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Health & Fitness

A Weekend on the Island

"I landed to see the country."

—Samuel de Champlain, on his exploration of Maine, 1604


I spent Easter weekend on an island in northern Maine. It was really northern Maine — maybe 50 miles as the crow flies from the Canadian border.

It's five hours from Portsmouth up to the island, well past the Passagassawakeag and Penobscot rivers, past old Fort Knox, a mid-eighteenth century citadel. My friend Rob has been telling me about the place for a couple of years, and I was finally making the trip up there with him. 

Usually he'd take his daughter along, to get the place ready for use from late spring into the fall.

The island has been in his family for over four decades now. His dad bought it for a pittance back in 1967 — probably because no sane Mainer wanted the hassle of an island — a little piece of heaven looking out on Pleasant Bay and its numerous islands, and way, way, way off in the distance, you can even see Nash Island lighthouse flashing. 

The timing of this trip couldn't have been better. My wife recently purchased me a copy of Champlain's Dream, by historian David Hackett Fischer, a biography of the great French soldier, humanist, seaman, explorer, cartographer, and artist, and one of a small group of people responsible for France's interest in North America in the early seventeenth century.

Remote and breath-taking, Maine was claimed, and fought over, as part of both New France and New England for many years. French interest was initially quite haphazard and lackadaisical, but thanks to the efforts of a select few individuals, most notably Samuel de Champlain and the Sieur de Mons, royal enthusiasm was eventually aroused and significant efforts made to explore and settle l'Acadie, as it was called.

Champlain spent a lot of time along this coast. With his "passion for discovery", as he put it, he traveled south from present day Nova Scotia and New Brunswick on at least three occasions, from 1604 to 1606, mapping the area with meticulous care and never missing a chance to explore the surrounding country to investigate the flora and fauna and make contact with native peoples — venturing inland as far as present day Bangor and Bath.

Champlain described this area as "beautiful, but not good for settlement." He may have been on to something, considering how sparsely populated it remains four hundred years later.

Those who endure the rigors of a long, cold Maine winter "Down East" are a friendly, soft spoken lot, but serious and deliberate, with accents so strong that even Rob — who has been coming around here his whole life — still has a little trouble understanding them.

"How do they survive up here?" I asked, noting the grinding poverty and lack of employment opportunities. 

"Multiple revenue streams," he replied. Many are also subsidized, he added.

Through its silly "rails-to-trails" program the State of Maine tore up all the rail lines, at great cost to taxpayers, and turned them into walking/biking/snowmobiling paths — used by nobody, from what I could see. "Worse," Rob said, "if there were any kind of economic boom up here, there's no longer a rail system to support it." 

Alcoholism and drug abuse are common. 

Bar Harbor was distant memory by the time we turned south down a road covered in bumpy, broken pavement that soon turned into a dirt and gravel track, used infrequently at best. Nothing less than a good, sturdy SUV would do at that point, for the road — if you could call it that — eventually became more of a dirt path that ended abruptly at a spot overlooking a small, quiet cove.

"That's it," Rob said, gesturing toward the island sitting tall in the water at two hours before low tide, a rocky point about three or four acres in total and covered with fir, spruce, and birch trees stabbing at a cloudy sky. 

It excited me to think that Champlain himself could well have set eyes on this very place.

The forecast called for cold weather, but not rain and certainly no snow. It was a bit windy, and the water was a little choppy, but I wasn't worried about the crossing.

Rob stores a 14 foot Meyer aluminum fishing boat nearby, essential for transporting food, clothing, and even water (this early in the year, anyway, but more on that later) out to the island. We loaded it up quick to beat the tide — if you time it wrong, you're thigh-deep in mud dragging the boat, full of gear, across the mud flats. That didn't sound like any fun at all.

It took maybe ten minutes to row the two or three hundred yards across, against the wind, Rob's alleged outboard motor currently being held some miles away with a promise of repair.

Rob was kind enough to fill that short time with stories about going out without a motor, only to be threatened by certain death when the wind picked up and switched direction, and the waves, even in that small cove, started coming over the bow.

"If you go over, get rid of your boots right away," he advised, looking at me seriously. 

I didn't think about it until later, but he was messing with me a little bit; the water wasn't more than a few feet deep at that point, and fears of being "swept out to sea" were only realistic if we were in the middle of a howling storm. I had a laugh at myself — as I'm sure he had at the time.

Interestingly, you can't see the house from the mainland; it's only visible from a couple of angles. Tying up, we dragged our gear — everything we'd need for the weekend, since we had work to do on Saturday and wouldn't have time to make a special trip into town — up the rocks, through the trees and down an overgrown path, partially blocked by a large fir tree that must have fallen over the winter. A few paces more and we were into a small clearing, looking up at a beautiful, two-story log cabin.

