Vermont to Maine

Posted On July 2, 2020

As of this exact moment, The Van is ensconced in the construction site of a brand new and gleaming white structure intruding itself into the Machias River bellow the Bad Little Falls in Machias, Maine, as if we were just another contractor, but in fact we’re not. We’re alien observers of a rivertown trying to reinvent itself.

Hereabouts, every town, excepting Burlington, VT, where we left off, and of course the coastal towns to come, appears to be desperately trying to realign itself with the latest recreational industry and away from the lumber and paper pillars of the past.

We wish them well, as the people of Maine have been as cordial and comical and (alas) as white as their reputation suggests. Not enough are wearing masks, as covid 19 continues to fuck us. On the other hand, we are thoroughly conflicted about this topic, as we are filthy, trying to comply with the usual CDC guidelines while travelling on our merry way through your communities. Can’t even right now!

Irregardless (Karyssa hates this “word”), four days, four topics:

6/27: On our way east from Vermont (a word that literally translates to Green Mountains), we crossed the Green Mtn Nat Forest and stopped at various roadside attractions, the best being Texas Falls where we were schooled on the major geological feature of the state: the Green Mountain Anticlinorium – a process occurring over 12,000 years ago when the ice started melting from the last ice age. Throughout the years, the continuous and ever increasing shiving of the water on the bedrock created these glacial potholes, allowing for larger and large holes to form.

6/28: We spent the the beginning of our day around Hanover, and the bourgeois enclave of the smallest of the Ivy’s. While a great AT trailtown, its privilege was showing, and we searched every trailhead around the town in order to avoid it. There are a lot of trails around here, managed by the kind Dartmouth Outdoor Club–they once brought me apples–but we could only do a quick scurry up Moose Mountain. I wish every day could start like this!

[Alsoooo! Karyssa add-in here! Nick frigging made a fire in the rain y’all. Listen. He got some paper birch – and gimme a sec on the whole paper birch thing, okay?

Like this tree is amazing. It is a high density wood, so it burns forever, basically. Native Americans used to make canoes because it’s sturdy enough that it won’t let water in. The abundance of birch is also an indicator of the youth or maturity of a forest. So, because birch loves sunlight and can’t handle shade, it is among the first (along with aspen and maple trees) to take root in a forest. However, because birch live so relatively short, once other trees start moving in (think conifers) and the older birches start dying, the forests gradually become more and more coniferous.

This area handled some massive deforestation and one particularly bad wildfire, which allowed for these trees to populate the area. In more mature forests, however, one wouldn’t get such a plentiful sight of birch.

Anyway, Nick used the scraps of paper birch bark that were lying around to light a fire, despite the rain. He also found a sap pocket and layered some along the kindling in order to keep the fire alive. I was thoroughly impressed. /Karyssa rant]

6/29: Return to Baxter…not quite. To attempt a backtrack of one’s AT hike in a van is not recommended, but we headed towards the Rangeley Lakes region, could not locate Hiker Hut, and dealt with a lost lug nut and transmission codes before ending up parking stealth-style in the wondrous Debsconeag (pronounced Debs-con-egg) Lakes Wilderness Area along a roaring branch of the Penobscot River. Though still recovering from a drought, it had rained here for days and the river seemed so know when narrows and rapids were approaching as it sped up and over them in a mad dash down from Maine’s marbled ledges.

As the sun set, we hiked over moss-covered boulders to a small Ice Cave, one that refuses to believe that it’s July. We have this beautiful place all to ourselves, except for a camp or two, but given that we had to traverse the Golden Road for several miles before crossing Abol Bridge, and then use really narrow forest service roads to get here, it’s no surprise. The MATC’s 100-Mile Wilderness begins around the corner, but it feels like we’re lost in it already.

6/30: Maine Coastal Rocks! We thought it would be cool to see the top of Route 1, but only made it to Houlton, where I-95 crosses into Canada, eh?

I approached the Canadian border station only to read “essential travel only” so I made a u-turn, only to discover that the US Customs is now in front of us, and despite the guard’s seeing our course, had to dig out our passports and answer twenty questions in his routine: “any fruits or vegetables?”; “but sir, we never actually left the country”; “Ehmm. How much cash are you both carrying? Please put away your phone, Ma’am.”

His institutionalized brain seems to have been stuck in a canalized rut, like a vole’s sexual response, and he simply had to go through the entire script.

But we did make it to the Easternmost point in the US, in Lubec, ME at West Quoddy Head lighthouse and state park.

West Quoddy is wild, and similar to the more popular Acadia Island, with two-hundred foot granite cliffs topped with peat bogs and thick conifer forests, and surrounded by dozens of named and un-named islands in the Gulf of Maine and Bay of Fundy.

Gulliver’s A-hole on the coastal trail, one-half of a mile from the lighthouse, is not to be missed, and the bellows made by the surf crashing into it can be heard throughout the park.

When we returned to the mainland to continue down Rt 1 to Bar Harbor, we marvelled at how much the famous tides had advanced across the vast tidal flats.

A local, armed with a metal detector on a very magnetized beach, told us that thirty-two foot tides were common here (and it was he who told us not to miss Gulliver’s hole, btw).

Along the St Croix river, separating us from New Brunswick, we stopped at the historic and now sad Calais, rhymes with Dallas, even though the townspeople voted to change their name from “Township #5” to Calais in honor of the French role in the founding of the USA. This freakin’ two-bit town was once the epicenter of global lumber shipping, an original boomtown (shout out to Williamsport, PA).

We ate lobster dinner (what else, right?, but actually my Dad’s parting words on the phone yesterday were to go get a lobster dinner) at the only restaurant open in town, in Lubec, that is. Most everyone wears masks here, but not all, and there are way too many Trump 2020 signs up in here. [F that f-ing moron.]

Today is another grey day, but it’s laundry day, so who cares for now. We do so underneath the Burnham Tavern ne Museum in Machias, where the first naval battle of the war of independence was plotted. Of course it’s closed, but the building has been standing since 1770 and is a neat reminder of how that war touched every nook and corner of this part of the world.