13 August 2010

Having not grown up around it nor ever been interested in living near it, I don’t know much about the sea. The idea of sailing—I had a lesson once on the lake near where my parents live—instills the same fear that flying does, though I imagine that if I were a mere passenger, I would love it. I certainly don’t want to swim in it. Drowning—lungs panicking and staggering for breath—holds a particular terror for me as someone with asthma who, when younger, faced frequent bouts of pneumonia and bronchitis. And besides, there are things in the water that can eat you. But even with that, I’ve always been fascinated by the sea, by its cycles, by its sheer vastness, and I’ve always wanted to learn more about it.

Now that I’m living right here on the Atlantic, I have even more reason to learn about it. From what I understand, the tide circles in six-hour increments. Three hours to reach high tide, the slightest pause, and then three hours to reach low tide. A long, drawn-out inhale and exhale—that’s how I like to think of the sea’s tides, its breath. So you have two high tides and two low tides in a twelve-hour period. The tides phase with the moon, though, so each day high tide and low tide are an hour later than they were the previous day. I find that all enthralling.

This morning, Tim, Leslie, and I drove the forty-five minutes to Deer Isle, a small island community reached by a narrow, high green bridge that spans the water. The farmers’ market was in Stonington today, and this market is actually said to be one of the best in Maine. It reminded me a lot of the street markets in Paris, actually. The vendors were selling everything from Indian food to vegetables and fruit to granola to bread to chocolate to crafts. I think it was my favorite market that I’ve been to here, due to the liveliness and most likely to the fact that I got to walk around more instead of just standing behind a table hawking peaches.

Today was my first time off since I’ve been here, and I spent the afternoon exploring. I drove aimlessly down several different roads just to see where they led and ended up on high hills fingering down into the bay. Then I drove out to the WoodenBoat School, a school here in town that’s famous for, yep, you guessed it, building wooden boats. Since it was a Friday afternoon, not much was going on there, but just the buildings and the small harbor were gorgeous. Just watching the careful crafting made me think of the time my sister and I found a stack of plywood under the cabin we were vacationing at in north Georgia. The two of us hauled the lumber out from under the house, found some old rope lying about, and fashioned a raft. She was a beauty, and we found a piece of charcoal in the fire pit and carefully wrote on her side The Wanderer. Much to our dismay, Dad wouldn’t let us try her out. We were rather crushed, though I doubt she would have floated even if we’d put her in the water. If I had the money, I’d love to build my own sleek wooden kayak. I think I would name her The Wanderer in honor of our first attempt to build a vessel. At any rate, I took a schedule with me, so I can go back during the week sometime and watch some of the classes.

I then drove out to Naskeag Point. The tide was high, so I didn’t get to explore any of the shoreline. Instead, I sat at a picnic bench and read (I’m rereading all of my Mary Stewart books. I own them all and have read each of them at least, oh, ten times probably. They never get old. She’s an absolute genius, and when I wrote her a letter and a couple weeks later received a handwritten reply, I almost died. She is my all-time favorite). It seems to me that high tide and low tide smell different. High tide smells of fish and other sea life. I sat there for several hours reading, listening to the wind in the trees and the glug-glug-glug of the lobster boats as they puttered by.

Low tide, however, smells briny and crisp. And I have to say that I prefer those hours when the seas pulls back, when she folds back her reach and allows we mere mortals to glimpse the world beneath her. At the bridge where my breath was first stolen, there’s an island to the left, unreachable except by boat when the tide is in. I waited for a few hours today and when the sea began its gradual slide back, I pulled my Wellies from my trunk, donned them, and crossed the narrow, gravelly strip of shore that the low tide exposed and that led to the island. The island is small, huge boulders and scattered shells leading out of the water and up to its forested center. I scrambled over the rocks, waded through shallow tide pools, and slipped over seaweed beds, exploring this craggy outpost. Alone on that uninhabited island, clambering from shaley rock to rock, I let my imagination take off. I was an explorer on a quest through unchartered territory, where it was my duty, my privilege to fill in the yawning blankness on the parchment map. I was a castaway, lone and independent and relying on myself and the benevolence of a fickle sea for survival. I was a fisherman’s wife who knows that she will always be her husband’s second love, for his first will always be the water that eddies around my rubber boots. I was a keeper of the light, a beacon on a raging winter’s night, holding in my hands the means to guide others safely home...

the island I explored

WoodenBoat's harbor