It's sits on the south side of the island, built by Rob's dad shortly after he bought the property. Full of life and character accumulating for almost half a century now, the log walls, brick chimney, and well-worn plank floor are a testament to solid, conscientious building. Walking up on the porch, staring south, out at the Bay, I was content, excited about the hard work and fresh air awaiting me the next day.

The kitchen's walls are covered in hanging pots and pans, and interesting old pieces of convenience not seen in the "civilized" world for decades, maybe even a century. For example, there was a small metal device mounted to the wall holding those large boxes of wood matches; you drop the box down inside and slide the insert out slightly, allowing several matches to spill from the opening into a small, upwardly curved tray, ready to hand. 

Carved in the kitchen tabletop are the names of many visitors over the years. I was informed that tradition demanded I participate, so I sought out and found a barren corner, carving in a simple "Scott '14" and instantly feeling like I belonged there.

Many paintings adorn the walls, a couple done by my friend's mother. All the way across the west wall of the living room are built-in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, littered with board games and old books, even a copy of the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence. I found several old copies of The Freeman magazine (which printed a dozen of my articles back in 2002/2003) from the late 1970s.

I pulled one off the shelf, chuckling with familiarity. My friend came over to see what I had found.

"That's how my dad discovered libertarianism," he told me. "He found one of those, in a hotel room drawer in Memphis."

Funnily enough, that's how Rob and I met — in a roundabout sort of way. 

Back in early 2006 my wife and I were in Portsmouth. Having signed up for the Free State Project, we started exploring the possibility of moving to New Hampshire as soon as possible, and had come up for a long weekend to look at houses. (We would have moved to New Hampshire with or without the FSP; we'd both been talking about moving here since the late 90s, when we were still in Oklahoma and before moving to Virginia. Even in the mid-90s, when we lived in England, we were talking about a long-term move to somewhere in New England, maybe Vermont.) 

Our real estate agent knew Rob and his wife, but casually. She'd just given birth to their first child, and they were hoping to find a larger place. One of the houses for sale in Portsmouth at the time was right across the street and down a bit from them, so when we stopped to have a look our agent suggested we pop over and say hello.

We were all introduced, making small talk for a few minutes before moving on with our respective lives. My wife and I passed on the house, choosing instead to buy a place across town a few months later, and that was that.

Then five years later we were hosting a party for Gary Johnson, the two-term former governor of New Mexico and GOP presidential candidate, and seventy people showed up! As guests were filing out at the end of the evening, a woman stopped to thank my wife.

"You know," she said, "we met a libertarian couple, years ago, that were thinking about moving to Portsmouth. We always wondered what happened to them."

A few prying questions later, and we figured out she was talking about us. We hadn't recognized each other at all.

The friendship has only grown, to our great pleasure.

The invitation to "come up to the island" has been made a few times since, but only now was I able to summon the courage to face the journey — I strive to rarely leave Portsmouth — and the hard work I was told awaited me there.

We're not real close, Manuel and I.

That's Manuel Labor I'm talking about, in case you're wondering. Lifting a pint at the Coat of Arms can hardly be called work.

My friend and his two brothers actually lived on the island for a solid year when they were young, with their mother; she took them there to live free and off the land, inspired by Helen and Scott Nearing's The Good Life and a radical leftist named John Holt. Rob's oldest brother worked digging clams during the summer, earning pretty good money, and they filled their days roaming the island's many trails, chopping wood for the stove, making frequent runs to a local public well to stock up on fresh water, swimming in the salty, cold cove through the summer, playing war, repairing the house when needed, and even surviving the famous Blizzard of '78.

Rob says he sees eagles from time to time, and across the bay, on a small outcropping poking out from the mainland, seals will sometimes gather, but we didn't see any on this trip. Seagulls were everywhere (of course), and lots of big — really big — crows, but there was also a lot of loons and large flocks of buffleheads around. Birds, the wind, and the water were really the only noise, except for an occasional lobster boat that puttered by.

It was cold up there, partly cloudy, the temperature not breaking 50 degrees the whole weekend and dropping down around freezing each night. After several beers and a junk food dinner of hotdogs and canned chili, we called it a night, retiring to our beds secure in the knowledge that Mother Nature would be calling soon enough.

There's no sewer line on the island, and it would be a long, cold walk to the outhouse later.

There's no water line on the island either. Back in '99 Rob and his wife quit their jobs and spent five months installing a system that gathers rain water in three large cisterns via the rain gutters, filtering it numerous times before pumping it into the house, the power for the pump supplied by batteries charged from a single solar panel on the roof, also installed during that same period.

But this system requires a few weeks of rainfall. Hooking it up for the season was part of the reason we were there, getting the place ready for when Rob's family starts coming up next month.

There would be no running water this weekend.

Food is stored in a propane-powered 'fridge, and cooked on a propane stove, the fuel brought out on the boat in small tanks when needed. 

Heat comes from a fireplace, or one of two wood stoves, one in the kitchen and another in the master bedroom; the wood comes from downed trees found on the island. 

