To protect an otherwise innocent and untrammeled place, the name of the naturalist’s favorite Maine island—the one where he might someday wish to have his ashes scattered amid its heath and ledge and careening gulls—should perhaps not be revealed. But plenty of people know it well. Lobstermen fish its surrounding shoals and canyons, hauling up bigger, harder-shelled crustaceans inured to a tempestuous way of life amid the area’s full-bore tides. Herring men also roam its waters under the cover of darkness when unknowably vast numbers of their prey rise to the surface at night to graze on the planktonic pastures of these very green waters. And ornithologists know it as a place of exceptionally high species diversity, both for its resident seabirds, restless migratory passerines and the raptors that follow after them most attentively.
So when friends suggested organizing a marine adventure to this remote island late in the summer season, it seemed like an excellent idea. Stores (a picnic) were laid in the ship’s hold (V-berth); scientific instruments (binoculars) were carefully inspected and loaded; and the requisite naval charts (GPS) were consulted.
The captain might have thought to tune in a marine forecast, but he did not. It was not as if he had to pick just the right day between one slow-moving low-pressure cell after another with their attendant fog-mulls. Nope, we could have picked any random day in August and expected a bright and shining day with sunlight refracting over the surface roughness of a gentle onshore wind. As it was, the high relative humidity of the morning had baked off early, leaving a white haze on the offshore horizon, which meant we actually had to plot a course, but other than that the essential discipline of the initial journey was to watch for cruising porpoise, diving gannets and perhaps even the dipping wings of a shearwater.
When we arrived at this unnamable island, we anchored in a small lee, launched the captain’s gig (inflatable dinghy), and nearly all stepped ashore dry-shod. Truth be told, the giant cobbles on the beach were tonsured in a slippery greenish algae, such that the first dozen steps ashore were accompanied by wildly gyrating postures suggestive of middle schoolers trying out their first dance moves. But dignity is easily sacrificed in such a spectacular natural setting.
Once we had firmly planted our feet on the island, we headed to the geological wonderland of its outboard side. The island is one long sinuous granitic ridgeline, ascending at a gentle incline from where you have landed up to its outboard edge where you come face to face with eternity. Because you have been hardly aware of the ascent, when you get to the island’s seaward side, 40-50 sheer cliffs plunge directly down to the edge of the restless sea. Who could not be tempted to leap into the embracing sea and head straight for Bermuda?
One of these seaward cliffs is edged by a near vertical, boulder—strewn gully, known locally as Squeaker Guzzle. Squeaker is the name fishermen use for black guillemots (they certainly don’t call them guillemots!), a small black and white seabird with brilliant scarlet webbed feet and scarlet beak and mouth. In season, squeakers tumble out of crevasses in this guzzle, making the sound fishermen have given them, but this year’s salt and pepper plumed young birds have long since fledged.
The truly mystical part of the journey is found at the foot of Squeaker Guzzle, where you jump down onto a flat slab of granite, washed clean at high water, and look back over your shoulder to a cleft in the rock wall that calls to you as if from within a chambered nautilus. You scramble up on the first rock shelf and then wriggle your way inward until another chamber reveals itself and then you are Jonah in the stomach of a whale feeling the deep rhythmic pulse of the sea.
And that’s the thing about Maine islands—you might head out to one expecting to have a simple island picnic and you end up sharing a transcendental experience.