Category Archives: Road trips

On giving up

Ferry Beach, Saco, Maine

It stopped raining late this morning, and by early evening the sky was almost entirely clear. With clear skies and a light wind, the conditions on Saco Bay were the best they’ve been all week. I decided to try to paddle to Eagle Island, about a mile off shore.

By six o’clock, I was pushing the canoe into the light surf. I waded out up to my thighs, jumped in the canoe, and started paddling. There were a few large cloud masses off to the southeast which might become thunderheads, but they were well to the south and moving away from me. I felt a light offshore wind on my back, just enough to ruffle the surface of the water. I figured the offshore wind would probably ease off towards sunset, so conditions looked good all around. I started paddling for the island.

When I was about halfway there, I saw a Common Loon off the port bow. I fumbled with binoculars — an old pair with broken eye cups, which would be no great loss if they got soaked — and as I fumbled, I realized that the bow of the canoe was slewing to port just as a particularly big swell came at me. I let the binoculars drop on their cord, grabbed the paddle, and brought the bow into the wave. It was suddenly clear that I couldn’t stop paddling, for if the canoe drifted broadside to the waves, the waves had gotten big enough that it would be easy to go over.

I kept paddling, and the swells kept getting larger. They were getting big enough that I began to worry how I would turn the canoe around. At first, I hoped that if I got on the landward side of Eagle Island, I’d be sheltered from the waves and it would be easy to turn around. But the farther out into the bay I got, the bigger the swells got. When I rode up and over one particularly big swell — about two feet high, and steeper than before — I gave up on Eagle Island, and looked for an opportunity to turn the canoe. Several good sized waves, then a short interval with small waves — I turned the canoe as fast as possible, and began paddling for shore.

But I wasn’t ready to go back yet. Once I got back to where the swells diminished in size, I decided to paddle over to the mile-long jetty that protects the channel of the Saco River. Sometimes Harbor Seals swim along the jetty — seeing a seal would be a nice consolation prize. The offshore breeze began to stiffen. I got near the jetty, reached for the binoculars to look at some Least Terns flying overhead — the wind blew me right towards the jetty. I grabbed the paddle and dug into the water to pull myself away the sharp rocks of the jetty.

That was enough. I paddled for home. It was tough going. With only one person in the canoe, the bow rode high, and it was hard work to keep it pointed just off the wind. I had to push myself harder than I liked. I rode a wave up onto the sand, jumped out, and grabbed the canoe to pull it out of the water. Muscles from my thighs up through my shoulders were quivering from the hard paddling — I just couldn’t lift the canoe right then, so I dragged it up the beach out of reach of the waves. A few more scratches on the bottom of the canoe wouldn’t hurt.

Eventually I carried the canoe up off the beach. Marty, the fellow who’s leading a sea-kayaking workshop here this week, saw me. “How’d it go?” he said.

“Well, I got two thirds of the way to Eagle Island,” I said. “But when the swells got higher than the gunwales of the canoe, it was time to turn back.”

He just laughed, and continued to tie his sea kayak on the roof of his car. His kayak would have ridden those swells with ease, of course. If I had had another experienced person in the canoe with me, I might have tried for the island, and paddling along the jetty wouldn’t have been a problem. But it was just me, in a too-small open canoe, with waves that got too big, and wind that got too stiff — so I gave up.

Art on the highway

The Maine Turnpike Authority decided to install works of art by William Wegman in several rest areas. When I was driving north today, I stopped at the Kennebunk rest area to check out one of those artworks. (0:42)

Press reports on the murals: The Portland Press-Herald reports that some turnpike authorities would have preferred “a picture of a lighthouse or Mount Katahadin” — whereas the Bangor Daily News offers a quote from a maintenance worker who likes the mural.

Note: video host blip.tv is defunct, so this video no longer exists.

Off the highway

Three of us — my father, my older sister, and I — drove down to visit my father’s brother, Lee. We’re staying in a hotel in Lima, Pennsylvania. The motel we’re staying in is right off U.S. Route 1, one of those small motels that all look pretty much the same:– bland prints in gold-toned frames on the walls, slightly worn desk and chest of drawers covered in wood-grain plastic laminate, little two-cup coffee maker next to the sink.

