It was noon on July 4th and Frances and I no longer wanted to celebrate.
We had decided earlier to go to the parade because we hadn’t seen one in years and had leftover images of music, clowns and marching bands. Neither of us was prepared for the sonic onslaught of Shriners and their miniature cars, cars so loud they made Harleys seem as quiet as Hybrids. Then the town’s fire engines finished off our nerves.
We stumbled to Bar Harbor’s athletic fields to volunteer at the children’s fair. It was a welcome change of pace. Sure, the children were endless and did their share of wailing, but their best screams lacked the sheer decibel level of what we’d experienced earlier. Besides, it was fun to help at games of “chance” where every child won.
But the sun, which earlier seemed to hide from the parade noise, made an unrelenting appearance. The athletic fields began to bake. It made helping children dig through haystacks less fun and the decision not to bring a sunhat downright foolish.
Soon, the sun, combining with the overwhelming smell of cooked lobsters, made us nauseous. But business trickled down and soon the sleepy children slung over parents’ shoulders outnumbered the ones left with tickets. After a few more minutes, we outlasted the last wide-eyed toddler aimlessly rolling around the haystack.
Frances’s eye color changes serve as a barometer for her well-being. Dark green is ecstatically happy or ready to run a marathon, with the health continuum sliding downhill with lighter shades of blue. When she staggered toward me at the end of the fair, her eyes were the color of a blue watercolor mix with too much water in it. It was time for a swim, but we had no suits.
Luckily, there was a small swimming hole nearby where it was said the park rangers looked the other way at skinny-dipping. Frances, a veteran private skinny-dipper, was desperate enough to risk public ogling.
We drove over, and then walked a short path to the swimming hole. We were met there by a small group of men in great shape who never gave Frances a second look.
The first plunge into the ice-cold water made everything all right. After the tenth plunge, our brains were so blissfully addled that the morning’s discomforts seemed far way. We warmed ourselves in the sun, ate, and made plans to get to the fireworks early. Fireworks are one of the few loud things we love.
Eventually, we packed up to leave. But as we walked up the trail, we spied a glimpse of a beautiful sunset and Frances wanted to scramble up the hill to a secondary path for a better look.
When we got there, we heard rustling and hushed voices. Afraid to stumble onto a couple doing more than skinny dipping, we made a wide detour.
We scrambled up through some brush and just caught sight of pink and orange above the treeline. It was to be our best glimpse of fireworks all night.
Our car was in a parking lot below. We didn’t have much light left, but we figured if we just went down, we couldn’t miss the original trail. If we went too far, we’d just hit the pond. Besides, it was an island, how lost could anyone get?
A half-hour later, we knew we were in trouble. We went down, up, and down again, with no sign of the trail. My wife was the pathfinder among us, versed at reading the stars and judging terrain, but she was getting tired. I muscled control of the expedition and forged us ahead in what I was sure was a straight line (it wasn’t).
All hope of getting to the fireworks early vanished when we plunged into a wetland that neither of us had seen. It was now dark enough that even if we stumbled onto the trail, we might not have known it. The mosquitoes were becoming maddening and we couldn’t even think in a straight line.
The more shrilly optimistic I became, repeating every few minutes that we couldn’t get lost on an island, the more fatalistic Frances grew. She described in detail how one dies of exposure; it sounded just like our current situation.
At one point, we heard dull thuds in the distance; dismally, we realized the fireworks had begun without us. We strained to catch sight of them, but we didn’t know if we were looking in the right direction and the mosquitoes kept flying into our eyes.
We hunkered down for the night, stretching our shirts over our knees and resting fitfully. There have been longer nights in my life, but not many.
But day came and the light made everything sane again. Soon, we found an old logging road and followed it to the trail. It seemed ridiculously easy and anti-climatic.
My wife immediately had to go guide a sea kayak tour. I stayed behind to write at the quiet swimming hole, then hitched a ride back to town.
When we met up after her tour, Frances flopped down on my lap and looked up at me with eyes the color of a chlorinated pool.
She told me she had one more adventure before leaving the swimming hole: A park ranger was waiting for her at our car. At first, he didn’t believe her story; no-one, he said, could get lost on such a short trail. She showed him her mosquito bites and he let her go.
— Craig Idlebrook