easier and easier till I rounded the tip of the island. There the shore was impassable and I had to bushwack through blowdowns and thick underbrush, often on my hands and knees. Eventually I rounded the second of the two northern peninsulas and found myself on an expansive sloping ledge in front of the only dwelling on the island. The cabin belongs to some acquaintances, beneffactors who gave most of this spectacular island to the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, thereby preserving a huge tract of Vinalhaven's most remote areas. I lay down for a few minutes on the ledge looking straight out Winter harbor at Stonington. It was a stunningly beautiful vista and unusually warm. I lay there a while and reflected on their generosity.

By the time I reached the point where my previous walk had ended I was all in from having done so much buhswacking. Actually, I only thought I was all in because I then struck out across the island to emerge wide of my mark (the kayak) by about a mile and then had to do some real bushwacking to get back to my point of beginning. Then I was relly all in and there was no mistaking it. It's a puzzle to me how I got so lost with such a small opportunity. I probably don't want to reflect on it.

Leg 51, the southwest half of Penobscot Island.

I thought there'd be too much muck to struggle through getting from Vinalhaven's shore out to Penobscot Island so I took a kayak and launched myself from a place oppositte the island's mid-point.

It was an hour or so before low tide and just enough water in which to paddle which I did with some apprehension, thinking all the while how much shallower it was likely to be when I was ready to return. My plan was to walk southwest to the island's extremity and around it's northern shore then cut across the island at a place I judged to be opposite where I'd begun.

Thoughout this exercise I've been amazed by the mussel beds, by the size of them. This one stretches out toward the Carrying Place. A coon, too far off to be photographed but finding itself amidst such plenty instead labored away in the mud for a clam. Coming around the northern shore I got a look at Starbaord Rock from a vantage i'd never enjoyed before and tried to pick out the initials my grandfather carved there expressing his devotion to my grandmother.

Here, inexplicably, the mussel shells are carefully scupted to from a ridge elevated way above its surroundings as if forces moved on it from all directions equally.

The island's streams are busy discharging snow melt. Some, like this one, are very small and have been doing business in one place for so long they leave a rusty footprint.

A gathering of Perriwinkles gathered cooperatively that they might more readily hear the featured speaker.

My fears were well founded. Returning, I pushed the kayak halfway across before finally finding enough water to support it and, even then getting aboard from a 'stuck in the mud' vantage is nearly impossible. I was a mess when I got home.

Leg 50, from the Trotting Park to Penosbcot Island, March 9, 2011

A few years ago this walk wouldn't have taken so long but now, after the miscalulations that resulted in the installation of the enormous culvert at the Boondoggle Bridge and the consequential flooding of the Vinal Cove inlet, the shore is twice as long. Where there were once woods, there are now these skeletal remains.

Spring is surely on its way. These brooks that were so recently cold and quiet now appear eager to get on with business and there certainly is a lot of business for them to be about. It won't be long now, though. The ice has been treacherous in one sense, trying to stay upright. On the other hand, there's been much less slogging through the mud. That will be my reality again before long.

The ice formations are smaller but certainly no less beautiful.

I'm looking forward to walking around Penobscot island, leg 51. i should be able to get out there this week. it might be an overnight trip or it might just be a good excuse for such a thing. I think I can get across at low tide. If not, maybe I'll go over by kayak.

Leg 49, from Vinal Falls to the Trotting Park

For twenty six years, ever since we rented a houseboat on Lake Erie, I have been fixated on the little lagoon that forms between this little island and the east shore of Vinal Falls inlet, just off Leo Lane's camp. Every time I drive by and look out there at that spot I remind whoever is with me that I'd like to put a houseboat there. Some have heard that enough. I should just do it.

Walking south I cover a lot of shore that parallels the North Haven Road. It's sometimes a few hundred feet between the two, often much less and has always been thus. Still it's all new to me. I see summer houses I never knew existed. How can that be? Just offshore is Penobscot Island. I think I can walk out there on ice cakes at low tide. I'm looking foreard to it.

It didn't look like Spring underfoot and it wasn't apparent that the snow was doing anything but piling up but it certainly sounded otherwise. This brook and others like it were fully occupied and the primary source was melting snow.

The Boondoggle Culvert invited me to crawl through but I thought better of it, too deep, and went up and over. I shed my vest and hat and left them on the bridge. I'd been struggling to stay upright and, while avoided falling overboard had overheated.

It was easy going out on the Inlet which was nearly empty of water but covered with a fairly level field of ice. I walked comfortably, hatless and without a coat even though it was way below freezing.








These streams, draining the wetland between the Trotting Park and Carver's Pond, were as busy as the one's I'd come across in the woods but all the action was under the ice.

The great Boondoggle orchestrated by the Corps of Engineers
has swallowed up a lot of shoreland. Healthy trees that once were a barrier between homes on Vinal Cove Inlet and the water are now skeletal sticks. Still, some argue persuasively that the goal of re-creating an environment where a good exchange of water tiwce has made for better conditions overall.


Next Let, #50, from the Trotting park to Penobscot Island.