Day Three

Day Three

We woke up to the sounds of a gentle surf in the cove.  Matinicus was magical--in part for what it was not.  There were no stores.  There was no movie theater.  There were no restaurants.  There were no pushy social climbers (I suspect social climbing on Matinicus is most often done with fists).  There was no putt-putt golf.  There was nothing to do and nowhere to go.  Just a spectacular, unspoiled Maine island and the Atlantic ocean as far as you could see. 

The joy of getting close to nature may actually be less about nature and more about what is missing from nature.  The absence of roads, shopping malls and cell phones creates a beauty all of itself.  We have an opportunity to breathe, enjoy the people around us and take time for satisfying simple tasks like patching a sail or making a pie.  Anybody who has had the experience of a summer vacation in a cottage on the water knows the feeling.

As an aside, I think we project this feeling when we think about aboriginal peoples who live a natural life close to the land.  On the one hand we want to save them from civilization and all the stress, clutter and environmental degradation that goes with it.  On the other hand, we know they have the right to choose and that they will ultimately not have the strength or perspective to resist the siren call of civilization. 

At some point we too will weaken and leave Matinicus for civilization and, just like corrupted aboriginals that you see in National Geographic with Grateful Dead t-shirts, cans of Red Bull and transistor radios (is that a missionary cooking in the background?), we will return to our iPhones, Outlook calendars and unpaid bills.

That morning Alan made me some good coffee and I rooted around and found some cereal for breakfast.  Today's adventure was going to be a trip on George's boat out to Matinicus Rock, a small island and bird sanctuary several miles away with a famous and still-operational lighthouse.  Our purpose was to see the Puffins' breeding grounds.

These were Atlantic Puffins, small, stocky diving birds--a species of the Auk family.  They nest in small crevices in the rocks where they can find protection from seagulls and other predatory birds.  When the young are old enough to leave, they depart the rocks en masse at midnight--a time when seagulls and other hungry creatures are presumably fast asleep.  The Maine coast is the southern part of their range (which centers on Iceland).  Puffins in this area were all but wiped out by humans who prized their feathers for hats and ate their meat.  They were reintroduced from Icelandic Puffins and have reestablished themselves on Matinicus Rock and elsewhere along the coast. 

The wind was blowing pretty hard but the Robin plowed through the waves and we were rewarded at Matinicus Rock with large flocks of puffins and larger auks.  Ann was a little politically incorrect when, upon hearing of the past practice of hunting puffins for their feathers, asked George if the trip included a complimentary puffin hat and puffin sandwich.

The Matinicus Rock Lighthouse is famous in local lore for the exploits of Abbie Burgess, the young daughter of the lighthouse keeper who, while her father was ashore buying supplies, kept the lighthouse lit through a fierce storm that destroyed most of the buildings on the island, thereby saving countless sailers who otherwise would have been dashed on the rocks.  Locals tell a slightly different story, alleging that the senior Burgess was a drunk who was on a three week bender on the mainland while his family struggled to survive on the rock.  Either way, the stories about Matinicus and its surroundings just kept getting more and more colorful.

Another bit of local lore that we heard on this trip was the story of a fabulous sea rescue of the crew of the Harkness, a 75 foot tug, which became known as the "Miracle on Matinicus."  As the story goes, in January 1993, the Harkness was going down in a fierce gale and sent out an SOS signal that it was taking on water and the crew of two was abandoning ship.  It is hard enough to survive a swim on the beach in Maine in August, much less a sustained immersion in gale-force seas in January.

Two brave men from Matinicus, realizing they were the Harkness's last hope, boarded a lobster boat and headed out into the storm towards the last coordinates the Harkness had broadcast.  Hypothermia was setting in and the two Harkness crew members were having trouble staying together on the ladder they were using for floatation. 

One of the drowning crew members had a flashlight frozen to his glove and, in a miracle, the rescuers from Matinicus caught a brief flash of the light through the gale.  They found the men and managed to get them on board and save their lives in unbelievably difficult conditions.  When looking up the details of this rescue online a few minutes ago, I discovered that one of the rescuers was Alan and Peggy's neighbor Paul Murray (husband of the island's bakery store owner, news reporter, schoolteacher and emergency medical technician Eva Murray).  An unbelievable act of heroism at sea.

When we returned to Matinicus after viewing the puffins, Alan and Peggy took us for a walk around their property.  They are on a 30 or 40 acre undivided property with four owners, each of whom has a separate house.  The property covers two coves, Condon Cove (where Alan and Peggy live) and an adjacent unnamed cove with a beautiful beach.  On the mainland there would be 50 summer houses on this property at a couple of million dollars a copy.  Nice to have it all to ourselves.

That night Alan and Peggy had a party for a bunch of their Matinicus friends which was somewhat in our honor.  After hearing colorful stories about the island residents for years, Ann demanded to meet them in person.  The group included professors, school teachers, artists, lobster fishermen and a venture capitalist.  The group lived up to its colorful billing and everyone had a great time.

One of the attendees was Biscuit Ames, a member of Matinicus's prominent Ames family and a leader of the lobstering community in both Matinicus and Maine as a whole.  The Ames family has been on Matinicus since 1825.  A bunch of them must leave every generation or the place would be overrun by now.

The Ames family has a history that is colorful even by Matinicus standards.  Apparently the islanders are not particularly stuffy about requiring that procreation take place exclusively in the context of marriage.  Biscuit Ames's father was a very successful lobster fisherman and was reportedly the handsomest man on the Maine coast.  Over time, more and more children were born on Matinicus who bore a striking resemblance to Ames senior.  Some of the islanders noticed that every time one of these look-alikes was born the mother received a new washing machine.  Over time people started watching for the washing machines on the ferry and would follow the delivery truck to see whose babies had likely been sired by Mr. Ames.  As I understand it, Ames senior acknowledged many, but not all, of these children as his own.  Surprisingly despite the high number of guns per capita on Matinicus and the high number of washing machine deliveries, nobody ever got shot.  These guys save their bullets for the important stuff--lobsters.

Alan's daughter Grace fishes as a stern man (woman?) with Biscuit from time to time as one of her summer jobs.  At my urging, she asked Biscuit during the party if I could go lobstering with them the following day.  He sized me up and decided either that (a) I would make good lobster bait or (b) this would be the best entertainment he'd had all summer, or (c) both, then agreed. 

If you have ever seen the cable TV show about the Deadliest Catch (fishing somewhere in the Bering Sea for king crabs or god-knows-what) you will have a good sense of my expectations for the experience.  Hypothermia, concussion, loss of minor extremities--all were good possibilities.  Oddly, everyone at the party who found out I was going to go fishing with Biscuit looked at me wide-eyed and then would laugh.  When I asked them what they were laughing about, they would just act as though they hadn't heard me and and wander off chuckling.

We met a number of other interesting people at the party, including Paul and Eva Murray who together do just about everything that needs doing on Matinicus other than catching lobsters.  Paul is in charge of the electric utility, the phone system, the microwave communications link to the mainland, the recycling center and probably several other things I've missed.  Eva has the only commercial enterprise on the island, a bakery, and in her spare time is the schoolteacher, the emergency medical technician (there is no doctor) and news reporter.  As I mentioned earlier, Paul was one of the heroes of the Harkness rescue.  As if that were not enough, Eva had recently done a heroic job of rescuing herself from a harrowing airplane crash of the single engine plane that services the island's grass landing strip.  Paul and Eva were an extremely impressive couple.

Eva and Paul Murray after Eva's Plane Crash

After the party I went to bed as soon as possible and steeled myself for the early morning wakeup call.  We were scheduled to be on the water at 4:00 am.