The few lights in the house are mostly propane, but a couple are electric, powered by the same solar panel as the water pump. 

That's self-sufficiency right there.

And yes, Mr. President — they did build it.

No public water line, no public sewage line, no electricity, no road, no school they're using, and no hope of emergency services — police, fire, or ambulance, should they ever need it — and for this, they pay almost $4,000 a year in property taxes. 

Their "fair share" — somehow.

Rising around six o'clock the next morning, I was surprised at how warm the place was. Peaking into the stove, I saw plenty of glowing coals so I threw another log in, watching it quickly catch fire. Rob was still snoring away upstairs, so I took my coffee and wandered down to the rocks, watching the loons dive for their breakfast and enjoying the sun rising over the water.

After a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and fried bread, we headed out for a day's work.

Clearing the gutters around the house was a first priority, removing six months of leaves and pine needles and dirt, and placing screens over the downspouts — stage one of the water-filtering process. While I did this — a tedious, but relatively easy project — Rob got busy preparing the cisterns — a complicated process that kept him under the house for some time. 

After that we saw to some minor maintenance matters, like a wobbly back porch and clearing away the mess in a supply shed caused by the meeting of mice and a large bag of grass seed. Hooking the pipes back up to the gutters took just a few minutes, and then it was lunchtime.

We ate two big BLTs each, sitting on the porch sipping tea and gazing south across the bay, through a modest sized clearing in the trees designed for just such an activity. Quickly jumping up to stand at the edge of the porch when the sun broke through clouds, but for never more than a few seconds, we caught a few rays of light and enjoyed a short break to the late morning chill.

After lunch we strolled around the island, Rob pointing out spots where he and his brothers liked to swim when they were kids, or old forts they'd built as part of their many war games, and the multitude of vague, overgrown trails that zig-zag across the island. I saw the grave site of a much-loved dog buried a few years ago, and we came across a large pile of eagle skat, and many deer droppings.

"They swim out here sometimes," Rob said. "I've scared up a couple in the past, and boy do they run!"

The afternoon went quickly. Rob got busy with the chainsaw, clearing the main trail of that fallen fir tree, cutting it into small chunks for transport by wheelbarrow back up to the house. I split it up with a maul, stacking it on the porch to dry, enjoying the hard work and remembering my own youth, in Oklahoma, when we lived in a house for a few years heated exclusively with wood. My daily task had been to split whatever stumps my father had left for me, something I enjoyed immensely, and still do.

Rob started cutting smaller trees that stood in front of the house, hoping over time to expand their modest "front yard" a bit, to provide a bigger play area for the kids, but also, eventually, for an expanded front porch. I thought it might be fun to help build that one day.

The main trail was overgrown, and it took an hour or so with a pair of garden shears to widen it and lower either side to shoulder height. When done, I was quite proud of the aesthetic quality of my work. Rob said it looked like the hedgerow of an English country estate. I thought so too.

The hard work was done now — it really wasn't much, to be honest — and as the sun started its descent behind us we boarded the Meyer for a quick jaunt over to a sandbar poking out from the western shore, a rocky beach on its north side and beautiful, pristine sand on the other — the work of countless years of erosion.  

And speaking of erosion: climbing a small hill at the end of the beach, we stood at the edge of a cliff that is getting perilously close to a small summer cottage, evidence of the constant, steady change right before us in the form of a rock and dirt slide, topped by a fir tree that just days or maybe weeks before had stood at the top of the cliff instead of at its base.

Fighting a strong wind and an even stronger current, we paddled back to the island to dine on Pabst Blue Ribbon and marinated chicken, cooking corn on the cob still in the husk right on the grill next to the meat, eating it without salt or pepper or butter — just piping hot and absolutely delicious.

The sun was going down, its fading light bouncing off Pleasant Bay. In the distance, we could see Nash Island Light flashing and waves crashing over Bunker Ledge. A few more beers and a small glass of Scotch, followed by a darts rematch that left me as demoralized as my defeat the night before, and I was looking for my bed again. It had been a fun day, with a bit of hard work and plenty of fresh air. My skin was warm, slightly reddened by the intermittent sunlight. 

Rising early again, around 6 o'clock, I made myself a large cup of coffee and found a comfy spot at the southern tip of the island. Two loons were out and about, and a small flock of buffleheads flew by, quite close. I sat for fifteen or twenty minutes, thinking that the weekend had gone by much quicker than I'd hoped. I missed my wife, and civilization, but I knew I would miss this place immensely.

Crossing the cove a few hours later, after another hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs, packing up, washing what few dishes we'd used, sweeping the floor, and locking the cabin up until next month, when Rob will come back with his wife and kids, I stared at the water and rocks and birds and looked forward to my own next visit to the island.

I wish that I'd been born in Maine, I thought — as my friend rowed us away. I was feeling melancholy and poetic, watching small waves lap against the slowly approaching mainland shore.


 


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