If you were to view the Baker Island Dance Floor through the lens of a time-lapse camera, you would see that there is a dance going on — one that has taken place over centuries.
Calm bright summer days bring a relative flurry of activity. The dancers most often arrive quietly, in small groups. Mixed among them are those who will only sit. There are, however, usually a few who will dance. They feel the wind, scan the horizon, and listen to the waves breaking on the rocks — as if to internalize the rhythm; and then, although no band is playing, they pantomime a few steps. Sometimes it is a solitary person who rises and stands in the sunlight on that shelf of brilliant pink granite, at the brink of the broad Atlantic, who then steps out an impromptu waltz with the sea.
By the time you reach there, you have crossed four miles of ocean. Perhaps the seas have been rough. Maybe your passage through the Cranberry Islands has been slowed by fog. After landing your boat on the rocky shore and clambering up through the sea weed zone, you hike for twenty minutes — up through the meadow, past the old farmhouse, to the lighthouse and then down a narrow trail that at times seems to go nowhere, and then you arrive at this place to which people have been coming for hundreds of years for picnics and dancing.
The dance floor is what you have come for. Photos don’t do it justice. You have come a long way for this and have probably been to many granite shorelines in your time, so you come with some skepticism that this will be anything special. And then the trail opens out to the dance floor and you forget all of that. It’s a lonely place, an awe-inspiring place, a wild place. You feel like you are on the edge of something — and you are. Sky, rock, and sea dwarf all that is human, including human thought. You get pushed out of yourself. It’s hard to know what to do. At the dance floor, the suggested activity is to dance.
Some who arrive there do so as a result of being lured by the brief description under “Unique Natural Features” in the Delorme Atlas. Some learn about it by reading kayaking or cruising books. Others come via boat tours out of Northeast Harbor. Still others come as part of organized groups. Penobscot Paddles describes their own recent trip to the Baker Island Dance Floor in their blog here. Ten years ago, a group of 26 social dancers gathered there for a dance that was recorded in a series of photos. Read about it and view the photos at http://www.cranberryisles.com/baker/dance.html The 2001 event was a re-enactment of sorts of events in the 1800’s, when Cranberry Islanders first began using Baker Island for picnics and dancing.
It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Native Americans did some dancing there as well.
Baker Island is about four miles south of Mt. Desert Island and is the outermost of the five islands that make up the Cranberry Isles. Settlers were living on the Cranberry Isles by the early 1760’s. The island has a 43-foot lighthouse situated at its center that is now nearly obscured by trees.
Resources:
http://www.cranberryisles.com/baker/dance.html
http://www.acadiamagic.com/BakerIsland.html
http://www.barharborwhales.com/baker-island.php (Baker Island boat tour charter company)