![]() ![]() One evening some years ago, I was returning at low tide to my favorite cove in a small fishing boat when a voice called to me from across the water, the voice of a yachtsman who had ventured too far into the channel. I count birds instead of sheep: wheeling bald eagles, squawking great blue herons, the shy hermit thrush in the woods by my dock, singing its Sometimes when I can’t get to sleep, I recite them. I think that the river is a sanctuary of names. Other places on the river are named for qualities and animals that they still possess - Salt Marsh Cove, Seal Cove, Merry Island. A lobsterman pulling pots off Kelsey Point may be a Kelsey, in fact. The old surnames officially attached to ledges, points, and islets have great dignity. Nautical charts don’t name every part of the river, so you can stake a transitory claim to various sites, as friends and I have done by applying names of our own to places, names such as Frog Rock, the Nubble, Striper Hole. On flood tides, a smell of fecundity rises out of the whirlpools below the Narrows, a sweet smell, almost too sweet, almost rancid, almost frightening, a smell of all life in the waters. The channels and hunchbacked clam-diggers moving slowly across the mudflats. Strong currents run past shores where trees vastly outnumber houses, past little islands and coves where ospreys preside from the tops of firs, scolding intruders, who aren’t very numerous, even on August afternoons - mostly lobster boats puttering in ![]() You could fit a house’s first story in the space between high and low tide. They riseĪnd fall about nine vertical feet on the average. It doesn’t flow just toward the sea, but in and out on the tides. It’s less like a river than a narrow embayment. Its navigable section extends only 12 miles inland from the Gulf of Maine. I like to imagine this river as a replacement place. Years later, in middle age, I came across a place on the midcoast of Maine, a small, tide-washed salt river near Penobscot Bay. For me the suburban conversion meant a loss of a lot of the landscape of my childhood and a disturbing loss of the power in I grew up on long island during the era of great suburban expansion, when New York City burst into the countryside. Stay at The Keeper’s House, a converted lighthouse operator’s residence where dinner is served by candlelight ($255-$294 20). Or splurge and take the mail boat from Stonington to Isle au Haut and For sweeping coastal views, reserve a third-floor room at the Castine Inn (doubles, $85-$135 20). 1, the 60-site Balsam Cove campground offers lakefront sites and hot showers ($15-$20 80). Aspiring sailors, meanwhile, might want to enlist in Hurricane Island Outwardīound School’s eight-day instructional program in Penobscot Bay ($995 80).īedding Down: Just north of Castine, off U.S. 26666) offer boating workshops and guided trips ranging in price from $35 for a two-hour introductory kayak lesson to $1,095 for a seven-day canoe trip on the Allagash waterway. Bean’s Outdoor Discovery Schools (80, ext. Island, climb the one-mile Canada Cliff Trail to the 839-foot summit of Beech Mountain, where the Lower 48’s only fjord, Somes Sound, looms in the distance. Or, head for Acadia National Park’s 100-plus hiking and biking trails for starters, from the Echo Lake Beach parking area on Mount Desert On Your Own: Weather permitting, try the 11-mile paddle from Castine to Warren Island State Park, a spruce-covered isle in Penobscot Bay with nine campsites ($12-$18 20). 1 east along the coast to Penobscot Bay, and then Maine 175 south to Castine. From Boston, take I-95 north to Brunswick, U.S. Getting There: A centrally located hub for playing on the Maine coast is the seventeenth-century French village of Castine, on a point jutting into Penobscot Bay. ![]() Understand why kayakers, sailors, and hikers rush headlong into the state at every chance. Combine that with 3,400 miles of shoreline, a dash of gruff yet charming Down East hospitality, and you’ll The official count of islands off the Maine coast, for example, is around 3,000. Though Tracy Kidder would prefer that you steer clear of his river, the thing about summer in Maine is that such solitary waterborne experiences are not hard to find. The Maine coast has more landmarks than names. Avast Ye, Matey – Find Your Own Damn Cove ![]()
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