Art Imitating Life

When my wife and I were first married we flew up to Maine for a vacation. One day we drove to Lubec to visit an old pulp writer I knew (Ryerson Johnson who--among many other jobs--used to write the old Doc Savage stories). After we stayed with him a while we drove out to West Quoddy Head Island to see the famous lighthouse. As we were driving along the causeway we looked out to sea and noticed a weather phenomenon you would have to have witnessed to believe. It was so visually horrifying that it felt like my guts froze solid. We pulled over on the deserted stretch of road and climbed out of the car to look at it. Trying to describe it is a worthless act. You'd have had to have been there.

Out on the ocean--the COLD North Atlantic--was what appeared to be a solid wall of white, as if sheared off with geometric perfection, flying along the surface of the ocean and extending high into the sky. No imperfections. No iterations. Just this solid wall of white headed for us across the vast, dark sea; as if someone had used a giant ruler to create it.

"What is that?" I barely heard my wife ask.

"Some kind of front. I think. I've never seen anything like that. I've never HEARD of anything like it."

We nervously climbed back into the car and drove on to the island where the lighthouse was located. By then the front had reached us, and by then we were in the trees and so had been spared seeing it actually arrive. We got to the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse parking lot and stopped. The fog was so thick that visibility, even in daylight, was a few feet. We could only see the lighthouse when we got out and walked right up to it along the pathway.

After about fifteen or twenty minutes the fog began to lighten a little. Not enough for it to vanish, but visibility was better and it actually felt like the sun was somewhere above us.

A few years after that I read Stephen King's novella "The Mist". In that story he describes something almost exactly like what we saw on the causeway. I wonder if King was around there that day. If not, then it must mean that this kind of thing happens now and again in Maine.

Frankly, even though at the time I kind of knew what it was, I really don't ever want to see it happen again. It was that disturbing a sight.

(This is where we were headed. I didn't take the photo of West Quoddy Head Lighthouse.)

As a point of silly trivia, the easternmost point of land in the USA is WEST Quoddy Head Island. This is because EAST Quoddy Head Island is in Canada.

Winter?

This is one of those years where human-caused global warming really is especially horrible. We had no autumn weather of cool days and chilly evenings. The trees are all confused, budding and blooming here at the beginning of winter. We're screwed.

I was looking at photos I shot years ago in Maine. One trip I took there was exclusively for the purpose of climbing Katahdin, the highest peak in that state. There's nothing like that peak (in my experience) on the east coast. It has a lot of territory high above treeline and it has been carved in relatively recent history by glaciers. The signs of glaciation are everywhere you look on that summit.

Yesterday I saw this image on a webcam that I check frequently. From this vantage point one should see the mountain covered in deep snow. The lake in the foreground should have been solidly frozen for at least a month. There should be people walking across that lake, or driving snowmobiles on it with no thought at all of falling through the ice.

Yesterday was the first time that lake had even the slightest skim of ice upon its surface, and the summit that should have been solidly cloaked in deep snow for many weeks is barely frosted.

Katahdin. Touched (finally) by light snow. The lakes around it showing (at last) some ice.

Constant Struggle

There are some things that I will never completely understand. I try to figure them out, but in the end they make no sense whatsoever.

Probably the finest thing the US nation has ever done was to establish National Parks and wilderness areas. As far as I know, it was an original idea that was born in this country. Part of the reason could be that we actually had unspoiled places that were worth protecting. There was a time when these Parks and wild places were delineated and placed under the sheltering wing of common good.

But those days seem to be over.

And I cannot figure that out, no matter how hard I try to understand how we can all be manipulated to the contrary.

For some years now, there has been an effort to create a new National Park in the state of Maine. It has been some time since a large, new National Park was dedicated in the USA. Some smaller ones have been named, but these have almost all been mere transfers of title from National Monument status to that of National Park. Most of these have been rather small areas, very fragile, and with little in the way of infrastructure.

The proposed Park in Maine has been called "The North Woods National Park" and sometimes the Maine Woods National Park. It would encompass over three million acres of mainly roadless forests, rivers, ponds, lakes, gorges, valleys, bogs, and mountains. Almost none of it is virgin territory, since Maine has pretty much been logged from side to side, end to end for lumber and pulpwood over the past couple of centuries. So there's not really anything there in the form of untouched lands.

What this area does have is the potential to be a set of recovered environments, and a place where "rewilding" can take place. Mother Nature repairs Herself if left unmolested by the hand of Mankind's exploitation. Everything that lives on the planet needs places like this. As long as we have wide areas of wilderness, then the ecology that birthed us and sheltered us and provided us with clean air and water can continue to do so. These are facts that are self-evident.

