3.3.14 As the wind blows the snow today, our minds drift to happier (sunnier) times…
Welcome to the first in a 7-part series about our kayak-camping week on the rocky, wild islands of Penobscot Bay, Maine. September 2013. 

Yes, it is possible to jump into a postcard and paddle in a picture-perfect, blue-sky world. Here’s how: Be sure to invite Hen (aka, Henrietta) who always but always guarantees good weather; Sound Kayakers, Michele and Nick, from Connecticut; new pal Julie from Alaska; and local girl Karen, of Castine Kayak. Go in mid-September when the “summer people” have vanished. And launch from a cozy poem of a town, Castine, Maine (one of the oldest communities in North America and the prettiest village around).

Penobscot Bay is Maine’s largest bay. Of Maine’s 4,613 islands, some of the largest are here, including North Haven, Vinalhaven, and Isle Au Haut. Our plan: Paddle south from Castine on the east  side of things, loop down around Vinalhaven, then return up the west side.  Total of 5 days, 4 nights, and infinitely beautiful scenery.

Of course, if you’re going to be out and about like that, you’ll need a few things. Karen master-minded the packing of supplies (tsk-tsking at our low-volume boats).  We’d need to carry 3 gallons of water per person (that’s 24 pounds + whatever your kayak weighs), tents, dry bags full of clothes, gear, personal stuff, coolers of food, cook stove, utensils, etc. etc. etc. Starting tomorrow, we’d get to haul it all over yards of slippery rocks before bedtime, six weary people to each heavy boat. Below, Hen and Karen pack their yaks.

Before we launch, let’s take a stroll around town. As our tourist map claims, “Castine is truly a unique Maine village, occupied continuously since the early 1600s as the site of numerous trading posts, forts, missions, and permanent settlements of France, Holland, England, and colonial America.”  The slideshow (below) gives you a sense of what Castine looks like. But The Steeple Jack by poet Marianne Moore (below slideshow; line breaks hers) really nails what it feels like.

Karen of Castine Kayak

Michele revels in late fall flowers

Homes from the 18th and 19th centuries are in pristine condition here

State of Maine, the training ship of the Maine Maritime Academy based in Castine

The town of Castine

Villagers work hard tending gardens; they’ve saved over 300 ancient elm trees from Dutch elm disease

Manor Inn B&B, where we geeks stayed before and after the trip

Our comfy room at Manor Inn. Starting tomorrow night, tents on rocks!

Our room’s clawfoot tub. Ah, the nostalgia one can feel for indoor plumbing…

Adventure beckons from the window of our room

The Steeple-Jack
Dürer would have seen a reason for living
    in a town like this, with eight stranded whales
to look at; with the sweet sea air coming into your house
on a fine day, from water etched
    with waves as formal as the scales
on a fish.

One by one in two’s and three’s, the seagulls keep
flying back and forth over the town clock,
or sailing around the lighthouse without moving their wings —
rising steadily with a slight
quiver of the body — or flock
mewing where

a sea the purple of the peacock’s neck is
paled to greenish azure as Dürer changed
the pine green of the Tyrol to peacock blue and guinea
gray. You can see a twenty-five-
pound lobster; and fish nets arranged
to dry. The

whirlwind fife-and-drum of the storm bends the salt
marsh grass, disturbs stars in the sky and the
star on the steeple; it is a privilege to see so
much confusion. Disguised by what
might seem the opposite, the sea-
side flowers and

trees are favored by the fog so that you have
the tropics first hand: the trumpet-vine,
fox-glove, giant snap-dragon, a salpiglossis that has
spots and stripes; morning-glories, gourds,
or moon-vines trained on fishing-twine
at the back door;

cat-tails, flags, blueberries and spiderwort,
striped grass, lichens, sunflowers, asters, daisies —
yellow and crab-claw ragged sailors with green bracts — toad-plant,
petunias, ferns; pink lilies, blue
ones, tigers; poppies; black sweet-peas.
The climate

is not right for the banyan, frangipani, or
jack-fruit trees; or for exotic serpent
life. Ring lizard and snake-skin for the foot, if you see fit;
but here they’ve cats, not cobras, to
keep down the rats. The diffident
little newt

with white pin-dots on black horizontal spaced-
out bands lives here; yet there is nothing that
ambition can buy or take away. The college student
named Ambrose sits on the hillside
with his not-native books and hat
and sees boats

at sea progress white and rigid as if in
a groove. Liking an elegance of which
the sourch is not bravado, he knows by heart the antique
sugar-bowl shaped summer-house of
interlacing slats, and the pitch
of the church

spire, not true, from which a man in scarlet lets
down a rope as a spider spins a thread;
he might be part of a novel, but on the sidewalk a
sign says C. J. Poole, Steeple Jack,
in black and white; and one in red
and white says

Danger. The church portico has four fluted
columns, each a single piece of stone, made
modester by white-wash. This would be a fit haven for
waifs, children, animals, prisoners,
and presidents who have repaid
sin-driven

senators by not thinking about them. The
place has a school-house, a post-office in a
store, fish-houses, hen-houses, a three-masted
schooner on
the stocks. The hero, the student,
    the steeple-jack, each in his way,
is at home.

It could not be dangerous to be living
in a town like this, of simple people,
who have a steeple-jack placing danger signs by the church
while he is gilding the solid-
pointed star, which on a steeple
stands for hope.

Marianne Moore