Messing about in boats

Mom and daughter, just in off the water.

There's more to say and show about the Old Stone Bridge, but it's the turn of the Medomak today.

The photo of Rachel and me is blurry, a hand-held selves-portrait, taken at the close of day. We had just been out in the red canoe.  Midcoast Maine is plenteous in opportunities to mess about in boats.

Waldoboro lies at the Medomak's head of tide. A series of waterfalls bisects the town and transforms the river from a small, swift, woodsy freshwater stream into a broad, brackish estuary. Putting in here, at the town landing, sets one up for boating among great blue heron, cormorants, and the occasional exploratory seal.  Putting in at the top of the falls, perhaps in the town picnic park, sets one off upstream, under the low route 1 bridge. A few strokes of the paddles brings your craft past the back door of Smeltzers' funeral and cremation business, housed in a log cabin. Then behind a hairdresser's, then past Waldoboro's work-out center. Now, the trees close in overhead and the hum of Route 1 traffic fades. If it's late in the day you may be treated to the attentions of a sturgeon, leaping out of the water (always in the direction you are NOT looking) and slapping the surface. By the time you turn your head at the loud Thwack, the fish has sunk out of sight. I don't know if they play this way with fishermen. I still have the large feathers we picked off the water after we disturbed a wild turkey perched on an overhanging bough.  Although I've never canoed that far, I know that eventually the Medomak becomes too rocky for my tame version of messing around in boats.

There's a lot more that can be said about the Medomak, about its lower reaches that bring one to the Gulf of Maine and about its glory days of wooden ship-building and commerce. Tomorrow is another blog. Or maybe this afternoon!

Retraction on Reporting live from a neglected nexus

Late November view of a memorial park, the Old Stone Bridge in Wayland, Mass.

View from the 1957 replacement bridge, now itself in need of TLC.

[See new material at end of blog entry]
Just a few hundred paces from our front door we can step onto the stone remains of a living monument, at of one of the most crucial crossing points of the Revolutionary War.  The Old Stone Bridge across the Sudbury river in Wayland occupies the site of a bridge from the 1700s. As the British closed off one by one the bridges that would allow passage of soldiers and arms to Boston, they overlooked just one:  the predecessor of our Old Stone Bridge.  General Knox, conducting cannon from Fort Ticonderoga  in upstate New York, knew of that small breach in the British line and used it to arm the Bostonians.


What is it like to stand, not on a memorial constructed in modern times, but on an actual artifact of our history?  This is more real than any reality show. You can see by the pictures that time and the action of floods and freezes has crippled the bridge. The masonry stood, though, until a flood washed the west bank out from under its pilings. Rather than try any longer to accommodate modern traffic to the narrow monument, the state cut off the end of the old bridge and built a new bridge just upriver and rerouted Stonebridge road. Other pictures show that the newer bridge, built in 1957, now needs TLC or it will predecease its ancient stone neighbor. 


The newest pictures, added 8/6/11, show that the Old Stone Bridge is NOT completely neglected, as it appeared to be last fall and winter. Note the new flowers, new flag. But by August, the newness is getting shaggy. It's hard to keep even half a step ahead of nature's urge to retake the America  that the British don't want anymore.

Roy Barnacle photo.

Substitution

Hamilton House, as seen from Vaughan Woods

By rights, I should be showing the Sudbury River tonight. Due to two technical glitches, I can show neither of the two rivers that star in this blog. Instead -- and in keeping with my theme of abundance -- I show my photo of the Salmon Falls River.

The Hamilton House dates from an era of American cornucopia, when Berwick, Maine, was bigger than Boston. The colonists were exporting the trunks of gigantic trees to the Old Country and other consumers of lumber, masts, and firewood. The river was the highway for commerce, defence of the colony, civil rebellion, trysts, and fishin'.  Read more about that era and this exact place in The Tory Lover, by Sarah Orne Jewett.

Vaughan Woods lies along the Salmon Falls river on the Maine side. The property was pasturage for the Hamilton House farm animals, but when Jewett bought the place at the end of the 19th Century she ordered that this section be left fallow. Left to its native inclinations, it regrew its piney woods. Deep, dark and criss-crossed with unobtrusively manicured walking and horseback riding trails, this jewel of a state park is a joy today and a link to the past.

My Old Maine River

The Medomak is one of Maine's most beautiful and unspoiled rivers. Ironically, it runs through one of the state's more populated and prosperous regions. It's a short river, but drains a huge watershed. 

The view from my kitchen sink, pictured below, focuses on one of the few points of ready access to the river, so complete has been attention to protective zoning. 

See the pear tree in the middle of Mrs. Creamer's field? My first husband used to climb it every year and trim off the rampant new growth. I was not able to keep up the project after he passed away.

The Medomak at this point is still an estuary, viewed here at high tide.  Six hours from this instant, only a modest trickle will flow through. 

By the way, my house with this extravagant view is for sale: 

View from my former kitchen sink window.

179 Friendship Street, Waldoboro, Maine.   

diamonds

What is the significance of the fourteen little diamonds lined up shoulder to shoulder around my wedding band? I like to think of it as double the Biblical symbol of completion. The solitaire on the engagement ring reminds me of unity, the basic quality of the universe.  Uni-verse, one song. (Thank you, Laurance Doyle.)

horn of plenty

My new river valley is the Great Meadows Nature Reserve in eastern Massachusetts. The Sudbury River flows silently by not 100 yards from our front door. "Our" is my new husband, Roy Henry Barnacle, and me. Most of the people who know me, know me as Sara Mitchell Gallant. That I was for many years, until widowed two days after Thanksgiving 2008. You have missed your opportunity to feel sorry for me for losing Tom, for I have embarked upon an entirely new adventure in marrying Roy. Roy was born and raised in London, England, with the exception of the years he spent as a child evacuee in rural England and in Wales. I look at his kindly face and wonder how Hitler could have targeted such a child as he was. Roy has been a naturalized American for maybe 40 years, and maybe sometime I'll write about how we met. It was an unusual encounter because set in a small-town public library, and the telling of it might give rural singles too much hope.

My former river valley was of the Medomak, along the coast of Maine. I'll learn how to post pictures, so you can see how I hop from one beauty spot to another. Now, I must join Roy in getting in wood for our fireplace.