After eight hours in the car, I was ready for a walk. Dad came with me. We walked up towards the state highway — the motel sits at an intersection of a state highway and Route 1 — but there were no sidewalks, not even a verge on which to walk. Dad has a bad knee, so he gave up and went back to the room. I walked down towards Route 1 through a boarded-up gas station — still no sidewalks and no verge — nothing but a big mall across four lanes of traffic. I walked around the periphery of the motel parking lot, but there was no way out. This is not a pedestrian-friendly motel. We’re fenced in on all sides by highways, like the characters in J. G. Ballard’s novel Concrete Island.

But I was desperate for a walk, so I walked back up to the state highway. A kid carrying a skateboard was walking precariously along the curb at the edge of the highway. I figured if he could do it, so could I. He looked surprised to see another pedestrian when we passed. A couple of hundred feet along the roadway, a construction entrance led into trees.

I walked in to find a completed road but no houses. Blackberry bushes grew along the side of the empty road, and some of them were ripe. After I ate a couple, I turned off and followed a path someone had mowed along the right-of-way for an underground gas pipeline.

I wound up at the edge of a farmer’s field, with chimney swifts circling overhead catching their evening meal of insects. A flycatcher was calling in the trees off to my right somewhere. I could barely hear the noise of the highways, although I could see, through a break in the trees, the huge mall across Route 1.

Day Hike

Katama – Edgartown, Martha’s Vineyard, 8+ miles

When I got up and stuck my head out the window yesterday, it promised to be a perfect summer day — dry, warm but not too hot, breezy, perfectly clear. I spent most of the morning talking with my aunt and uncle (I’ve been staying with them for the past three days), and then told them I was going to take a good long walk. Uncle Bob gave me a map, showed me some possible routes, and I set off about 11:30.

It really was turning out to be a perfect summer day, the kind of day that energizes you. Except that on my second day of vacation, I wasn’t feeling very energetic. The grind of work had worn me down more than I had admitted to myself. For the first hour, I walked without paying attention to much except the bike trail in front of me. I did notice some invasive exotic plants: several big stands of Japanese Knotweed, and lots of Spotted Knapweed in full bloom along the bike trail. I also noticed huge poison ivy plants, some of which were bushes three and four feet high.

When I got to the business district of Edgartown, 3 miles and 50 minutes later, I bought a newspaper and went in to the Main St. Diner, which was the least pretentious restaurant I could find. The waitress, who looked to be in her late teens, brought me a menu, and looked at my newspaper. “The New York Times,” she said approvingly. “I read that paper.” I told her that I thought it was a pretty good paper, and thought to myself that that was a curious thing for a waitress to say.

After I finished lunch, I wandered around Edgartown, looking at the houses, and looking at the people. I had some pretty good people-watching. You could tell when a tour bus stopped in town, because suddenly the narrow sidewalks were full of people who all looked somehow the same and who all wore name badges around their necks. You could tell the upper class summer people because even I could tell that their clothes were far more expensive than mine. (That evening, Uncle Bob said he bet there weren’t any actual residents of Edgartown walking around that day, and I suspect he’s correct. The yards and driveways of all the houses were just about empty.)

I finally wound up down at the main pier in Edgartown Harbor, reading my newspaper, and now and looking up to watch the two little ferries go to and fro between Chappaquidick Island and the pier. Then it was time to start walking again. Instead of walking straight back via Katama Road, I headed off along Clevelandtown Road, and continued walking along some side streets, winding around towards Katama Airport.

It was not an inspiring walk. The few modest houses left on Martha’s Vineyard are disappearing one by one, either bulldozed so that a mansionette (or sometimes a real mansion) can be put up in the same spot, or renovated beyond all recognition. It’s not unusual to see a 3,000 or 4,000 square foot house going up. It’s no longer enough to have a dirt driveway, or one of crushed shell — the latest fad appears to be driveways paved with peastone, and lined with expensive paving blocks or curbstones. The more pretentious houses boast emerald green lawns with full irrigation systems, huge three car garages, and waist-high stone walls made from stones that have obviously been brought in from off-island. I saw one elaborate stone wall that included an enclosure about twenty feet square for the vegetable garden, with some tomato plants barely poking their crowns above the stone.

