feste_sylvain

Tuesday, September 13 started slowly. I mostly slept well, except that in my haste to fall asleep, I failed to make a camp pillow out of my laundry. This resulted in a stiff neck, which was my own fault. But other than that, the air was clear and cool, I could breathe easily without antihistamines, and the sleeping pad I got just before this trip proved most effective at smoothing the various bumps (rocks, roots) from under my sleeping bag. Mostly a win.

I listened to the motorboats come into the inlet, where men would come out onto the mud flats at low tide to dig for bloodworms. This part of Maine is the only place in the world where these bloodworms live, and they get fifty cents a worm to collect them for Japanese fishermen to use them for bait.

I got up before the kids did, which made it easier to amble off to a "see-far" in order to piss in peace. (For those who wanted to shit in the woods, they required a "two-see-far", or find a tree far away from the tents, and once you get there, find a tree far from that.) On my way back, I stripped many of the trees of the dead branches down around my eye level for the morning fire. By the time I got back, Hirsch was awake and preparing the fire pit and breakfast ingredients: scrambled eggs on bagels. Once enough of the kids were up, we had them build and start the fire, fetch more wood, and get breakfast started. Hirsch then assigned one of the more hyper kids to wake the stragglers, much to everyone's amusement.

Did I mention that they wash the dishes with sea-water? And soap. They also washed their hands with this combination.

All three groups came together at a campfire site on True Point, the southernmost part of Chewonki Neck, which overlooked Oak Island to the south.


The chief instructor (named Kate) told the story of the formation of this area (glacial retreat), which had the kids pretty much entranced. We would then prepare, obtain life-jackets and paddles, and hike off to the boat docks, where we would canoe out into the salt marsh and cord grasses at high tide.

Canoeing. I had completely forgotten about canoeing. I think I canoed once in the last twenty years; I remember taking my wife out for a brief jaunt, most likely at some company picnic or other. I can canoe as the only paddler in the boat and keep it heading true. I get very little upper-body exercize in my life, and I enjoy doing this. But I don't own a canoe, and if I were to get one, I strongly doubt I'd get out very often. I need to find excuses and opportunities to canoe more often.

Anyway, as with most of these activities, the kids were assigned the heavy hauling work of carrying the canoes from the storage area to the launching dock. After a while, I was asked to help, just to speed things along. Whichever kid got stuck with me (the gangly boy, as it turned out) would help bring up the rear to make sure we didn't lose any struggling stragglers. So we got in our boat last.

As soon as I stepped into the boat, it started to fill with water. Seriously. The fiberglass canoe had a crack above the water-line, until any weight was in the boat and the crack was suddenly below the water line. We shouted this status, and the instructors decided that it would be better for some canoes to have a passenger than try to find another boat. So we pulled that boat out of the water, and two canoes came back to take us on as riders. After some shuffling, I wound up in the bow of another canoe, steered by a boy with very little experience.

I did my best to offset his bad steering from the front as we made our way from the docks to the salt marsh. Once there, our group was assigned the task of finding what animals lived in this place: blue heron, turkey vulture, horseshoe crabs, minnows of some form, mosquitoes, dragonflies, loons; this place was rich.

We all landed at a rock, and spent some time ashore to look for more wildlife in the forest along the shore. We reallocated people for the paddle back, so I got to sit astern and steer properly, especially as we'd be returning against the current of the incoming tide. One of the other boats, with no adults aboard, had such bad steering problems they wound up on the other shore for a while, but they managed to recover.

As another of the groups came in (while we were returning our canoes to storage), one of the other chaperons totally lost control while coming to dock, and wound up falling into the drink. So that was exciting.

Dinner that evening was macaroni and cheese. Real cheese, sliced from a large block of cheddar by two of the kid cooks. That many 12-year-olds around the fire, and nobody made a "who cut the cheese?" joke. I was proud of them.

We hiked back to our campsite in the dark, and this time I remembered to make a pillow.