more Vinalhaven. and lobsters for dinner

An excellent quiet day in Vinalhaven - there really is nothing like an island, and this one reminds me so much of the Île aux Moines, the other side of the Atlantic - so of course the minute I set foot on it, I loved it to bits.

Rocks, seaweed,

and a hike with a monarch butterfly, and, on a tiny off-shore island, lots of seals (not pictured),

and Alice and Charlotte trekking valiantly through the bushes - Charlotte's hat making her look very like Vera ...

The Historical Society was full of documents and images of the island's granite industry - followed by netting (not so much for fish, but nets to keep flies off horses), domestic crafts and life; local businesses, and of course lobstering.

Did I say lobsters?  Of course, it was very fresh lobsters for dinner:

trying to put out of our mind the fact that they'd been in the ocean enjoying their lobstery lives this morning.

And then the moon and stars over a quiet Vinalhaven night.

dawn to dusk - Bar Harbor to Vinalhaven

From our room balcony this morning - pure Sugimoto marine fog.  Somewhere out there there's a cruise liner, but one couldn't, by that point, tell that.

Driving away from town - misty bogs and trees.

Over the bridge at Barnsport - itself spectacular, and with a formidable looking ... what?  prison?  military installation? on the right - googling showed that it was Fort Knox! but it was long past by the time I found that out...

Then the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, with lots of Andrew Wyeth as well as Maine art - I'd post examples if we weren't staying in a friend's house with no internet and only very shaky phone coverage, so I'm typing fast while I have a bar or two of contact ...

... and it is, indeed, isolate, on Vinalhaven, an island off the mainland: an hour and a quarter on a ferry to get here, and then the most extraordinary, beautiful, seaweed-filled sunset.

 

a wet day in Acadia National Park

It was wet - very wet. Before it got to extremely wet, we went for a walk along the southern shoreline of the Acadia National Park, with me wondering at every turn who painted what where - this looks very much like a Frederic Church sunrise location, but obviously there wasn't much sun today.  Indeed, none.

This was dramatically barren (and wet).

There are some terrific little paths between thick granite walls - this went up to Otter Point (no otters in sight, alas).

The wet woods around the Wild Gardens of Acadia were stunning -

and here are two of my book chapters collapsed into one shot - a slug, and some very striking lichen.

Out of the park, we drove to Mother's Kitchen, which had been recommended to us (and yes, I'd recommend the curried chickpea sandwich), and this seasonal decoration was round the back - pumpkins in buoy nets.

Since it then became even wetter, we were very glad indeed to be in a comfortable, dry hotel ...

 

Acadia peninsula and Blue Hill

Extraordinarily beautiful views from our balcony this morning - silver and blue light.

A short drive to Seal Beach, with plenty of kayakers in very fancy kayaks, and lots of seaweed-

and a guy shoveling seaweed (straight out of my seaweed chapter!) but also rather juxtaposing the difference between the moneyed and unmoneyed in northern Maine.  This seaweed will be used as fertilizer - apparently it's especially good for tomato plants.

Driving anywhere today was sheer autumnal beauty.

Then up to Blue Hill, where Lisa Durkee, an old and dear friend is pastor of the First Congregationalist Church - a stunningly beautiful church, inside and out, with what I think of as old church, pre Gothic revival proportions - the building dates from 1843. She is doing wonderful work there, not least with social and food programs benefiting those in need over a fairly wide area.  And it was just terrific to see her again: I've known her since 1994, when she took a Bread Loaf class with me on the Brontës and George Eliot - my first summer ever in Santa Fe - and then over some subsequent years there - years without which I'd never have got to know New Mexico, and probably would never have moved to the US ...

One of the very striking windows in the church - Angel with the Anchor - by Mary Tillinghast, from the late 1900s: she was a pupil of Carolus Duran, in Paris; had a disastrous business relationship with John LaFarge, and was overall a completely fascinating woman and designer.

And here's Lisa, with another old Bread Loaf face, Larry Abbott, who'd driven up to say hello - great to see him, too! - as we had a picnic lunch down by the port.

Walking through the woods to and from the Blue Hill Co-op - which reinforced the image of the community as an envisbly socially responsible one.  A terrific day.

 

more bits of Maine

Another impressive sunrise in Lincolnville, and then a very fine heron on the shore.

The view from the top of Mount Battie, just outside Camden/Lincolnville - seeing the lines of cars yesterday to go up this (very small) mountain, we thought we'd better wait until early this morning, which was definitely the right decision.

Off down the Blue Hill peninsular, with a stop on Caterpillar Hill - 

full of bilberries, autumnal wild flowers, and a view down to Walker Pond, where there was a particularly nasty British massacre of the Wabanaki in the late 1600s or early 1700s.

Onwards to Stonington, and these flowers in a coffee shop,

and much evidence of lobstering.

The view from our exceedingly comfortable hotel, just outside Bar Harbor - grey weather, still 

and this, in a bookstore in downtown Bar Harbor, a very effective display of banned/censored books.  It's been fascinating driving round Maine, from a political point of view - many Susan Collins - Our Senator signs, but also many others not just supporting Troy Jackson, but drawing spot-on parallels between T---- and inflation, war, and so on.

 

a quiet day in and around Camden ME

Beautiful sunshine all day (it's not going to last ... there's the remnants of a hurricane on its way ...), and a pretty quiet day after a week's rushing around.  View from the hotel at breakfast ... then down to its shoreline, with plenty of bladderwrack,

and fringed with autumnal trees.

The steep stairs up ...

Then into Camden - about five miles away - which was beyond full of traffic and tourists, but which also starred a bookstore-and-cafe that excelled in both departments.

Here's the beautiful harbor.

I spent the afternoon drawing the view at the hotel ... and then this was the view at Megunticook Lake (from a Wabanaki word meaning "Great Swells of the Sea" or "Big Mountain Harbor") on our way to dinner ... it was hard not to go full picture-postcard photo style today...