I could have been walking through and upper class or upper-middle class neighborhood in any one of dozens of wealthy towns around Boston or north of New York City. Was I in Weston, Darien, or Westchester County? I couldn’t be sure, except for the huge poison ivy plants along the side of the road. I would have thought that if you go away for the summer, you’d want to go some place that doesn’t look like home. Maybe if you see the poison ivy, you know that you’re on Martha’s Vineyard.

At last I made it to Katama Airport, a small airport with grass airstrips and no air traffic control. Both the airport and the adjacent farm are on town-owned conservation land. Mid-afternoon is when raptors like to hunt, so I walked down the dirt road between the farm and the airport looking at the sky. Sure enough, in the distance I saw a hawk gliding low over the tops of the grass and scrub. It was a female Northern Harrier hunting. She dropped down onto something a couple of times, but I never saw her catch anything. Once, a group of Red-winged Blackbirds mobbed her, pestering her until she flew away from their territories. Once she roosted for a minute or two on top of a tall bush, and then flew on again, her head going this way and that as she searched the ground below her for prey. I stood watching her for maybe half an hour, and all other thoughts left my mind.

Eight things I noticed on the beach yesterday evening

Ferry Beach, Saco, Maine

A Herring Gull swooped down onto the beach a hundred yards in front of me, carrying something large in its bill. Through the binoculars, I could see that the gull was carrying a fish, maybe a flounder, that looked too big for it to swallow. A young gull stood nearby, watching and hoping the older gull would drop the fish. The adult gull tossed the fish in the air, dropped it several times, tried to maneuver it so the fish’s head was pointing down the gull’s throat, and then, so quickly I didn’t see it, swallowed the fish. I could see a bulge in the gull’s throat. It swallowed hard a couple of times, then flew away.

A light rain shower passed over the beach, leaving the sand pockmarked with tiny craters where the big raindrops had hit.

I looked out over Saco Bay as the rain showers passed. The sun broke through the clouds in the west, and lit up Eagle Island, which is a mile or so out in the bay. The island stood out, bright and green, against the dark blue clouds and the dark gray sea. More sun came out, and picked out the tops of waves as they broke against the beach, turning them from a dull color to brilliant white.

Bits of a rainbow appeared in the sky: two short, bright bands at the horizon, marking out the north and south points of the bay; and pieces here and there against the dark clouds, so faint that at times I wasn’t sure if I was seeing them or not.

A Common Tern hovered over the water. I managed to get my binoculars up in time to watch it break out of its hover, plunge into the sea, and emerge with a small fish in its bill. It flew up, tossed the fish back and swallowed it, and shook itself dry as it flew off looking for more fish.

Halfway out to Eagle Island, fifty or sixty white specks appeared in a sudden ray of sun, circling around, hovering, and plunging into the sea.

Through some odd optical effect that I don’t understand, broad rays of alternating light and dark appeared in the clouds, radiating out from Wood Island; or perhaps I should say, converging down towards Wood Island. If I wasn’t aware that the sun was almost directly behind me, I would have thought that the sun must have been behind Wood Island, as if somehow the sun were setting in the east southeast, instead of in the west.

A dozen Bonaparte’s Gulls stood on the beach, keeping an eye on me now and then, but mostly doing nothing. They were all molting, losing the crisply-defined black heads of their breeding plumage, losing the odd tail feather, looking rather bedraggled. Presumably, these were first-year birds that never made it all the way up to the breeding grounds in Canada, and so here they sat on the coast of Maine, molting and waiting for the fall migration to begin in earnest. It was a poignant sight, an anticipation of the end of summer.

Posted two days after the fact — I’m a little behind in posting due to spotty Internet access here in Cambridge.

Wood Thrush

Ferry Beach, Saco, Maine

The afternoon showers drove most everyone off the beach. I walked down to Ferry Beach State Park, and walked under Route 9 through their underpass, and into the woodlands and swamps of the park. There weren’t any cars in the parking lot, but one of the rangers was still there. He saw my binoculars, and we started talking about birds. I asked him if he had heard any Veeries, and he said no, but there were a few Wood Thrushes in the woods.

Wood Thrushes and Veeries can produce more than one note simultaneously — birds have syrinxes, not larynxes like us mammals do, and many birds can produce more than one note at a time — so they can actually sing in harmony with themselves. A Veery sings a song that sounds like it’s descending in a sort of swooping spiral. I’m not good at describing sounds, so I won’t try to describe the sound a Wood Thrush makes, but it’s a series of notes that I find hauntingly beautiful.