But whenever such an effort to create something like a National Park is raised, there is always a push-back against them. The people who earn vast amounts of cash wrecking these spots never fail to rally their forces to prevent the establishment of Parks and wilderness. Generally, they get their ignorant minions to scream about "government land grabs" and other such nonsense. Grabbed from whom? Given to whom?

The proposed North Woods National Park is something that this nation needs. It has been far too long since a large, new national Park was added to the eastern USA. Here is the acreage. This is the place where forest ecosystems can be restored; where wild  creatures that have been eliminated from the land can be repatriated.

Let's have it. Now.

Katahdin.

The Woodland caribou, which used to live in Maine but which has been extirpated from the area. It could be restored to the area within the proposed Park boundaries.

Even the folk who promote the proposed Park are afraid to mention the Timber wolf when discussing the effort. This is because one of the main arguments against the Park come from brainless hunting and gun rights morons who are among the most effective weapons of the corporate elite who don't want to see a new National Park created.

Excitement at Pemaquid.

I didn't take this photo. Found it on the Internet somewhere.

I've been to this spot three times in my life. It's called Pemaquid Point and is in Maine. The first time I went I was just a very small child. My parents turned their back on me and I wandered down that long spine of exposed rock to get a closer look at the ocean. But that day the surf was very rough with massive waves, some of them crashing completely over the rock. Yeah, I could have been swept out to sea.

All I remember about the event are the screams and adults running down to grab me up and take me back to safer ground.

Climbing Katahdin

Some years back, after I got my job with USPS and actually found myself with some leisure time on my hands and some money in my pocket, I decided that it was time that I visited Maine to climb Katahdin.

Katahdin is the highest peak in Maine. It's not the highest mountain on the east coast, and it's not even the highest peak in New England. But at just a few feet shy of one mile above sea level, it's still an impressive peak by the standards of the east coast of North America. In addition, it was raked so thoroughly by glaciers in recent geological history that it more resembles a western mountain than our typical eastern ones.

I'd wanted to climb it since I first read of it as a teenager. So I flew up to Boston, met up with my nephew Chuck who works for Defense Intelligence, and we drove on up to Millinocket Maine to climb Katahdin.

Unfortunately, this was in the days before digital cameras, so all of my photos were made on film and I haven't transferred them to my hard drive. The weather, also, did not cooperate so we hiked largely under dark clouds and--once we reached the summit--rain.

But we did it. Almost thirty years after I'd first read about that mountain, I climbed it. It was an amazing experience--maybe the highlight of my hiking days. But I want to go back and do it again, this time in better weather.

Katahdin, the East's unlikeliest peak.

One Year Ago

One year ago:

We were staying here, at Joe Dodge Lodge in New Hampshire.

At this time one year ago, I was hiking up the Tuckerman Ravine Trail to the summit of Mount Washington, the highest peak in New England, and the highest peak in the Appalachian Mountains north of Roan Mountain (in Tennessee).

Since I've never had the opportunity to hike out west, the nearest I've been able to come to the kind of scenery one expects to see in places like the Rocky Mountains are the peaks and summits of New England. I have never been disappointed in the scenery when I go hiking in Maine and New Hampshire.

I never got tired of looking down into Tuckerman Ravine on my way to the summit of Mount Washington. I look at this and can almost see the glacier that carved this enormous cirque.

The weather was appropriately overcast, cold, and blustery by the time I reached the highest point on the mountain. I really didn't want it to be otherwise.

The views on the way down were no less spectacular than on the trip up. Here I was approaching Lion's Head, one of the more amazing sub-peaks on Mount Washington.

And a double rainbow rewarded me as I hiked along toward Lions Head.

Other hikers passed us going up, toward Lions Head as we headed down to Joe Dodge Lodge and a hearty meal and a hot shower and a soft bed.

Looking back on my adventure of last year only makes me go a bit more stir crazy as Carole and I remain stuck in Charlotte due to her impending surgery. We'll have a wait of several weeks after that before we can head off into the wilds. Until then, I have only my memories of past trips and photographs from some of my amazing hikes to increase my level of utter and complete frustration! ARGH!!!!

With any freaking luck at all, I'll be able to hitch up the trailer, strap on my daypack, and head up into the Black Mountains of North Carolina for views like this one, as I did in the summer of 2007. Wish me just a little bloody fortune.