June 2012 – Waterlines — A Maine Sea Kayaking Journal

If you drive 26 miles east from Ellsworth to Steuben, and then 6 miles south from Route 1 on the Pigeon Hill Road, you reach near the end of a peninsula that protrudes as far south as the town of Bar Harbor and Schoodic Point. The Petit Manan Refuge is one of the five refuges that together make up the Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge.

Petit Manan Point is named after nearby Petit Manan Island, which itself was named by Samuel de Champlain and means “island out to sea.”

The refuge consists of 2,195 acres, both on Petit Manan Point and on nearby islands.

Like the other four refuges in Maine, Petit Manan provides a seasonal home for endangered neotropical songbirds such as the American redstart, Sawinson’s thrush, and song sparrow. The saltmarshes and mudflats provide habitat for black ducks great blue herons, American bitterns, sandpipers, and more. According to the refuge brochure, “During fall migration the 80-acred Cranberry Flowage on Petit Manan is filled with over 4,000 . . . black ducks, green-winged teal, and mallards” who use it as a resting and feeding spot.

We often say that kayaking is the best way to see the coast, but walking is also good — and it sometimes gets you places unreachable by other means. Petit Manan Point presents a strong case for the argument that being able to see the water is not always a prerequisite of coast. For even where the trails take you over glacially scoured terrain and down into the deep shade of white cedar forests, the fingerprints of the ocean are unmistakable and everywhere. In the cool, moist salt air. In the peat bogs, the subarctic vegetation, and the tamarack. In the thrushes, sparrows, and warblers. In the wildflowers, and –yes — in the sound of distant surf.

Petit Manan Point offers two main options for hikes. The shorter, easterly hike (Hollingsworth Trail) seems to be favorite of some. The longer, westerly hike — (Birch Point Trail) has recently undergone upgrades that include new plank bridges in the boggy areas.

For our late day, late May hike, we chose the Hollingsworth trail, which, as we found, provides a tremendous variety of vegetation and landscapes in a 1.5 mile loop. There is also opportunity to extend the hike by walking south along the beaches toward the southern tip of the peninsula.

Whether you go in May or August or October, there is likely to be lots to see — and a good chance to see something you haven’t seen before.

This time of year I trade my downriver kayak for a sea kayak. Rather than a wing paddle, a flat-bladed Euro paddle occupies a place in the backseat of my car. Instead of monitoring stream flow data, I keep an eye on the tide charts. The bays and islands, not the rivers, become the target of my afternoon and weekend plans.

River paddling is linear. We drive upriver and then make the trip down, sometimes repeating the trip on the same day. The days are still short. Daylight is at a premium. We look at our watches and paddle harder to make sure we can get to the take-out by sundown. The river itself is a line, albeit a living and moving one. In sections where rocks interrupt the river’s smooth surface, we seek to run the ideal lines, following the current, avoiding the rocks and holes. As spring advances, we move from the first rivers to ice out to the ones that hold their level longer, due to upstream dams or large watersheds. This migration, too, is a line, a sequenced progression repeated from one year to the next.

Ocean paddling is more about arcs and circles. The days are longer and warmer and we shed the sense of urgency that kept us in continuous movement. We linger in quiet coves or pause for a moment to bob in the waves. The number of put-ins and take-outs is almost infinite — as are the routes between them. Getting from point A to point B is about possibilities. The tide rises and falls. The winds swing from north to south and back again. We skirt shorelines and trace the gentle arcs of pocket beaches. We circumnavigate islands for the sake of doing so. Destination becomes less important. There is no end to get to. Just a vast sea to experience and appreciate.

It’s a very human thing to resist change and to mourn it. The time to ride the rivers on the flood of snowmelt and spring runoff is always abbreviated. The brief season of running rivers is one of thrill and urgency and a little bit of danger. And then the rains slow and the rivers subside, and we make the transition back to the sea. We go reluctantly at first, but then, after arriving, we are glad to feel waves rise underneath us, glad for the early light and the islands, glad for the seal pups and eider chicks, glad for the island blueberries and wild roses, whose own time is even now growing closer.