A few steps out of the parking lot and into the woods, I heard a Wood Thrush calling. The quality of the sound is such that it can be hard to tell exactly where the sound is coming from. I walked down the path towards the sound of the Wood Thrush, and it seemed as if the bird was slowly moving away from me, flying from tree to tree — but maybe it was two different birds, and one started singing while the other stopped singing as I got close to it.

Eventually, the Wood Thrush stopped singing. It was getting dark. I headed back to the campsite.

Stuck in Portland

My flight out of Portland keeps getting delayed. The gate attendant just assured me that I would get to San Francisco in time to make my connection to Boston. To be honest, though, I wouldn’t mind getting stuck in Portland for another day. Here are some reasons why I like Portland:

  • Everyone I have talked with in six days in Portland has been unfailingly friendly, polite, and just plain nice. It’s amazing what a difference politeness makes.
  • For me, the climate is ideal: cool, relatively dry air, plenty of clouds and light rain to break up the sunshine. You know you’re north of the 45th parallel.
  • It is a truly multicultural city.
  • The coffee is really, really good. True, good coffee is probably necessary to make it through the long, gray winters. But the coffee is so good, even here in the airport, that it just might be worth it.
  • You can see snow-covered mountains from downtown Portland.
  • The public transportation system is just as good as you’ve heard. The light rail system is fast, clean, efficient, and free in the city center. The Portland street car is charming. No one pushes or shoves or casts glowering glances. And they have special bicycle hooks built into the light rail cars.
  • Everyone rides bicycles. Riding the light rail out to the airport today, I stood behind a wiry man in a black t-shirt standing next to his hotshot mountain bike. I realized that his funny-looking bicycle helmet was actually a hardhat, and that his black t-shirt was from the local ironworkers union. In Boston, he’d drive a truck.
  • Lots of trees grow in downtown Portland, making the city feel green and delightful.
  • Free wifi throughout the airport.

Of all these reasons, the first one is most important:– it really does make a difference when everyone is polite. (One of the reasons I like New Bedford, where I live, is that most everyone is polite.) And the fact that everyone is polite and friendly has made the delay here at the airport far more bearable.

The free wifi helps, too.

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Summer on the road

The drive up from New Bedford to Cambridge this afternoon was a real summer drive. The car was already hot from the sun. Driving with the windows rolled down didn’t cool it down much. Even though it wasn’t that hot today — only up in the eighties — I thought I could feel my head getting hot from the sun beating on the roof of the car. My shirt was damp with perspiration. I’m not used to the heat yet, and I swear I got a headache from the heat. But in a month or less, a day like today will seem cool and comfortable.

“Seek peace, and pursue it.”

Every Saturday at noon for the past four years, a small group of Quakers and other peaceniks have gathered on the lawn in front of the Capitol building in Washington D.C. to witness for peace. A couple of people have always brought a banner that reads: “Seek peace, and pursue it. Ps. 34:14.” The format is similar to silent meeting for worship in the manner of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers): everyone stands in silence together; but the only spoken ministry for these public gatherings is when a passer-by happens to ask someone why they’re standing there, in which case a quiet explanation is given.

Elizabeth and I were greeted by a man who shook hands with each of us and said, “Welcome, friend”; though he could have meant meant “Friend,” which is another name for a Quaker. We stood in silence, and I centered down and meditated on the words on the banner. Near the end of the hour, a man standing next to Elizabeth started crying; she comforted him and another man brought him tissues. When the hour was over, we all shook hands with the people on either side of us, saying, “Peace,” or “Peace be with you.”

Then everyone started chatting. Elizabeth talked to the people she knew from Friends Meeting of Washington. I saw a man who was wearing a “Christian Peace Witness for Iraq” button, and we talked about the peace witness in front of the White House yesterday. The older Quakers greeted a group of students from Sidwell Friends School: “Welcome, young Friends!” The students had a group picture taken with the Capitol building as a back drop. Then we all went home to get warm.

It was a good way to observe the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. (If you’re curious, you might look up the reference to Psalm 34:14 in the King James Version of the Bible, and read the whole verse.)

My impressions of the Christian Peace Witness on Friday: Link.